The Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini of Lucca and the DAMS/Università di Torino are pleased to invite submissions of proposals for the symposium «Music, Cinema, and Modernism. The Works and Heritage of Kurt Weill between Europe and America», to be held at the  Università degli studi di Torino, Palazzo Nuovo, Via Sant’Ottavio, 20 – Torino, from 21 to 22 May 2021.

Keynote Speakers

• Nils Grosch (Universität Salzburg)
• Stephen Hinton (Stanford University)

The conference aims to address aspects of Kurt Weill’s works in relation to his contemporaries and his heritage to succeeding generations, both in the United States and in Europe. The creative activities of the German-American composer have been characterized by his keen interest in new media: principally, in radio in Germany and in the cinema in the United States, and in new forms of experimentation in musical theater on both sides of the Atlantic.

The fact that his compositions as well as his sensibilities tended to situate themselves somewhere between the poles of highbrow and the lowbrow culture allows for multiple interpretations, while prompting various possible themes for research. The themes suggested here are not intended to be restrictive but, rather, to invite a wide range of reflections, and other topics are also welcome:

• The modernity of Kurt Weill: borrowings and assimilations among his contemporaries
• After 1950: the theoretical and aesthetic legacy of Kurt Weill after his death
• Kurt Weill’s german-american contemporaries: aesthetic, artistic, and compositional choices
• Marc Blitzstein as a translator and interpreter of the German Weill in the United States
• Love Life on Broadway: a new musical theater genre is born?
• Musicals, American opera, Radio Opera and so on: the ideas about musical theater by Kurt Weill
• The debates for and against modernism among German émigré composers to the United States  before and after World War II
• Aesthetic and theoretical debates concerning film music between the 1920s and 1940s
• Film music as “modern music”: identity and perspectives
• Kurt Weill and Hollywood: New Music for the Cinema?
• Composer and arranger: new roles and new relationships
• Berlin, Broadway, and Hollywood: a comparison of their modes of organization and cultural production

Programme Committee

• Giaime Alonge (Università degli studi di Torino)
• Giulia Carluccio (Università degli studi di Torino)
• Tim Carter (University of North Carolina)
• Pietro Cavallotti (Università degli studi di Torino)
• Roberto Illiano (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca)
• Kim Kowalke (Eastman School of Music/ University of Rochester – The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music)
• Andrea Malvano (Università degli studi di Torino)
• Ilario Meandri (Università degli studi di Torino)
• Alberto Rizzuti (Università degli studi di Torino)
• Marida Rizzuti (Università degli studi di Torino)
• Massimiliano Sala (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini, Lucca)

The official languages of the conference are English and Italian. Papers selected at the conference will be published in a miscellaneous volume.
Papers are limited to twenty minutes in length, allowing time for questions and discussion. Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words and one page of biography.
All proposals should be submitted by email no later than ***Sunday 29 November 2020*** to <conferences@luigiboccherini.org>. With your proposal please include your name, contact details (postal address, e-mail and telephone number) and (if applicable) your affiliation.
The committee will make its final decision on the abstracts by ***Sunday 13 December 2020***, and contributors will be informed immediately thereafter. Further information about the programme, registration, travel and accommodation will be announced after that date.
For any additional information, please contact:

Dr. Massimiliano Sala
conferences@luigiboccherini.org
www.luigiboccherini.org