International Virtual Conference
organised by
Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini
IAM-Institute for Applied Musicology
9-11 June 2027
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini and the Italian Institute for Applied Musicology are pleased to invite submissions of proposals for the Conference «Sounds of Madness, Soundscapes of Care: Music, Mental Health, and Places from Antiquity to the Present» to be held online from 9 to 11 June 2027.
Over the past decades, the relationship between music and madness has emerged as a significant field of interdisciplinary research, bringing together musicologists, historians of medicine and psychiatry, scholars of opera and musical theatre, anthropologists, and researchers in sound studies. Throughout history, the connections between musical experience, mental health, illness, and practices of care have assumed diverse and often conflicting meanings, shaped by changing medical theories, philosophical and religious beliefs, and broader cultural representations of mental illness and madness.
This international conference seeks to investigate the historical relationships between music, madness, institutions of care, and therapeutic practices, with particular emphasis on musicological, historiographical, and interdisciplinary approaches. Rather than treating madness solely as a medical or psychiatric category, the conference welcomes contributions that explore its changing cultural, social, intellectual, and aesthetic meanings, as well as the ways in which music has participated in the construction, representation, regulation, or treatment of states understood as forms of mental disturbance.
Particular attention will be devoted to historical conceptions of music as a means of restoring, regulating, or disrupting mental and emotional balance; to representations of madness in the performing arts; to the cultural construction of the figure of the ‘mad genius’; and to the presence and functions of music in hospitals, asylums, charitable institutions, and other spaces of care from the medieval period to the present day.
The conference also aims to encourage innovative methodological perspectives on the study and interpretation of documentary, musical, visual, and material sources. The conference welcomes case studies, comparative perspectives, archival research, and theoretically informed approaches that contribute to a broader understanding of the historical relationships between music, madness, and practices of care.
Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
- Theories and conceptions of music and mental illness from Antiquity to the twentieth century
- Medical, philosophical, theological, and literary discourses on music and madness
- Music and the history of medicine and psychiatry
- Music as a means of regulating mental, emotional, and bodily states
- Music, therapy, and historical practices of care
- Music and the construction of the myth of the creative or ‘mad genius’
- Representations of madness in opera, musical theatre, and other performing arts
- Music in medieval and early modern hospitals and charitable institutions
- Music in asylums, psychiatric hospitals, and other institutions of care
- Archival sources for the history of music in hospitals, asylums, and psychiatric institutions
- Historical soundscapes of spaces and institutions of care
- Bells, prayers, chants, and other sonic rituals in institutional and religious contexts
- Sonic regulation, discipline, and control within institutional spaces
- Hospital, asylum, and psychiatric archives as sources for musicological research
- Medical, psychiatric, and musical documentation
- Musical practices, institutional cultures, and the experience of patients and caregivers
- Intersections between musicology, the history of medicine, psychiatry, anthropology, and sound studies
Programme Committee:
- Roberto Illiano (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
- Massimiliano Locanto (Università di Salerno)
- Fulvia Morabito (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
- Marida Rizzuti (Università di Torino)
- Massimiliano Sala (Centro Studi Opera Omnia Luigi Boccherini)
Keynote Speakers:
- Marita Fornaro Bordolli (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
- Andrea Korenjak (University of Vienna)
The official languages of the conference are English, French, 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 14 March 2027*** 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.
Further information about the programme and registration will be announced in due course after that deadline.
For any additional information, please contact:
Dr. Massimiliano Sala
conferences@luigiboccherini.org
www.luigiboccherini.org
