Music in the Carolingian World: Witnesses to a Metadiscipline
A Conference in Honor of Charles M. Atkinson
The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
October 28-29, 2011
Music in the Carolingian World: Witnesses to a Metadiscipline is an international conference honoring Professor Charles M. Atkinson. Its aim is to bring together twenty distinguished scholars from different academic fields to discuss music in the intellectual and cultural life of early medieval Europe. Thanks to its rich Antique legacy, the idea of music (musica, mousike) included a broader range of meanings than is commonly attributed to it today, foregrounding mathematical, scientific, philosophical, and theological ideas of harmony and proportion to such an extent that most fields of intellectual or artistic endeavor at that time can be said to have involved ‘music’ in some way, whether poetry, rhetoric, and other language arts; architecture, painting, and other fine arts; theology, philosophy, and other intellectual disciplines; or mathematics, astronomy, physics, and other scientific disciplines.
It is the goal of this conference to evoke this broader concept of music in the Carolingian sphere, with emphasis on its interdisciplinary consequences for modern research; and in so doing, to argue that Carolingian music, as a field of study, may properly be considered a metadiscipline. The conference will unfold according to four distinct sessions, treating music from the standpoints (broadly construed) of Verbum, Numerus, Ars, and Cultus. In addition there will be two keynote speakers, from the fields of musicology and history; and on Friday evening, there will be an early-medieval music concert. Information about the sessions, papers, speakers, and concert can be found through the Program, Speakers, and Concert links; other links will provide information about Travel and Lodging and Registration.
You are invited to join this celebration of Charles Atkinson in his 70th birthday year, where 20 scholars from different disciplines will present their research in four sessions chaired by Jan Ziolkowski (‘Verbum’), Michel Huglo and Barbara Haggh-Huglo (‘Numerus’), David Ganz (‘Ars’), and Susan Rankin (‘Cultus’), with keynote addresses by Patrick Geary and
Calvin Bower, and a concert by Sequentia/Dialogos.
Please visit the School of Music website for more information
