The Musica Viva: Florence Festival presents an International Mini-Conference titled "Music in the Galant Style and Beyond – A Modern Renaissance," taking place from August 20 to 22, 2025, in Florence, Italy. This scholarly gathering will bring together performers, musicologists, theorists, educators, and interdisciplinary researchers for three days of presentations, dialogue, and performance, focused on music of the Galant style and its resonances in contemporary thought and practice.
The conference is part of the larger Musica Viva: Florence Festival, an event dedicated to cultivating artistic excellence, historical awareness, and global musical dialogue. The mini-conference invites proposals that explore eighteenth-century Galant aesthetics and their legacy in today’s musical and intellectual culture. We encourage submissions that engage with historical performance practice, compositional pedagogy (such as partimento and solfeggio), analysis of style and form, improvisation, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and the reception or reinterpretation of Galant-era ideas in modern and experimental settings.
Presentations may take the form of traditional academic papers, lecture-recitals, panel discussions, workshops, or interdisciplinary sessions. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Theoretical frameworks of the Galant style, including phrase structure, ornamentation, and harmonic language.
Partimento and improvisation as tools for composition and performance, both historically and in modern teaching.
Historically informed performance and the rhetoric of expression in eighteenth-century music.
The influence of Galant idioms on Romantic, contemporary, or popular genres.
Cross-cultural perspectives and the global reception of the Galant style.
Intersections between music and other arts: literature, visual arts, and dance.
Technology and innovation in the revival or reimagination of early music.
The conference seeks to create a platform for interdisciplinary exploration and welcomes innovative session formats that foster dialogue between scholarship and performance. Performers and scholars alike are encouraged to propose projects that illuminate the Galant repertoire in fresh and engaging ways.
All proposals will be peer-reviewed through a blind evaluation process. Participants may submit one proposal per category (e.g., one paper and one lecture-recital). The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2025. Proposals should include a 250-word anonymized abstract and a separate document with the participant's bio and institutional affiliation. Submissions will be accepted through the official online form provided in the conference announcement.
The Musica Viva: Florence Festival is committed to fostering inclusive, international dialogue and welcomes participation from scholars and performers of all backgrounds and career stages. We hope this event will spark meaningful connections across disciplines and generations, highlighting the enduring relevance of eighteenth-century music and the creative potential of a truly modern renaissance.