A Pre-Conference for the 2025 Joint AMS-SMT Annual Meeting in Minneapolis, MN
5-6 November 2025
Due Date for proposals: 6 April 2025
In recent years, musicians, activists, and scholars have investigated how different musical traditions interact with questions of identity and belonging. Since at least the nineteenth century, Western concert music has been used by divergent political and social causes as a rallying point, as model, and as a potent communicator of personal and group identities. Brahms’s music, for example, has represented the political ideals of Vienna’s Liberal bourgeois community (Notley, Brodbeck) and the upward social mobility of Black musicians in the United States after the Civil War (Thurman), while also being upheld as apolitical when treated as “absolute music” in the aftermath of World War II (Beller-McKenna). This conference seeks to explore these and other ways that Brahms, his music, and the music of his circle have come to communicate personal and group identities since the late nineteenth century and the ways that different groups have addressed questions of belonging among those who engage with Brahms and his music as scholars, performers, and listeners.
We welcome proposals on any aspect of Brahms and his music, but we are especially interested in proposals dealing with topics such as:
- Reception and uses of Brahms and/or his music in political/social causes
- Researching, teaching, and performing Brahms in the 21st century
- Race, gender, sexuality, and class in the performance, analysis, and reception of Brahms’s music
- Brahms in global and cross-cultural contexts
- Brahms and his music in colonial and postcolonial contexts
- Brahms and public scholarship and outreach
- Analysis: new voices, new methodologies
In collaboration with the Mendelssohn Network, we also invite proposals for a joint session exploring the relationships between public and private perceptions of the Mendelssohns and Brahms in the nineteenth century and beyond. Proposals might address common themes and compositional procedures in these composers’ music, aspects of a shared reception history, Brahms’s engagement with the music and musicians of Mendelssohn’s circle, etc.
We envision presentations in these formats: 20-minute papers, with 10 minutes Q & A after each; themed sessions (3 or 4 papers, 20 minutes each followed by 10 minutes Q & A); roundtables (up to six presenters, each giving a brief position paper, followed by a general discussion: 90 minutes in length). Presentations in other formats will be considered. We are planning for a fully in-person event, but would like to accommodate participants who cannot travel. If you anticipate needing virtual accommodations, please contact info@americanbrahmssociety.org. The conference language is English.
Proposals are due by midnight EST on 6 April 2025. One need not be a member of the ABS to submit a proposal, but those who present at the conference will be expected to join.
Abstracts for individual papers or presentations should not exceed 300 words; for themed panels or roundtables, proposals should not exceed 900 words. Panel proposals should give an overview of the panel’s topic or theme and brief abstracts for each of the contributions. Supplemental material of no more than two pages (such as musical examples, tables or illustrations, and/or a bibliography) may be included and do not count towards the word limit. Please combine all materials (abstracts and any supplemental materials) into a single continuous PDF without presenters’ names or other identifying information and upload to this submission form.
Decisions will be announced in June 2025.
There will be no registration fee for the pre-conference, and all are welcome. Those wishing to make a donation towards the costs of the conference may do so through the website (credit card or PayPal) or by mailing a check (payable to The American Brahms Society) to:
The American Brahms Society, Attn: Karen Leistra-Jones
Department of Music, Franklin & Marshall College
P.O. Box 3003
Lancaster, PA 17604-3003
We appreciate your support!
Conference organizing committee: Marie Sumner-Lott, Karen Leistra-Jones, Drew Stephen, and Scott Murphy.