2006

On 10th June 2006 the IMS Study Group "Musical Iconography" was founded within the framework of the international congress "Musical Iconography in the XXI Century: Mapping European Art for Context and Meanings" (Ravenna, 7-10 June 2006).

The congress provided an unprecedented opportunity to bring together historians, philologists, musicologists, and art historians who share an interest in musical iconography, scholars from all over the world and representatives of multiple cultural traditions. The most authoritative exponents of the discipline and the heads of the main music-iconographic research institutions and documentation centers, as well as very young researchers, took part in the meeting.

The papers presented a wide range of topics regarding the relationships between music and figurative representations, addressing issues ranging from musical archeology to oral traditions, twentieth-century aesthetics, with insights dedicated to the relationship between text and image, and Renaissance iconology, the parallels between musical and figurative structures and links between iconography and musical theatre.

The conference ended with a Round Table, chaired by Tilman Seebass, where the foundation of the Study Group and its first steering committee - formed by Nicoletta Guidobaldi, Björn Tammen and Alexandra Voutyra - was proposed and approved by the assembly.