Past SMI Annual Conferences
2008: Waterford
The annual conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland was hosted by the Music Department of Waterford Institute of Technology at the College Street campus from Friday 9th to Sunday 11th May 2008 with more than 100 delegates in attendance. Leading academics and postgraduate students presented a total of 68 research papers on a wide variety of topics, ranging from Renaissance to Romantic to Twenty-first-century classical music studies, Irish Traditional Music, jazz, popular and film music, music theatre, social aspects of music in Ireland, pedagogy and performance studies, aesthetics and music analysis. The keynote speaker was Professor John Tyrrell of Cardiff University, co-editor of the monumental 29-volume revised edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and, most recently, of two major books on the composer Leos Janácek, who died 80 years ago this year. There was also a recital to mark the tercentenary of the death of the composer John Blow and of the bicentenary of the initial publication of Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies given by renowned tenor John Elwes accompanied by harpsichordist Malcolm Proud.
Booklet [PDF ~270K]
2007: Inaugural SMI Postgraduate Students' Conference
University College Dublin
Saturday 19 January 2008
The first annual SMI Postgraduate Students' Conference was held at University College Dublin on Saturday 19 January 2008. The conference commenced with an address given by the inaugural President of the SMI, Professor Harry White; Dr Wolfgang Marx (Head of Music, UCD) closed the proceedings. The key-note address was delivered by the President of the SMI and Hamilton Harty Professor of Music at Queen's University, Belfast, Professor Jan Smaczny. Anne Hyland was the conference organiser.
Booklet [PDF ~33K]
2007: DIT
The Fifth Annual Conference of the SMI was held in the DIT Conservatory of Music and Drama, Rathmines, Dublin on 11-13 May 2007. The Keynote speaker was Professor John Rink.
Booklet [PDF ~137K]
2006: Limerick
The Fourth Annual Conference of the SMI was held in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick on 5-7 May, 2006. Over 100 delegates from Ireland, the UK, France, Germany, Portugal, Canada and the USA attended the conference to hear 70 papers over three days. The Keynote Speaker was the President of the Society for Music Theory, Professor William E. Caplin of McGill University, Montreal, and the Romanian String Quartet, ‘ConTempo’ performed in the College Chapel.
Booklet [PDF ~320K]
2005: Cork
The Department of Music, UCC, hosted the Society's third annual conference on 6-8 May 2005. Around 100 delegates attended the event, which was dovetailed with a weekend festival of music: the Department's most extensive contribution to Cork 2005, the year in which the city celebrated its tenure as European Capital of Culture. Thirty-eight papers were delivered and the keynote address, entitled 'Musical Runes, Musical Ruins: On Hearing History', was given by Lawrence Kramer, professor of English and Music at Fordham University.
Programme and Abstracts [PDF ~212K]
2004: Belfast
The School of Music, Queen’s University of Belfast, hosted the second annual conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, on 7-8 May 2004. The event featured over forty papers on a wide range of topics, and a keynote address given by Professor Michael Beckerman of New York University, entitled 'Dvorak: A Minor Quartet'.
Programme [PDF ~19K]
2003: Maynooth
The first annual conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, held in association with the Irish Chapter of the Royal Musical Association, took place at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, on 2 and 3 May 2003. It attracted over 70 delegates from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany and Hungary. A total of 34 papers were presented in sessions covering a broad range of topics from plainchant to contemporary composers, and from Irish traditional music to cathedral music. The keynote address, by Professor Derek Scott (University of Salford), was on the subject of 'From the Erotic to the Demonic: Scaling the heights and plumbing the depths of musicology'.
This conference marked the formal inauguration of the Society for Musicology in Ireland whose first annual general meeting was held at the end of the conference under the chairmanship of the newly-elected President of the society, Professor Harry White. The conference was also the occasion of the launch by composer John Buckley of Irish Music in the Twentieth Century, edited by Gareth Cox & Axel Klein, Irish Musical Studies, vol. 7 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003).
Programme [PDF ~313K]
RMA Irish Chapter Conferences
2002 University College Dublin
2001 No conference
2000 Queen’s University Belfast
1999 Waterford Institute of Technology
1998 University of Ulster (Jordanstown)
1997 Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick
1996 Queen’s University Belfast
1995 Maynooth International Musicological Conference
1994 University College Cork
1993 University of Ulster (Jordanstown)
1992 Trinity College Dublin
1991 Stranmillis University College, Belfast
1990 NUI Maynooth
1989 Queen’s University Belfast
1988 University College Dublin
1987 University of Ulster (Jordanstown)