Overture

This year marks the first New Music Festival at the University of Central Missouri.  We invite composers and scholars to submit scores and/or papers for the festival, to be held March 2-3, 2009. The postmark deadline for submissions is Oct. 31, 2008.  Composers can find the list of available performers, ensembles, and technology in the detailed call for scores on the festival website: http://www.ucmo.edu/music/NMF/UCMNMFIndex.htm.  All forms of electroacoustic music are very welcome.

In keeping with the newness of the gathering, we have organized the festival around the theme of Innovation. 

One can trace innovation throughout the history of music, but the period since the end of World War II has been extraordinary in the pace, breadth, and intensity of musical exploration and extension. The composers of the Darmstadt School and later experimentalists dedicated themselves to questioning all inherited assumptions about music, leading in turn to the development of reactionary aesthetics in some musicians toward the end of the 20th Century. The ongoing, intensifying impact of technological innovation on the practice and consumption of music has not only led to new forms of art but also has led to new understandings of older music. Examination of the last six decades with regard to musical innovation begets a rich, diverse field of inquiry for scholars. 

We invite scholars to address any of the following questions or issues, but proposals for papers on any topic related to innovation in music since 1945 are in keeping with the theme:

• Following the unprecedented, exploratory nature of avant-garde composition in the 1950s and 1960s, is innovation truly possible today?
• What have innovations in musical instrument design since 1945 wrought in the field of music?
• How have musicians advanced, reacted to, embraced, or rejected innovation?
• What aesthetics have developed in support (or rejection) of innovation?
• What are the relationships in compositional strategies between innovation and tradition?
• How is the novelty of the present – in technique, design, and/or affect – balanced by continuity with the past?

The submission deadline (postmark) for proposals is October 31, 2008.  We prefer to receive these proposals via email in PDF, MS Word, or RTF format.  Presenters will be notified on or about November 21, 2008.

For additional details, please visit the festival website:

http://www.ucmo.edu/music/NMF/UCMNMFIndex.htm

Please direct specific questions to Dr. Eric Honour