The Dvořák American Heritage Association and Austrian Cultural Forum New York, in collaboration with New York University and Virginia Tech, are pleased to invite you to a two-day conference that explores the sonic and musical cultures of Habsburg Central Europe, with a specific focus on transnational circulations, exchanges, and ruptures.
Consisting of present-day Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, and parts of Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Croatia, Italy, and other lands, Habsburg Central Europe has been described as “a ‘laboratory’ for the pluricultural experience.” With this event, we seek to examine the sonic/musical entanglements within Habsburg Central Europe and reveal the ways in which the aural can highlight unexpected contestations of citizenship, belonging, and affiliation. An inescapable presence in Europe from the late sixteenth through the early twentieth century, the legacy of the Habsburg monarchy continues to resonate into the present day.
Program Day 2
9:00 – 10:30 AM
Panel 3: Habsburg Devotional Practices, Aural and Material
Chair: Erika Supria Honisch, Stony Brook University
Andrew Weaver, “Defining the Empire in a Music Print: The Novus thesaurus musicus (1568) between Nationalism and Cosmopolitanism”
Kimberly Hieb, “Regional Agency and Imperial Influence: Sacred Music in Salzburg at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century”
Anna Sanda, “Resounding like a ‘Little Vienna’?: Habsburg Ambitions at the Bonn Electoral Court 1784–1794”
10:30 – 10:45 AM
Coffee Break
10:45 – 12:45 PM
Panel 4: Networks, (Trans)Nationalisms, and Cosmopolitanisms
Chair: David Catchpole, Dvořák American Heritage Association/Texas State University
Gregor Kokorz, “The Lost Space: Between Graz and Trieste”
Mary Riggs, “Fanny Elssler: Transnational Folkdance and Ballet in the Habsburg Empire”
Pavel Kodýtek, “A Habsburg Drama Around Mahler and Smetana: Nationality as a Flaw”
Robert Riggs, “Joseph Joachim: Nationalist or Cosmopolitan?”
12:45 – 2:15 PM
Lunch Break
2:15 – 3:15 PM
Panel 5: Envoicing Habsburg Networks
Chair: Christopher Campo-Bowen, Co-organizer, Virginia Tech
Dylan Price, “Transnationalism and Phenomenology in Dvořák’s Gypsy Songs”
Claudio Vellutini, “Rossini, Weber, and the ‘Entangled’ History of Opera in Vienna, Munich, Prague, and Naples”
3:15 – 3:30 PM
Short Break
3:30 - 4:30 PM
Roundtable: Opera and the Politics of Empire in Habsburg Europe, 1815-1914
Axel Körner, Barbara Babić, and Dietmar Friesenegger
4:30 – 4:45 PM
Closing
Christopher Campo-Bowen, Co-organizer, Virginia Tech
4:45 - 5:30 PM
Extended Break
5:30 - 7:00 PM
Sounding Habsburg: A Musical Journey around the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Ariana Wyatt and Richard Masters
Free and open to the public. RSVP through Eventbrite is required. For those unable to attend in person, the conference will be streamed via Zoom. Please register to either attend in-person or virtually via Zoom.
Bohemian National Hall and the Dvořák American Heritage Association require all attendees to in-person events, such as concerts, lectures, etc., to show proof of vaccination (2 doses of Pfizer/Moderna or one does of Johnson and Johnson, and at least one booster shot) and wear a mask at all times while on premises, except when actively eating or drinking.
This event is organized by the Dvořák American Heritage Association and supported by the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Virginia Tech, and New York University.