Eduard Hanslick, 1825–2025: Background, Context, Legacy

Eduard Hanslick has profoundly influenced the discourse of music philosophy, musicology, and music history through several central roles: as the author of the seminal aesthetic treatise On the Musically Beautiful, which shaped the thinking of both composers and aesthetic theorists (Adorno, Nietzsche, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, etc.), and continues to inform current analytical aesthetics of music; as a pivotal figure in nineteenth-century music criticism, shaping debates on Wagner and impacting the formation of the modern musical canon; and as the first professor for the “History and Aesthetics of Music,” thereby laying the foundation for the academic discipline that would later be known as musicology.

The symposium “Eduard Hanslick, 1825–2025: Background, Context, Legacy” marks Hanslick’s 200th birthday by celebrating and critically examining his activities. The event aims to delve into the historical contexts of Hanslick’s work while also exploring his lasting impact on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. By embracing an decidedly interdisciplinary approach, it seeks to capture the entire scope of his texts, their historical, cultural, and political contexts, and their influence across various discourses. In addition to submissions from musicology and aesthetics, we actively welcome proposals from related fields such as art history, history, cultural studies, literary studies, and the history of science.

We welcome proposals that engage directly with Hanslick’s work, explore his broader intellectual and cultural contexts, or debate related issues intersecting with his legacy across historical, cultural, and theoretical dimensions. Topics of particular interest include but are not limited to:

• the interplay of and the potential tensions between Hanslick’s aesthetics, critical writings, and compositions (both synchronically and diachronically);
• the shifts, evolution, and constants in Hanslick’s positions from his earliest reviews (1840s) through On the Musically Beautiful to his later texts;
• the exploration of political processes and cultural transitions within Hanslick’s writings, including his aesthetics, reviews, and autobiography;
• the aesthetic, cultural, musical, political, and sociological contexts surrounding Hanslick’s reviews;
• the largely unexplored scholarly monograph Geschichte des Concertwesens in Wien;
• Hanslick’s concept(s) of research within the broader intellectual framework of his era;
• the reception and influence of Hanslick’s ideas from the nineteenth century to the present;
• Hanslick’s impact beyond the German-speaking world, particularly through translations.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers (plus 10 minutes for questions), panels (3 papers, 1.5 hours total), and roundtables (3–5 participants, 1 hour). The keynote address will be delivered by Thomas S. Grey (Stanford University).

Please submit your proposal in German or English (including an abstract of up to 300 words), by January 31, 2025, to hanslick2025(at)oeaw.ac.at. To ensure a blind review process, please omit any identifying information from your abstract. Notifications will be sent by February 28, 2025.

Thanks to financial support from the Department of Musicology at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, there is no registration fee for the symposium. The department will also sponsor a conference dinner for all delegates. A peer-reviewed special issue featuring selected presentations is planned.