Montreal/New Musics Festival
11th Edition (2023) — Music and Spirituality
February 23 – March 5, 2023

Music and Transcendence in a Posthuman Age

  • Thursday, February 23 – Saturday, 25, 2023
    • In person
    • Conference…

Works by Hron, LeBlanc, Matthusen and Westerkamp.

  • Thursday, February 23, 2023: 9:00 am — 4:00 pm
  • Friday, February 24, 2023: 9:00 am — 12:00 pm
  • Saturday, February 25, 2023: 9:00 am — 6:00 pm

The purpose of this conference is to bring composers, performers, and scholars together to engage with the theme of the festival, “Music and Spirituality,” exploring its meaning in the world today through the lens of posthumanist thought. Narratives of spirituality and transcendence tend to focus on individual human experiences or to investigate those of groups treated as a homogeneous entity. The view of the composer as a mediator between the individual and the divine (or the sublime) continues to influence the composition and analysis of music characterized as “spiritual” through the composer’s stated intent, the work’s title or subject matter, or the ritualistic context of its performance. Posthumanism invites a turn away from the humanist ideal of a universal (meaning white, male, able-bodied, and heterosexual) “Man” as agent, as well as of the positioning of humanity as superior to and separate from other living organisms. It calls for a new way to view our relationship to nature, to each other, to technology, leading us to consider the many dimensions (transversal, affective, embodied) and ecosystems in which and with which we create.

In this conference, we hope to investigate how the move away from a human-centered and humanist approach that focuses on the agency of man on his environment can help us rethink musical compositions and their relationship to spirituality and explore the ways music can help us view the world as a connected entity and enable us to connect to the world in diverse and new ways.

Participants

Program

Presentation of Montreal/New Musics and the Chaire de recherche du Canada en création d’opéra de la Faculté de musique de l’Université de Montréal.

Thanks: Observatoire interdisciplinaire de création et de recherche en musique (OICRM), Groupe de recherche sur la médiatisation du son (GRMS), Observatoire québécois d’art lyrique (OQAL), Chaire de recherche du Canada en musique et politique, Groupe de recherche sur l’avènement et la formation des identités médiatiques (GRAFIM), Observatoire du cinéma au Québec (OCQ) and Partenariat cinEXmedia.