International Symposium: STUDY GROUP ON MULTIPART MUSIC OF THE INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR TRADITIONS OF MUSIC AND DANCE

19–22 August 2026, Gosposka Hall and City Museum Ljubljana

The main themes of this year’s symposium of the Study Group on Multipart Music are Borders, Borderlands, and Cross-Border Traditions and Transmissions of Multipart Music. The aim is to encourage discussion and present the latest research on how cultural and political interpretations shape and influence the ways in which multipart music is transmitted and performed. We are interested in how communities preserve multipart music traditions through heritagisation, innovative methods of transmission, and cultural exchange in the light of contemporary social, demographic, and technological changes and the increasingly rapid overcoming of geographical distances. These questions are becoming increasingly important in contemporary ethnomusicology, particularly because they influence the creation and recreation of multipart music.

One of the important research perspectives of the Study Group on Multipart Music is also the way in which polyphony develops in instrumental music. Various European and global musical traditions include vocal multipart music, but multipart music is also performed instrumentally. In practice, this means that musical instruments and the voice often intertwine to create distinctive forms of vocal-instrumental multipart music, opening up rich creative potential. This type of musical expression is one of the most flexible and at the same time most resilient forms of musical expression, continuously transforming up to the present day through the music-making of folk musicians as well as contemporary music artists. This practice will once again be at the centre of the Study Group symposium.

Symposium organisation

The symposium will take place as part of the regular activities of the Study Group on Multipart Music of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (StG MM ICTMD), with the professional support of the Institute of Ethnomusicology at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (GNI ZRC SAZU) and in co-organisation with Imago Sloveniae.

The symposium will be held in English and is expected to bring together approximately 35 researchers of multipart singing and music-making from Slovenia, various European countries, and other continents. The symposium programme is overseen by an organising committee consisting of the leadership of the Study Group and representatives of other ethnomusicological institutions. Based on the call for participation, the committee will prepare the symposium programme, in which researchers will present their latest research.

Following the symposium, a peer-reviewed publication is planned, in which participants will publish the research presented at the symposium.

About the organisers

The Study Group on Multipart Music was established in 2010, when researchers and scholars studying the multipart music of different peoples of Europe and the world, all members of the International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance (ICTMD), brought together their research interests within a single specialised research association. The group regularly meets at international symposia every two years (with the exception of the pandemic period) and forms part of ICTMD, the largest international organisation for ethnomusicology, active since 1947.

The Institute of Ethnomusicology (founded in 1934) is today a modern research and archival institution dedicated to the study of folk songs, music, and dance, and is part of the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Organising Committee

Yannick Wey, Bern University of Applied Sciences
Giovanni Cestino, University of Milan
Alma Bejtullahu, University of Würzburg / University of Ljubljana
Mojca Kovačič, GNI ZRC SAZU
Jan Kern, Imago Sloveniae
Nino Razmadze, Tbilisi State Conservatoire

Free admission.

In collaboration with: ICTMD, ZRC SAZU, Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, KED Folk Slovenija