Dates: Tuesday 26 to Thursday 28 August 2025
Times: All Day
Locations: Dublin - Various, please event website link below for more details.
To register for tickets, view the full conference programme, recitals, and further details, please visit the Expansive Canvas event website here.
The recitals are free and open to the public and no booking is required. A full list of the recitals is available on the event website here.
The Department of Music, School of Creative Arts, TCD, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and the Trinity Long Room Hub are delighted to announce the international conference and collaborative symposium, “The Expansive Canvas: Large-Scale Form in the Music of 19th-Century Women Composers” which will take place in Dublin, Ireland on 26 to 28 August 2025.
About the event: Large-scale form (LSF) refers to the structure of an extended musical composition found in numerous genres such as sonatas, symphonies, overtures (some with literary adjuncts), operas, concertos, chamber music and extended choral works. It stands in contrast to the domestic genres historically associated with women composers such as song and piano miniatures. For the purposes of this event, the long nineteenth century extends from 1789–1922. This international conference and collaborative symposium aims to reinvigorate our conception of music history, and to challenge entrenched patterns of representation within the classical music establishment by opening up a forum for the discussion, performance, and analysis of LSFs by women composers. With four central pillars in performance, music analysis, musicology, and music education, the event will provide a platform for a discourse on gender diversification in music education, and concert programming as it pertains to the music of the long nineteenth century. Research on women’s contributions to LSF in the nineteenth century lags behind research on women’s contributions to large-scale works in other artforms such as the visual arts and literature. This event will also explore and interrogate the reasons for this disparity.
Summary and Impact: The International Conference and Collaborative Symposium “The Expansive Canvas: Large-Scale Form in the Music of 19th-Century Women Composers” will significantly enrich ongoing research and creative activities concerning women composers in the nineteenth century, and the activities that explore conceptual issues through performance and creative modes of expression in relation to the music of women composers. With four central pillars in performance, music analysis, musicology, and music education, “The Expansive Canvas” seeks to foster interdisciplinary connections with art history, dance studies, literary studies, film studies, gender studies, and other disciplines. As we unearth, contextualize, recover, and promote large-scale compositions by these women composers, this international conference and collaborative symposium offers wonderful opportunities for collaboration in study and performance, as well as within the academy and with industry leaders.
Further information is available by emailing Dr Nicole Grimes, Department of Music, School of Creative Arts at nicole.grimes@tcd.ie.
