International Conference Princeps musicæ in urbe Mantua

Sound, Text, and Contrapuntal Processes between Mantua and Rome in the Age of Palestrina: Problems and New Research Perspectives
Milan, G. Verdi Conservatory of Music, 6 December 2025

The musical world of Palestrina still represents a fascinating field of inquiry, an essential point of passage for understanding the rich and varied cultural context of the Italian Renaissance. Over the last half-century, the progress of musicological studies and experimentation in performance practice have highlighted the extraordinary complexity of this historical reality, within which Palestrina remains an indispensable point of reference, and whose writing continues to raise new questions for scholars today.

Within this broader framework, Palestrina’s Mantuan experience appears to represent a distinctive moment, one that has not failed to attract the interest of modern researchers. Particular attention has been devoted to the works produced for the Gonzaga court, on account of their significant differences from the composer’s more customary style.

This conference aims to focus attention on the works Palestrina composed for the Chapel of Santa Barbara, a body of music that continues to present musicological and musical research with new problems and questions. The intention is to address certain conceptual loci which, over the centuries, have shaped the image of Palestrina’s musical language—and which continue to generate new scholarly needs across specific areas of investigation.

The objective is to interpret the distinctive features of the writing of the Mantuan Masses, placing them within the broader context of the issues surrounding the interpretation of sixteenth-century Italian sacred music, and defining the elements and modes of transformation to which the latter is believed to have been subjected following the publication of the new directives established by the Council of Trent.

The Masses composed for the Duke of Mantua, in fact, represent a kind of stumbling block in the history of post-Tridentine sacred music and raise some of the issues referred to in the subtitle, which may serve as equally fruitful lines of inquiry.

In addition to the specific interest in the Mantuan Masses, the conference also invites contributions on the following themes:

Questions of performance practice: what sounds in sixteenth-century music?
The Mantuan environment in Palestrina’s time
Other musical documents preserved in the Santa Barbara Collection
The repertory of Palestrina’s contemporaries

Proposals addressing the above research themes will therefore be welcomed, though projects of inquiry related in chronology, geography, and repertory will also be considered.

Proposals should be between 4,000 and 5,000 characters including spaces, to which should be added a brief bibliography (maximum 5 references). It is not possible to submit more than one proposal.

Deadline for the call: 15 July
Notification: 30 July

There is no registration fee.

Proposals must be sent as .doc or .rtf files to the following email address: ricerca@consmilano.it

Proposals must include:

title of the presentation
name of the author or authors
institutional affiliation
email address
a short biography

Papers presented at the conference must last between 20 and 25 minutes, followed by 5 minutes of discussion, and may be published as essays in the volume collecting the conference proceedings, subject to a favorable opinion by two anonymous referees, in accordance with the double-blind peer-review system.

No reimbursement is expected for travel, meals, and/or accommodation expenses for participation in the conference.