Call for Papers and Deadlines:

Sumbissions can be sent via email to searchjournal@gmail.com.

Next issue (Fall 2016):

The editors are currently accepting submissions for the next issue. The submission deadline is 15 April 2016 with a projected release-date of 15 September 2016.

A set of formatting guidelines for contributors may be found here.

For the upcoming issue, the Editors propose the following topics as possible areas of inquiry:

Festschrift for Karlheinz Stockhausen:

Articles addressing the myriad aspects of Stockhausen's works, biography, aesthetic, compositional methods, and/or influences upon subsequent generations of composers would be especially relevant at present. Submissions may take the form of analyses, historical surveys, insightful anecdotes, etc. Of particular interest would be the perspectives of composers, musicologists, and performers who had established a correspondence/working relationship with Stockhausen.

Music and/Or Text:

We welcome submissions of articles investigating the relationship between text and new music, from various viewpoints including:

- semantic coherence or text as sound
- music’s autonomy or descriptiveness in a textual context
- new music, text, and political statement
- new music and experimental poetry, music theater
- approaches to various uses of language: poetry, the media, folktales, jargon, ancient texts, etc.
- speech and accent synthesis; text and technology
- text and extended vocal techniques
- translation; the use of multiple languages

Alternative Tuning Systems, Microtonality, and Politics

What are the new modes of alternative tuning used in new music today? How do these systems interact, merge and differ with existing tuning systems from the folk music of the world?  What is the political consequence of the re- and de-tuning of music today?

Composition and Cognitive Science:

In what ways have the realms of perceptual psychology/cognitive science/artifical intelligence/neuroscience influenced compositional practice?How have salient models derived from these disciplines (e.g. neural nets, state-machines, Gestalt theory) been applied to composition? What effects (if any)  does the implementation of (or reference to) such models have upon the relationship between musical structure and music perception?

Both technical descriptions and general reflections pertaining to the above are welcome.

Threshold Performative Challenges

Since the late works of Beethoven,  highly innovative compositional visions have tended to go hand-in-hand with threshold performative challenges: challenges arising from the ground of performative tradition that nevertheless push performers in each generation to the edge of what each age has deemed possible. Many of these works are now seen as peak works of
their age and/or style and have reshaped entire performance traditions: from the Hammerklavier, to Pierrot Lunaire, through the works of Carter, Xenakis, Lachenmann, and Ferneyhough (to name a few.)
           
The unusually high number of works of extreme difficulty over the past few decades, coupled with the unusual performative difficulties found therein, have raised the following questions among critics, performers, and composers: Are such extreme
challenges anything more than manneristic gestures,and are performers of such works simply using them as means to evade high-Modernist standards ofperformative rigor? Is there a binding relationship between the extreme challenges of any piece and the originality and compellingness of the composer's artistic vision? Can one assess the performer's degree of responsibility and artistic integrity, and if so, how?

Forum on Adorno, Music, and Society

This forum is envisioned as a vehicle to extend a discussion across several issues. A more detailed description may be found here.