[Commlist] Televising Art Music: Space, Performance and Audiences | Cfp View Journal no. 32

Call for Papers: Televising Art Music: Space, Performance and Audiences, 
issue no. 32 of /View Journal of European Television History & Culture/
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***Proposals deadline: October 7th, 2026***

All info here: 
https://viewjournal.eu/announcements#cfp-view-issue-#32:-televising-art-music:-space,-performance-and-audiences 
<https://viewjournal.eu/announcements#cfp-view-issue-#32:-televising-art-music:-space,-performance-and-audiences>
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Editors: Sara Beimdieke (Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf), Jelena 
Novak (CESEM, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa), Emiliano Rossi (Università 
di Padova)

Over the past decades, sound studies and musicology have developed a 
substantial body of scholarship on the relationship between Western art 
music and audiovisual media. This research has highlighted the role of 
sonic and musical textures as narrative devices that shape processes of 
diegesis, mediation, and semiotic (re)articulation. However, a 
television-specific perspective remains comparatively fragmented. This 
becomes particularly evident when set against the extensive attention 
devoted to popular music cultures and their entanglements with 
broadcasting industries, performance cultures, and celebrity economies.

It is from this void that the present issue of /View Journal/ takes its 
point of departure. The discussion is oriented towards reconsidering the 
relationship between the medium and art music by moving beyond an 
understanding of music as merely ancillary to the televisual image. The 
intention is rather to examine art music as a crucial structuring 
element within a wide range of television texts that have contributed to 
shaping collective imaginaries. These include the on-screen transmission 
of well-codified genres such as opera, as well as the televisual staging 
of symphonic concerts and orchestral performances.

This volume aims to frame art music on television as a post-1945 
phenomenon which encompasses multiple dimensions: it is simultaneously 
national and transnational, as well as rooted in the traditions of the 
classical canon while fostering progressive experiments in music theatre 
for the screen. At the same time, television made extensive use of art 
music in more functional ways (i.e. employing excerpts as background 
motifs), shaping atmospheres and reinforcing the medium’s audiovisual 
language. It also opened up new spaces, reaching wider audiences by 
bringing music directly into the living room, while also providing 
television with fresh content and offering composers new creative and 
professional opportunities.

The issue is structured around three main axes of investigation. First, 
it encourages contributions rooted in a comparative, European 
perspective in order to examine how Western art music has been 
positioned, programmed and represented within television schedules 
across diverse broadcasting frameworks, with particular attention to the 
political implications of such circulations. This entails exploring the 
often less visible deployment of art music as an interstice or backdrop 
to diverse formats of television content, beyond broadcasts explicitly 
devoted to music.

Second, it seeks to explore how classical music displayed on television 
functions as a signifier within broader processes of history-, 
identity-, memory- and community-making, notably through its 
contribution to shaping forms of nationalist aspirations and collective 
belonging. Special attention will be devoted to the role of public 
service broadcasters and their intra-continental alliances in the 
post-war period. These institutions were pivotal in promoting an 
educational and civic mission that positioned classical music as a key 
component of broadcasting cultures and audience formation.

Third, the volume foregrounds the dynamics of eventisation that have 
characterised television since the early decades of public service 
broadcasting, whereby musical programmes have frequently taken the form 
of media spectacles, temporarily suspending the ordinary flow of 
scheduling and often recurring in connection with moments of festivity, 
commemoration, or solemnity. Focus is on the processes of 
televisualisation of music, through which musical performance is adapted 
and made compatible with the technical, aesthetic and industrial logics 
of television production.

Across these three thematic strands, the issue turns towards 
contemporary transformations in creative industries, where processes of 
platformisation and multi-distribution have repositioned classical music 
within an increasingly expanded media ecology. The genre re-emerges 
across pay and non-linear services, often reaching wider audiences while 
simultaneously renegotiating its cultural positioning within today’s 
screen-based environments.

Fostering a critical-interpretative approach by bringing together 
academic researchers, professionals, and experts, Issue 32 of /View 
Journal /welcomes contributions which engage with the following thematic 
prompts (please note that the list is not exhaustive):
-the logics, politics and strategies of televising music, including its 
adaptation, aestheticisation and staging for the screen;
-art music programmes in European television history and the development 
of specialised thematic channels;
-genres and forms of art music and their logics of circulation on 
television;
-the artistic and socio-cultural impact of music programming on 
television, also with respect to the pedagogical mission of public 
service broadcasters and EBU initiatives;
-composing for the small screen and the technical, production and labour 
practices involved in televising music;
-the process of popularisation of art music and mediation of other music 
traditions (i.e. folk, jazz, blues);
-the performance activities of PSBs-owned symphonic orchestras and 
ensembles around Europe;
-musical heritage and media archaeologies, with particular attention to 
television;
-the uses of art music within TV paratexts (i.e. opening/intro themes) 
and as an extra-diegetic components (i.e. underscore, jingles);
-the interplay between screen media, theatre performance and musical 
traditions.

Submission requirements
We invite submissions from television scholars, media historians, 
musicologists, sound studies experts, researchers interested in the 
connections between music, film, television and digital screen media, 
audiovisual practitioners, and archivists.

Contributions to this issue may take the form of full academic research 
articles (5-6.000 words) or shorter creative papers (“Enthusiasms”, 
around 3.000 words) as well as audiovisual essays. More details on 
submission formats can be found here 
(https://viewjournal.eu/about/submissions). All articles will be 
peer-reviewed. /View Journal /is a diamond open-access publication.

Paper proposals (max. 500 words, plus a biographical note of max. 100 
words) are due by October 7, 2026.

Submissions should be sent to (journal /at/ euscreen.eu) 
<mailto:(journal /at/ euscreen.eu)> as a single PDF file containing both the 
proposal and the biographical note; please copy 
(emiliano.rossi.1 /at/ unipd.it) <mailto:(emiliano.rossi.1 /at/ unipd.it)> to your 
email. Authors can specify in their proposal the format of their 
contribution. A notice of acceptance will be sent to authors by the 
beginning of November.

Full contributions will be due by April 15, 2027. Submission guidelines, 
including stylistic instructions, can be found here 
(https://viewjournal.eu/about/submissions 
<https://viewjournal.eu/about/submissions>). As outlined in the 
guidelines, please note that the inclusion of audiovisual extracts is 
strongly recommended; audio-only embedded extracts are also welcome. The 
issue is scheduled for publication in December 2027.

Questions about the issue can be directed to the co-editors of the 
issue: Sara Beimdieke (sara.beimdieke /at/ rsh-duesseldorf.de) 
<mailto:(sara.beimdieke /at/ rsh-duesseldorf.de)>, Jelena Novak 
(jnovak /at/ fcsh.unl.pt) <mailto:(jnovak /at/ fcsh.unl.pt)>, Emiliano Rossi 
(emiliano.rossi.1 /at/ unipd.it) <mailto:(emiliano.rossi.1 /at/ unipd.it)>.

/View Journal of European Television History and Culture/ is the first 
peer-reviewed, multi-media and Diamond Open Access e-journal in the 
field of television studies, published since 2012. No publishing costs 
will be charged to authors.

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