CONTEMPORARY MUSIC THEORY - APPROACHES, CHALLENGES, LIMITS 2026

Department of Music Theory at the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague 2nd volume of the conference 
Contemporary Music Theory - Approaches, Challenges, Limits
Topic:  Music Theory in Relation to Contemporary Music Praxis

Music and Dance Faculty, Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, April 9-10, 2026

The conference is dedicated to the current situation of music theory and the directions, topics, and problems of this discipline. The conference aims to compare different views on the field of music theory, on what can be its subject, and what it means to be a music theorist in the 21st century.

This output was created at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague as part of the Institutional project with the support of the Institutional Endowment for the Long Term Conceptual Development of Research Institutes, as provided by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic in the year 2026.

Programme:

Thursday, 9th April, 2026
Respirium, HAMU 

12:30-13:00 Agnieszka Draus Analysis and Interpretation of 20th and 21st Century Polish Musical Works with a System of Textural and Sonic Figures

13:00-13:30 Dr. Natalia Szwab, The Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music in Kraków Intertextuality as a Research Perspective in the Work of Marcel Chyrzyński

13:30-14:00 Lucia Reiprich Maloveská Analyzing Structure, Respecting Context. New Tools of Music Theory with Emphasis on Judy Lochhead’s Approach

COFFEE BREAK 

14:15-14:45 Alexandra Magazin From Pianistic Semiography to Graphic Notation in 20th-Century Romanian Music

14:45-15:15 Wenhao Huang Analysis as Practice: John Rink’s Performer-Centred Reconfiguration of AIP

15:45-16:15 Joenne Oana Dumitrascu: Speaking Through Music 

COFFEE BREAK 

16:30 – 17:30 KEYNOTE LECTURE

Ariana Phillips-Hutton, University of Leeds: Sound the Alarm: Thinking Musically in Crisis

Friday 10th April, 2026 
RESPIRIUM, HAMU 

9:30-10:00 Nikola Komatović – Does the Present Future Lie in the Past? Post- and Metamodernist Music-Aesthetic Influences

10:00-10:30 Ivana Petrač Music Criticism and Contemporary Music Analysis

10:30-11:00 Adela Țârc Constantin Rîpă’s Pedagogical Framework for Music Theory

COFFEE BREAK 

11:15-11:45 James Falzone Hauntology of Microtonal Music 

11:45-12:15 Pierluca Lanzilotta Recent Applications of Transformational Theory to Microtonality and Spectralism

LUNCH BREAK 

13:00-13:30 Matteo Cenerini Defining Modular Approaches in Contemporary Music: Analytical Perspectives on Four Case Studies

13:45-14:15 Iwona Sowińska-Zając Deus Passus by Wolfgang Rihm – towards the Poetics of Violence in Passion Music of the 20th and 21st century

COFFEE BREAK 

14:30-15:00 Cameron Storey Not With Your [Ears], With Theirs: Comparing Neurotypical and ASD Perceptions of Rhythm and Meter

15:00-15:30 Marcin Strzelecki Mapping Emotional Topographies in Contemporary Music with Accessible AI Tools

15:30-16:00 Iva Oplištilová Gestalt music analysis?

16:00-16:30 Maeve Sterbenz Mapping Musical Affect: Choreography as Analysis in Anabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Symbiotic Twin

COFFEE BREAK 

16:40 – 17:30 
PANEL DISCUSSION Relevance of Music Theory: Different Perspectives on the Future of the Field (modarator: Iva Oplištilová, debaters: Agnieszka Draus, Tereza Havelková, Michal Rataj)