Although the etymology of mystêrion is not entirely clear, scholars have traditionally thought it to be derived from the Greek μύω, meaning “to close” or “to shut.” The word may thus refer to shutting not only the eyes (during the initiation ritual), but also the mouth, since initiates were not allowed to reveal what happened in the ritual. Nevertheless, the mysteries were probably not as esoteric as scholars have thought (see R. Turcan and W. Burkert).

While scholars have, in the past, treated a variety of cults as mysteries, nowadays they operate with a stricter definition of the term. “Mysteries” designate, first, ancient Greek mysteries (the Eleusinian, the Dionysian and the Orphic-Bacchic Mysteries) and, secondly, new mystery cults worshipping divinities that Greeks and Romans adopted gradually from other cultures (Cybele, Isis and Mithra). Mysteries supplemented civil religion rather than competed with it: they had the same goal of creating an individual relationship to deities through votive offerings. Any individual could easily observe the rites of the state religion, be an initiate in one or more mysteries (whatever her/his status might be), and at the same time adhere to a certain philosophical school.

The Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Music, University of Arts in Belgrade, is pleased to announce its Fifteenth International Conference on the topic Music– Musicology–Interpretation.

The subject of the conference Music-Musicology-Interpretation focuses on the complex and multifaceted relationships between the constituent concepts. It proposes to re- examine these multiple relations by thematizing, from the point of view of interpretation, music as language, discourse, work of art and text, the performance of music and the discourse on music – musicology itself.

On the threshold of the nineteenth century, the hierarchy of the aims of music and the means employed to attain them changed, thereby affecting the relationships among musical works, their composers and their listeners. Our understanding of this new and complex situation of the musical work is enhanced by grounding the objects of interest in relevant contexts, not only comparing them with other works of the same type and genre, but also taking account of the specificities of the times, social practices, intellectual currents, reception history, and so on.

A musician cannot prove him- or herself as an artist without an audience, without a performance space, without the support of a benefactor, without an instrument builder to create musical instruments – the musician’s performing tools, without a reviewer who would spread the musician’s fame. He or she could probably have not become an artist without a teacher, or music to be performed – either from memory, or from a manuscript or a print. All these persons and artefacts make part of the infrastructure that enables The Artist to realise his or her special gifts, and each of them is a part of or creates their own network.
As, for example, a musicological or a cultural project theme gathers people in a vertical network in order to achieve a common goal, a musician creates various horizontal networks in achieving their own goal, an event that would give the musician the opportunity to present his or her artistic qualities in public (concerts, theatre performances) or in private (salon).

Il seminario Musiche (e musicologie) del XXI secolo giunto alla sua quinta edizione, intitolata La musica delle diaspore nel XXI secolo: ricerca e metodi, intende dibattere su una questione che riteniamo di forte attualità: il ruolo che svolge la musica nelle migrazioni a connotati diasporici del XXI secolo. Ciò implica una riflessione aggiornata sui fenomeni più recenti e una messa a punto delle metodologie ora impiegate dall’etnomusicologia per studiare questi processi. Anche in questo nuovo secolo, infatti, le diaspore costituiscono fenomeni importanti, sia che esse siano forzate per sfuggire a guerre o persecuzioni, sia che esse siano innescate da motivi economici. Un fenomeno antico quanto l’uomo sta assumendo oggi nuovi connotati a seguito di mutate condizioni sociali ed economiche, di forti cambiamenti nello scenario politico internazionale, e di nuove modalità di produzione e consumo musicale sempre più condizionate dai media e dalla tecnologia. La domanda che intende porsi il seminario è se siano necessari nuovi strumenti interpretativi e/o come debbano essere ritarate le metodologie sviluppate nel secolo scorso in cui gli studi sulla diaspora si sono sviluppati e hanno assunto autonomia disciplinare e prospettiva interdisciplinare.