International musicological conference Song is Our Weapon: Music in the Process of Nation Building

The Department of Musicology of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, is organizing an international musicological conference entitled “Song is Our Weapon: Music in the Process of Nation Building”, which will be held in Ljubljana from 17 to 19 November 2026.  The conference is organised in collaboration with the Slovenian Musicological Society, the Institute of Musicology at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Bruno e Michèle Polli Centre for Documentation and Tartini Studies at the Giuseppe Tartini Conservatory of Music in Trieste.

The conference Song is Our Weapon: Music in the Process of Nation Building is intended to reflect on the role of music in the formation, consolidation, and articulation of national consciousness from the mid-18th century to the end of World War II. It aims to highlight the diverse connections between music, identity, and political processes, where music was not only a form of aesthetic expression, but also an important means of national identification, social communication, and the establishment of symbolic boundaries between “us” and “them”. In the vivid words of the Slovenian patriot Ivan Godina from Trieste: “Dear brothers! Who else but the song has so far kindled the flame of national consciousness? The song has shaken our simple, unconscious people out of their lukewarmness. The song is our role model, the song is our weapon with which we fight against our common national enemy.” Studying the role of music in the process of nation building offers new perspectives on the cultural and social changes that shaped this process, helping us understand the complex connections between culture, identity, politics, and society. At the same time, it shows how political and social circumstances influenced the image of musical life, its institutional organisation, and aesthetic expression. This helps us understand why music took certain forms in a specific historical moment and why musical institutions functioned as they did. This dual perspective – music as both a factor in and a product of nation building – opens a rich interdisciplinary field of research, enabling new methodological approaches to understanding the relationship between music, culture, and political processes.  

The conference is organised as part of the ARIS research project Music and Nation Building in Trieste.

Call for papers

International Scholarly Committee
Prof. Dr Giulio D'Angelo (Giuseppe Tartini Conservatory of Music in Trieste)
Prof. Dr Matjaž Barbo (University of Ljubljana)
Senior Research Fellow Dr Tatjana Marković (Austrian Academy of Sciences
Vienna)
Prof. Dr Lubomír Spurny (Masaryk University of Brno)
Assist. Prof. Dr Nejc Sukljan (University of Ljubljana)
Assoc. Prof. Dr Fritz Trümpi (mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna)
Prof. Dr Boštjan Udovič (University of Ljubljana)
Prof. Dr Marta Verginella (University of Ljubljana)

Organising Committee at the Department of Musicology, Faculty of Arts, University

of Ljubljana
Assist. Prof. Dr Katarina Bogunović Hočevar
Assist. Prof. Dr Nejc Sukljan
Dr Vesna Venišnik Peternelj
Assist. Sara Zupančič