THEMATIC DOSSIER CALL: Musical Practices of the Past: subjects, sources, perspectives, and approaches

Posted on 2026-01-15

Editors:
Professor Vinícius Eufrásio (UFPB)
Professor Fernando Lacerda Simões Duarte (UFPA)

Deadline: August 30, 2026
Expected Publication: December 2026

Musical activities tend to leave material traces, but also individual and/or shared memories within a given collectivity. In analyzing the relationship that historians establish with such traces, Ana Maria de Almeida Camargo drew on the notion of attributed documentary status — as opposed to the status of archival documents, which would be congenital — to describe the relationship that characterizes what is considered a source for research. In the field of History, the range of sources accepted in research gradually expanded from the Annales School onward. This movement, initiated in the late 1920s, proposed an alternative to the positivist model then in practice. In Brazil, the field of Musicology has undergone transformations since the late nineteenth century, involving not only an expanded notion of source but also the methodologies through which the historiography of music is produced. Moreover, studies in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology have influenced ways of looking at the past.

The study and analysis of different types of sources for the study of musical practices of the past, approached through different interdisciplinary perspectives and research methods, are crucial paths for producing narratives about facts, subjects, groups, trajectories, and related phenomena. Knowledge production that explores possible dialogues and intersections between musicology and specific currents of social, political, cultural, gender history, microhistory, decolonial criticism, as well as archival studies, has made it possible to overcome hegemonic discourses and has challenged current beliefs about what, for many years, remained restricted to the idea of “history of music” or, more specifically, “history of Brazilian music.”

Faced with challenges related to access to historical sources and to the promotion of their preservation and safeguarding, thinking about the study of musical practices of the past as the production of innovative knowledge and of critical discourses regarding historiographical practices established over decades requires from researchers an investigative and analytical effort that exceeds disciplinary logic. Contact with other theoretical and methodological approaches redirects and even reconfigures musicological practice itself.

Thus, this call is intended for works focused on musical practices of the past, but it also encompasses investigations whose sources, perspectives, and approaches are in some way directed toward understanding traditional practices still manifest in contemporaneity.

Topics of interest
  • Methods, techniques, and technologies for approaching and treating musical sources and collections: Musicology in dialogue with History, Anthropology, Ethnology, Archaeology, Codicology, Library Science, Archival Studies, Museology, and Information Sciences;
  • Music for the eyes: iconographic sources and interfaces with Visual Arts and Design;
  • Material traces and the challenges of writing a history of music in non-literate societies;
  • Player pianos, music boxes, automata, and other means of mechanical reproduction of music: between museum processes and present-day uses;
  • Perspectives on historiographical practice — cultural, social, political, and gender history, microhistory, decolonial criticism, subaltern studies, and archival studies — and the production of knowledge about musical practices of the past;
  • Beyond the canons: perspectives on women composers, composers, genres, and musical works relegated to oblivion;
  • Intersections between history, culture, and knowledge production in music;
  • Historiographical practices concerning Brazilian music;
  • Musical knowledges-practices, memory, identity, and heritage processes;
  • Continuities and ruptures in musical practices;
  • Memory and history of multiple forms of music teaching: from primers and treatises to transformations in music pedagogy;
  • Traditional musical manifestations in their trajectory into the present: negotiations, resistances, and the decline of Pastorinhas, bois, folias, among others;
  • Notions of progress and decadence in discourses on the history of music;
  • Music, sociabilities, race, and gender from a historical perspective;
  • Local musicking and urban musicology: transmission and reception of repertoire and the movement of musicians throughout history;
  • Urban musical genres and sociabilities: the sharing of identities based on musical taste from a historical perspective;
  • Lundu, maxixe, and funk: the history of moralities, racism, and cultural repression;
  • From the “most German of the arts” to Latin American protest song: continuities and innovations in the political uses of music;
  • Disciplinary dialogues: innovative approaches from Music Theory and Analysis, Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Studies, Composition, and other subfields for understanding musical practices of the past in their multiple aspects;
  • Constructions of narratives about musical practices of the past;
  • Interfaces between Musicology and History: approaches from Public History, the History of Ideas, the History of the Present Time, historiographical studies, and the History and Philosophy of Science;
  • Scientometrics and analyses of academic production in Musicology in Brazil;
  • Training for historical musicology: challenges and perspectives;
  • Music of the past and Artificial Intelligence: reinterpretations, appropriations, historical forgeries, and ethical dilemmas;
  • Scientific communication and music history in the post-truth era: the interest of the New Right and the challenges posed by historical revisionism and denialism;
  • Research on musical practices of the past and possibilities for social intervention: the social function of the musicologist and of musicological work from a historical perspective.
Objectives of the dossier

With the publication of this dossier, the aim is not only to disseminate research results, but also to stimulate reflection on the safeguarding and preservation of the memory of musical practices of the past; to foster discussion and disseminate experiences capable of providing practical tools for the preservation of musical sources; and to encourage disciplinary and interdisciplinary dialogue, ultimately strengthening research and scientific communication within the field of historically oriented musicology in Brazil.