Music in/of the Mediterranean: Selected Papers from the Third Biennial Mediterranean Music Conference, 19–21 September 2013, University of Nicosia


The seven articles comprising this edition of Mousikos Logos were all originally presented at the Cyprus Music Institute’s Third Biennial Mediterranean Music Conference, held at the University of Nicosia, 19–21 September 2013. Instead of a unifying theme, the papers chosen for publication here reflect the eclecticism of the conference itself. This eclecticism is suggested by the conference’s intentionally ambiguous name, in which it is unclear whether the modifier ‘Mediterranean’ applies to the ‘Music’ or the ‘Conference’. And this ambiguity in turn reflects the peculiar circumstances of Cyprus’s nascent musicological field. Although Cyprus now boasts three ten-year-old music departments, they are inevitably small and therefore have little chance of constituting a self-contained musicological community. Consequently, Cypriot scholars are generally required to present the greater part of their work in foreign outlets to remain connected to their respective academic fields. (Indeed, many Cypriot music scholars live and work outside of Cyprus and have little professional connection to their native country.) Ironically, by concentrating their efforts to remain connected to the outside world, Cypriot musicologists risk becoming intellectually isolated from each other. The Cyprus Music Institute was founded in 2007 to help overcome this double isolation, and the inauguration of a biennial conference was conceived as an initial step towards accomplishing that goal.