Report of the
SECOND ANNUAL MEETING
30–31 October 2008
Faculty of Musicology, University of Pavia
Cremona, Italy
(http://musicologia.unipv.it)
Program (.pdf format)
Poster (.pdf format)
Please click here to download a .pdf copy of the Meeting Report found on this page.
Report of the Second Annual Meeting - Contents:
- Summary
- In Attendance
- Communications
- Final Communications
- Election of the Executive Committee
- Meeting Photos
During the VIIIth Seminar titled Le musiche dei Greci: passato e presente. Valorizzazione di un patrimonio culturale, the second annual meeting of MOISA. International Society for the Study of Greek and Roman Music and of its Cultural Heritage was held in Cremona on the 30th and 31st of October 2008. The attendance at the second meeting of the reborn Society was numerous and enthusiastic, as you can see from the list of participants enclosed in the report, and the discussion on its future developments was rich in stimulating proposals (summarized below).
The meeting was preceded by a round-table discussion entitled Music in the Roman Empire. Theoretical Evidence and Archaeological Findings (Thursday morning, October 30th), followed the day after (Friday afternoon, October 31st) by two sessions of papers contributed by members of MOISA in which they presented their ongoing research projects.
On that occasion there were also two musical performances, one by Ludi Scaenici (Cristina Majnero and Roberto Stanco), who played their own musical compositions on rebuilt ancient Roman instruments, and one by the Choir of the Faculty of Musicology of the University of Pavia/Cremona directed by Dr. Ingrid Pustijanac, which sang a selection of pieces from Prophetiae Sybillarum by Orlande de Lassus.
Report of the Assembly of MOISA Members - Aula Magna of the Facoltà di Musicologia of Pavia University, branch of Cremona, 30 October 2008
The annual Assembly of the Members took place at 3:00 pm. The chair was taken by Andrew Barker, the outgoing President; Massimo Raffa took the minutes. The following members were present:
| Speakers and Participants | ||
|---|---|---|
| Andrew Barker | Pauline LeVen | Eva Pöhlmann |
| Angela Bellia | Emiliano Li Castro | Antonella Provenza |
| Alan C. Bowen | Cristina Majnero | Massimo Raffa |
| Gabriele Bugada | Maria Chiara Martinelli | Donatella Restani |
| Daniela Castaldo | Roberto Melini | Eleonora Rocconi |
| David Creese | Angelo Meriani | Antonia Roumpi |
| Mariella De Simone | Timothy Moore | Anna Scalfaro |
| Paola Dessì | Gabriella Moretti | Francesco Scoditti |
| Marco Ercoles | Gianfranco Mosconi | Jon Solomon |
| Ferruccio Franco Repellini | Francesco Pelosi | Roberto Stanco |
| Stefan Hagel | Egert Pöhlmann | Ourania Zachartzi |
The President began his address to the Assembly with a special acknowledgement to Eleonora Rocconi for organising the Meeting so brilliantly; the Members joined him in applauding her. Then, he briefly outlined the Association's achievements in 2008 and set the agenda for the election of the Executive Committee to be held the following day at 4:00 pm. He also invited nominations to be presented by the following morning. Then communications from the members began.
Communications
1) Alan C. Bowen highlighted the usefulness of the Internet as a means of communication
between the members; especially, that it allowed the members of the Executive to discuss some
crucial issues, both of technical and logistic relevance, without having to meet. Then, he
explained the different sections of the MOISA website and suggested the possibility of
organising virtual meetings in the future. In his view, the website could be improved in
some specific areas: for instance,
a) by adding a section on the history of MOISA;
b) by publishing the reports of the meetings regularly;
c) by creating and adding profiles of the members that include name, affiliation, edited and
forthcoming publications, areas of interest and expertise, projects and so on (starting from
January 2009);
d) enhancing bibliographic information based on the entries submitted by the members. As he
pointed out, two options are viable: the entries could be published on the website in .pdf
format, which the University of Toronto, the website's current host, is able to do; on the other
hand, were the entries to be published in such a way to allow a more sophisticated search through
the whole amount of data, a commercial provider might be needed, which of course would entail
an increase in administration costs.
Then Bowen reminded the members that the bibliographical database De musicis, overseen by Gianfranco
Mosconi, is currently searchable through the MOISA website.
Stefan Hagel suggested that the Zotero software could turn out to be a useful tool for
storing and organising bibliographical references on the Internet.
e) given the small amount of correspondence in the mailing list in the past two years, it has not
seemed useful to introduce neither a moderator or to divide messages into different directories,
such as reviews, conferences and so on. These solutions will only be considered if the traffic
on the significantly increases;
f) the related links section should be updated as well.
Egert Poehlmann asked if the whole material available in the Skytala Moisan review could be
transferred on the MOISA website. Bowen replied that this was possible, provided that the entries
were converted into the .pdf format.
2) David Creese brought the Assembly up to date on the state of the mailing list. In the two years
of its existence, only 34 messages have been sent. Needless to say, as Alan Bowen had already pointed
out, there was no need of a moderator. Creese suggested that the associates should make more use
of the list as it is a useful means to share information. Some logistic details were then discussed.
The associates whose e-mail addresses changed were invited to send their new addresses to David
Creese; all associated were also invited to report any problems in downloading the attached files.
Stefan Hagel suggested creating a virtual archive containing all the attachments, so that they
could be downloaded from the website instead of the webmail provider.
3) Donatella Restani warmly thanked Alan Bowen and David Creese for all the benefits MOISA had
from the implementation of the information technologies. Then she explained what kind of
bureaucratic difficulties the society had to deal with: for example, it took six month to register
the society and four months to have a postal account.
Pauline LeVen suggested that MOISA should be advertised by means of banners on the websites of
the most important cultural institutions (Universities, research institutes and so on);
4) Eleonora Rocconi brought the assembly up to date on the financial situation of the Society.
On 31 August 2008 € 1,066.99 were available on the postal account and € 1,035.44 on the virtual
PayPal account. It was necessary to open a PayPal account because the postal one turned out not
to be entitled to receive funds from abroad; moreover, it has proved difficult to check the state
of payments from the associates. Due to logistic needs, the postal account will be moved form
Ravenna to Cremona. However, she suggested the associates could pay their annual fees directly
to Eleonora Rocconi as outgoing Treasurer at the end of the assembly.
5) Gianfranco Mosconi explained how the bibliographical database De musicis is organised. The
entries from 2000 onwards are being vetted and are about to be published on MOISA website in
.pdf format. The authors were requested to submit not only the references to their works, but
also their .pdf texts or, at least, the abstracts. This would greatly simplify the bibliographer's job.
6) Chiara Martinelli told the Assembly about the LEMMA Project (Lessico della Musica nel Mondo
Antico), which was conceived at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. She asked the Assembly for
its opinion about the project's usefulness and viability. As a result of a preliminary discussion
with the Executive of the group Le Musiche dei Greci (in that particular occasion represented
by Daniela Castaldo, Gianfranco Mosconi, Donatella Restani and Eleonora Rocconi), a division of
the whole lexicographic material into the following sections was suggested: 1) musical instruments;
2) proper and common names of musicians; 3) problems of performance; 4) treatises; 5) musical
hearing; 6) music-related myths. It might be advisable to start with section 1) only, evaluating
the possibility to select the words starting from Pollux Onomasticon (IV, 58-94).
Andrew Barker pointed out that because of the very nature of the entries, most of them might
overlap with other fields, such as archaeology, philosophy, and so on; accordingly, he highlighted
the importance of the initial selection of the material.
The members expressed their appreciation of the project and asked Chiara Martinelli to continue
discussion with the Executive Committee.
Final Communications
Donatella Restani reminded the members of plans to hold the 2009 Meeting in
Ravenna concurrently with the Conference titled Moisa Epichorios, organised by Barbara Kowalzig,
François Lissarrague, Donatella Restani and Peter Wilson (1-3 October 2009). After a formal motion,
the proposal to do this was unanimously approved by the members. The deadline for submission of
papers top be presented at the meeting in Ravenna is 31 January 2009.
Andrew Barker invited the members to make suggestions for the location of the Annual Meeting in 2010;
then he announced that the election of the new Executive would be held on the 31 Oct 2008 in the
morning and that the votes would be counted in the afternoon starting at 4 p.m. The Assembly
disbanded at 5:10 p.m.
| The Keeper of the Minutes | The President |
|---|---|
| Massimo Raffa | Andrew Barker |
Election of the Executive Committee - 31 October 2008.
Aula Magna of the Facoltà di Musicologia of
Pavia University, branch of Cremona, 31. October 2008
From 4:00 pm onwards the polling procedures were carried out for the election of the New
Executive Committee, according to the agenda drawn up by the outgoing President Andrew Barker,
and approved of by the members of the Assembly present on October 30th. The election had taken
place in the morning, during the II MOISA Annual Meeting. In accordance with the President's
suggestion, five members had presented their nominations: Andrew Barker, Eleonora Rocconi,
Donatella Restani, Alan C. Bowen, David Creese.
A poll station was organised whose members are Egert Poehlmann (president), Angelo Meriani
(returning officer), Massimo Raffa (secretary). Then the votes were counted and the results
were as follows:
| Candidate | Votes |
|---|---|
| Andrew Barker | 31 |
| Eleonora Rocconi | 31 |
| Donatella Restani | 29 |
| Alan C. Bowen | 28 |
| David Creese | 30 |
| Other associates | 2 |
As a result, the aforesaid candidates were elected to be members of MOISA
Executive Committee. The elected associates announced that they would discuss the assignments
of the different roles (President, Vice-president, Secretary/Treasurer, Sub-Committee on
Electronic Communications).
The election ended at 4:30 p.m.
| Egert Poehlmann (President) | Angelo Meriani (Returning officer) | Massimo Raffa (Secretary/Keeper of the Minutes) |
Meeting photos - click to view gallery (32 images).
