The slow burn of musicology

In 1993 the School of Music organized a pioneering conference on music in eighteenth-century Spain, the proceedings of which were later published by CUP and translated into Spanish.

Twenty years later at a conference in the University of Rioja on the same topic, the Cardiff event was described as a 'breakthrough conference' for Spanish musicology, 'much influenced and altered for the better by that initiative'.

Professor David Wyn Jones was one of three members of the School of Music involved in the 1993 project, funded by the British Council. His research on the musical repertoire at the court of Carlos IV formed part of the conference and subsequent publications.

He said: "It was a very bold initiative, something of a leap into the dark. A couple of decades after Franco's death Spanish musicology was still very isolated from the international community but, as we found out, there were a number of very forward looking individuals anxious to remedy that situation. It's very rewarding to learn that twenty years later the Cardiff conference is viewed as significant, not only for eighteenth-century musical studies, but for the development of musicology generally in Spain."