Expansive Canvas

The Department of Music at Trinity College Dublin, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and the Trinity Long Room Hub are delighted to announce the international conference and collaborative symposium, “The Expansive Canvas: Large-Scale Form in the Music of 19th-Century Women Composers” which will take place in Dublin, Ireland on 26–28 August 2025.

Large-scale form (LSF) refers to the structure of an extended musical composition found in numerous genres such as sonatas, symphonies, overtures (some with literary adjuncts), operas, concertos, chamber music and extended choral works. It stands in contrast to the domestic genres historically associated with women composers such as song and piano miniatures. For the purposes of this event, the long nineteenth century extends from 1789–1922. This international conference and collaborative symposium aims to reinvigorate our conception of music history, and to challenge entrenched patterns of representation within the classical music establishment by opening up a forum for the discussion, performance, and analysis of LSFs by women composers. With four central pillars in performance, music analysis, musicology, and music education, the event will provide a platform for a discourse on gender diversification in music education, and concert programming as it pertains to the music of the long nineteenth century. Research on women’s contributions to LSF in the nineteenth century lags behind research on women’s contributions to large-scale works in other artforms such as the visual arts and literature. This event will also explore and interrogate the reasons for this disparity.