Living in a world of global mobility, issues of religious, national, and political identity are clearly understood as unstable. However, questions of mobility and identity are not unique to the past century. On the contrary, migrations, networking, and cultural transfers can be understood as the basis for the development of humanity, so that “the reality, for most of the past as once again for the present, is more about nomads than natives” (Greenblatt 2009).

Over the last fifteen years or so, the issue of migration (and networking, often associated with it) is intensely present in the social and political environments of all countries on all continents. We are witnessing the issue of the reception and integration of Others on various levels, and countries solve their issues of welcome or unwelcome migrants in different ways.

What can musicology do and how can musicologists act in such situations, and how can they contribute to smooth and successful migratory processes? Which musical questions arise from the basic issue of the migration of people?

The awareness of this situation has been reflected in a series of research projects and conferences, resulting in the publication of new ideas in proceedings and monographs. Here we might mention the example of the EU research project “Musical Networking in the Early Modern Age (MusMig)” (2013–16, with researchers from Croatia, Germany, Poland, and Slovenia), and the earlier project “European Musicians in Venice, Rome and Naples (1650–1750)” (2010–12).

These projects and corresponding publications pointed out that the objects of research on migration are not or should not only be persons and musicians, but also artifacts (instruments, sheet music, books) and ideas (musical styles, patterns of music making, ideas on music), which often result in cultural transfer (Espagne and Werner 1986). It was observed that musicians without a stable or permanent location, such as Biagio Marini or Johann Christian Bach, “to date, have received significantly less attention than those that can be clearly assigned to a nation, a denomination or a culture” (Ehrmann-Herfort and Leopold 2013).

On the other hand, networking is deeply connected with migration. Networking might encompass connections between students of an eminent teacher or musician (e.g., Franz Liszt, as pointed out by A. Babbe and V. Timmermann 2016), or ways of spreading information. Thus, the nodes or intersections of such networks are not only persons (teachers, editors, instrument makers, etc.), but also institutions (music societies, ensembles, publishing houses, salons) and newspapers, as stated in the proceedings Musical Networking in the “Long Nineteenth Century,” which resulted from the project of the same name.

A preoccupation with both principles is clearly present in current musicological research and in announcements for musicological conferences worldwide. (A recent call for papers, e.g., announced a symposium on “Musical Exile, Migration, and Cultural Mobility” in Melbourne in August 2025).

The initial meeting of this study group was hosted onsite on 15 May 2025 by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb, within the conference “From Private to Public: The Institutionalization of Bourgeois Music Culture in the Long 19th Century” as well as online via Zoom.

Vjera Katalinić (HR)

For a report of recent activities, as well as older reports, see the IMS Publication Archive.