16th International Congress of Musicology in Helsinki
From 2 to 6 June 2026, the 16th International Congress on Musical Signification (ICMS) will take place at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. This marks the return of the congress to Finland – twenty-five years after ICMS 7 and forty years after the first edition in Imatra.
Since 1986, the ICMS has brought together scholars from the fields of musical signification, signs in music and musical meaning. The aim is to discuss current developments and future trends in musical semiotics and related fields of research. The congress is a central platform of the Musical Signification Project, which was founded in Paris in 1984 and has been led by Prof. Eero Tarasti (University of Helsinki) for over 40 years. The project also serves as an educational tool for the training of doctoral students.
Under the title ‘Music as a Meaningful Art’, ICMS 16 will address a wide range of topics, including:
- Analytical and historical approaches to musical meanings
- Narratives and gestures as meaningful phenomena in music
- Embodiment of and in musical meanings
- Mechanisms and processes of music, mind and meaning
- Semiotic and philosophical approaches to the ontology of music
- Synthesis of cognitive and cultural approaches to the study of meaning(s)
- The locality and globality of music as a meaningful art form
- The relationship between musical meaning and learning, growth, therapy and well-being
- Music in the age of technological explosion and sustainability
- Social phenomena, structures and policies in the context of musical meaning
Susanne Kogler from the Department of Arts and Musicology at the University of Graz will speak on 4 June on the topic “Exploring musical signs and meaning: Understanding new music with works by Clemens Gadenstätter”.
Further information and the programme will be available shortly on the official conference website.