Conference ‘Mahler and Humour’

Gustav Mahler Research Centre Innsbruck / Toblach

17-19 July 2025

Full programme

Organisers: Anna Stoll Knecht and Alice Verti

Conference committee: Anna Stoll Knecht (University of Fribourg), Alice Verti (University of Innsbruck), Morten Solvik (Mahler Foundation), Lóránt Péteri (Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music)

17 July

9:00-9:15                   Anna Stoll Knecht and Alice Verti: Welcome     

Keynote 1

9:15-10:15                 Christine Lubkoll-Klotz (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)

Nachahmung – Kontrastierung – Travestie. Lachtheoretische Vorüberlegungen zum Humor

Coffee break

Session 1: Musical Humour and Literary Theories

10:30-11:15               Christian Glanz (University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna)

Mahler’s ‘Humoreske’ in the context of ‘Menippean’ satire

11:15-12:00               Renate Stark-Voit (International Gustav Mahler Society)

Spielarten des Mahlerschen Humors – Facetten in einem Kaleidoskop

Lunch break

Session 2: The Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Symphonies: Of Irony and Animals

13:30-14.15                Alice Verti (University of Innsbruck)

‘Vorwiegend heiteren Charakters’, ‘humoristischen Inhalts’: the peculiar irony of the Seventh Symphony

14:15-15:00                Julian Caskel (Folkwang University of the Arts)

The theory and analysis of metrical consonances and dissonances: A humorous Mahlerian update

Coffee break

15:15-16:00               Thomas Peattie (University of Mississippi)

‘What the Animals in the Zoo Tell Me’: Mahler’s Domesticated Nature

16:00-16:45               Nicolas Waldvogel (University of the Pacific)

Mahler, Cuckoos and Donkeys

18 July

Keynote 2

9:00-10:00                 Federico Celestini (University of Innsbruck)

From Haydn to Mahler and back again. The ‘unshackled masters’ of musical humour

Session 3: Constructed and unintentional laughter in Mahler’s music

10:00-10:45               Jeremy Barham (University of Surrey)

‘First as Tragedy, then as Farce’: Mahler’s Sternean Punchlines

Coffee break

11:00-11:45               Brent Wetters (Clark University)

Nobody Expects the Comically-Large Hammer: Mahler, Hardy, and the Unintentionally Humorous

11:45-12:30               Eric Smialek (University of Huddersfield)

Orchestrating the ‘Inverted Sublime’: Contrasting Settings of Humour in Mahler’s Wunderhorn Symphonies

Lunch break

Session 4: Irony and Caricature in Form and Reception

14:15-15:00               Oana Andreica (Gheorghe Dima National Academy of Music)

‘Humour’ Censored? On Mahler’s Reception in Communist Romania

15:00-15:45               Milijana Pavlović (University of Innsbruck)

Funny, but to whom? The musical othering of Jews and its long shadow over the Mahler reception

Coffee break

16:00-16:45               Mike Mitchell (Durham University)

Formal Characters and Caricatures in the Opening of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony

July 19

Session 5: Facets of humour in the Wunderhorn symphonies

9:00-9:45                   Morten Solvik (Mahler Foundation)

Mahler’s ‘Humorous’ Third Symphony

9:45-10:30                 Christian Utz (University of Music and Performing Arts Graz)

Performing the Comic, the Grotesque, the Serious, and the Tragic in Recordings of the Vocal Movements of Mahler's Third Symphony

Coffee break

10:45-11:30               Maho Naito (University of Bonn)

Strategien der Verfremdung in der Ersten Symphonie Mahlers

11:30-12:15               Lóránt Péteri (Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music)

Nostalgia and Humour – Musico-Cinematic Intertextuality in István Szabó’s Father

Concluding thoughts – end of conference