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: eine vorwiegend sprachliche und literarische Spurensuche

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: Novelistic and poetic Humour in Mahler’s compositional thought

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               He Jie (Wuhan Conservatory of Music)

Comparison of Mahler’s Irony in Das Lied von der Erde and Poets’ Ironies in Corresponding Ancient Chinese Poems

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

16:45-17:30               Justin Gregg (Columbia University)

Caricatures of the Concertgebouw: Satirical Cartoons on the 1920 Amsterdam Mahler Festival

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                 Eric Smialek (University of Huddersfield)

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

Coffee break

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

Strategien der Verfremdung in der Ersten Symphonie Mahlers

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

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

Concluding thoughts – end of conference