Music in Language, Language in Music – Music as Heritage

About

After six successful editions, the Music as Heritage summer course continues to discuss music as intangible heritage and a social phenomenon. In 2025, our focus will be music and language, their multilayered, transmutable connection; through the lens of heritage management and cognitive science.

Our course builds on a highly interdisciplinary academic approach to modern musicology. We rely on the integrated approach of musicology to describe and examine complex social processes and identities. As is the trademark feature of our explorations, we bring in practical as well as theoretical angles.

Under the aegis of heritage, in 2025 we look at the cross sections of endangered languages and musical traditions, with eyes set on safeguarding these cultural practices: language preservation methods as applied to music, the role of music in keeping languages.

Cognitive science offers an insightful take for the 2025 course: we explore how musical training and language procession correlate. A wider societal perspective examines cultural embeddedness in music cognition and the perception of music.

Student participation is an integral and highly valued part of our course reflected in its structure: topics are discussed by distinguished scholars, then delegated to group assignments to receive their closing consideration at masterclasses relying on the contribution of all participants. A popular course element, a field trip where students may interact with representatives of a musical heritage, takes us this year to Ráckeve: home of the Serbian-Hungarian community and their cultural traditions.

Participants may present their own cultural heritage in the form of individual project development. Mentors assist students in developing then delivering a short presentation on their subject related to heritage and the course topic.

The course features social events (music performance, concert, music film screening) open to all CEU SUN participants, as in previous years.

Financial aid is available, in limited numbers.

Course leader

Martin Stokes (Department of Music, King’s College, London, UK) & Zsuzsanna Szálka (Cultural Heritage Studies Program, Central European University, Vienna, Austria / House of Music, Budapest, Hungary)

Target group

The course intends to bring together graduate and post-graduate students, as well as junior researchers from the fields of cultural heritage studies, ethnomusicology, linguistics, sociology, social anthropology, cognitive science.

Fee info