The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Research [research group]
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PROGRAMME FORMAT
Stage I | Articulation and Presentation | October 2026
Stage I consists of two online seminars devoted to the presentation and critical articulation of participants’ projects, materials, methods, and principal research questions. Each participant or group introduces work in a form appropriate to the inquiry: articles, scores, recordings, field notes, interviews, archival documents, datasets, software, performances, or other relevant documentation.
The purpose of this stage is not to demand a finished philosophical position, but to make each project’s operative conditions visible. Participants will be invited to identify how their research object is constituted, which concepts it depends upon, what forms of evidence it recognises, how its methods organise attention, and what intellectual, artistic, ethical, or public stakes it claims. Discussion will consider the relation between question and method, observation and construction, interpretation and argument, and a project’s internal logic and contexts.
Moderated peer response will help participants distinguish productive questions from premature conclusions, clarify terms that remain unstable, and identify lines of inquiry capable of advancing the work. By the end of Stage I, each participant will have established a provisional account of the philosophical grounds of their research and a focused set of questions for further development.
Stage II | Critical Inquiry and Development | January 2026
Stage II consists of two online seminars devoted to collective inquiry into the grounds, methods, ethics, and functions of music research. The seminars move between shared problems and the specific demands of participants’ projects. Rather than treating philosophy of music research as a pre-existing discipline with fixed boundaries, the group will examine what such a field should address and which methods are adequate to contemporary research practices.
Inquiry may encompass ontological questions concerning the identity and status of musical objects; epistemological questions concerning what may be known through scores, sounds, bodies, archives, testimony, data, and practice; interpretive questions concerning meaning, explanation, and critique; ethical questions concerning representation, consent, care, access, and consequence; technological questions concerning mediation, modelling, and automated analysis; institutional questions concerning authority, validation, and disciplinary power; and political questions concerning whose music, knowledge, and histories become researchable.
Participants will develop writing, artistic research, analytical work, fieldwork, editions, digital projects, or other outcomes through sustained discussion and critical reflection. The aim is not to force every inquiry into one academic model, but to strengthen its conceptual precision, methodological coherence, ethical accountability, and communicability. Each participant will formulate a development trajectory before the public residency.
Stage III | Public Presentation and Exchange | June 2027
The programme culminates in research presentations, lectures, and public discussions at the seventh Bled Contemporary Music Week in Bled, Slovenia. This stage brings the work developed through the online seminars into a wider artistic and intellectual context.
Participants will present the questions, methods, propositions, and outcomes of their research in forms suited to their projects. The emphasis is not solely on completed results. Public presentation is understood as a further stage of inquiry: an opportunity to test arguments, encounter new responses, refine language, and examine how research changes when it enters a shared discursive space.
The Bled residency creates a concentrated setting for exchange among researchers, composers, performers, artists, and audiences. It enables participants to situate their projects within broader debates, develop intellectual relationships, and contribute to an international discourse on the conditions and possibilities of music research today.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC RESEARCH
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io