Διεθνές Συνέδριο Μουσικολογίας και Μουσικής Βιβλιοθηκονομίας: "Musicology and Music Librarianship in Cultural Context"

The Friends of Music Society Athens and the IMS Study Group Music and Cultural Studies announce an Interdisciplinary Conference "Musicology and Music Librarianship in Cultural Context" in Honour of Stephanie Merakos.

The conference will take place on February 20 and 21 of 2025 in English. 

The conference is organized to honour the multifaceted activities of Stephanie Merakos, musicologist, director of the Music Library of Greece “Lilian Voudouri” of the Friends of Music Society in Athens, RILM National Committee of Greece, treasurer of IAML National Branch of Greece, tireless organizer of exhibitions, music, musicological and educational events who has recently retired from service. Merakos lived 14 years in the United States, where she studied musicology and specialized on Byzantine and Western music. Soon after her return to Greece, she started working at the newly-established music library that the Friends of Music Society established in 1995.

The library opened in 1997 and at that time there were 70,000 books, scores and audio-visual material. It was very soon after the establishment of the Library the first large archive arrived, the Mikis Theodorakis Archive. Now, after almost 30 years of working in and 20 years since she undertook the direction of the library, there are more than 150,000 titles, books, recordings, scores and 54 archives of Greek composers, musicians, and teachers of the calibre of Manolis Kalomiris, Nikos Skalkottas, Petros Petridis, Antiochos Evangelatos and many others. Moreover, a large part of the archival material has been digitized.

Merakos fulfilled the ideal which already Donald Jay Grout hoped for as early as in 1941, to be a head of a music library and also an active musicologist. She led the library through time, witnessing a rapid development of technology and modernization, which she not only followed with great interest, but also endorsed and applied in one of the largest Music Libraries in Southeast Europe that has been kept and enlarged by the Friends of Music Society. Her own experience in working for RILM enabled her to remain fully updated in actual state of research and technological tools. Stephanie Merakos is an activist in promoting Greek music heritage and providing manuscripts, scores, recording to international performers and scholars thanks to her wide professional network.

Keynote speaker: Stephanie Merakos, Music Library of Greece “Lilian Voudouri” of the Friends of Music Society

Programme Committee:

Tatjana Marković, Austrian Academy of Sciences Vienna
Alexandros Charkiolakis, The Friends of Music Society Athens
Zdravko Blažeković, Executive Director of RILM, City University Graduate Center Ney York
Leon Stefanija, University of Ljubljana
Katalin Kim, Research Centre of Humanities, Eötvös Loránd Research Network
Thomas Aigner, Music Collection of the Vienna City Library
Evi Nika–Sampson, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and Hellenic Musicological Society
Valia Vraka, The Friends of Music Society Athens