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Conference Agenda

The Online Program of events for the 2026 AMS Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.

Use the "Filter by Track or Type of Session" or "Filter by Session Topic" dropdown to limit results by type. Some of the sessions are also color-coded: purple indicates performances, grey indicates paper forums, and orange indicates sessions which have been organized by one of the regional associations of IMS (ARLAC or IMSEA). (Sessions which are both IMS sessions and performances are only colored orange.)

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Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 1st Sept 2026, 02:57:44am EDT

Daily Overview

Session

Musical Travels In and Out of Russia
Session Chair: Keenan Reesor

Presentation 3

Rimsky in Respighi's Rome

Nathan Seinen

National Taiwan Normal University

Outside of Russia, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov remains under-appreciated by audiences, and has been (relatively) neglected by scholars. While he was primarily a composer of operas, his best-known works are the three orchestral showstoppers, composed back-to-back in 1887-88: the Spanish Capriccio, Sheherezade, and the Easter Festival overture. The composer has been acknowledged as a master of orchestration, and he had a significant influence internationally on composers such as Debussy and Ravel, as well as Ottorino Respighi, in whose case the influence was partly direct, after several (in his words) ‘very important’ lessons with Rimsky-Korsakov when working in Saint Petersburg in 1900-01 and 1902-3. This paper offers a detailed examination of features of orchestration in Respighi’s own trio of splashy orchestral works – Fontane di Roma (1915–16), Pini di Roma (1923–24), and Feste romane (1928) – with the aim of demonstrating how these draw from Rimsky-Korsakov’s practices. While also taking account of other influences (including Wagner, Ravel, and Strauss), I compare Rimsky-Korsakov’s and Respighi’s particular strategies of orchestration, including the use of individual instruments, textures, sonorities, and special effects. Beyond this, I make observations on shared general stylistic principles, and present an argument about the similar role that texture and sonority play in the structural organization of their orchestral works.
In musicology, the history of orchestration has emerged as an area with significant potential. My investigation of Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral style is inspired by the work of Emily Dolan (2013) and Inge van Rij (2015) on Haydn and Berlioz respectively. Timbre had been considered an ‘extraneous’ parameter, as mere surface decoration – a prejudice inherited from German Romantic aesthetics. The emphasis in Russian music on colour and sonority rather than counterpoint and ‘organic’ development would suggest that Russian music studies has much to offer to a broader history of orchestration, and Rimsky-Korsakov is the prime candidate for examination in this regard. While there are scattered references to Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral techniques throughout the scholarly literature, no systematic study has yet been conducted. Using well-known examples, this paper will contribute to a better understanding of both the main features of his style and his international influence.