An almost unchangeable landscape that determines the fate of its inhabitants (as Braudel saw it) or a basin that inspires the ideas and endeavours of the human beings who cross it (as Abulafia suggests), the Mediterranean is a sea of diversity.

On its shores flourish cultures rooted in a multi-millennial reality of circulation and exchange. Musical practice and thought is a field in which this reality is particularly evident and relevant: ideas, beliefs and theories about music, instruments and practices, repertoires and forms of interpretation meet and influence each other along borders, accompany travellers, overlap and stabilise after various migrations or diasporas. A mutual interlocution that is generated beyond, and often below, the geopolitical dimension of states—and that is immanent to all aspects of human cultures (Jullien).

This dialogue extends far beyond the geographical boundaries of the Mediterranean basin, involving civilisations rooted in other parts of the world. The exchanges established along the routes of trade and war are essential to the musical practices of the Mediterranean: so are the relations with the cultures of the Near and Far East (ed. Strohm, The Road to Music) and with Africa and America (ed. Marín-López, Músicas coloniales a debate). The cultural losses inflicted by colonialism are irreparable, and many wounds are still open and influential in the present. However, the realities of encounter and fertilisation produced by early globalisation are necessarily part of the history of music in the Mediterranean.

Recent works show the productivity of an innovative research model that makes disciplinary frameworks flexible and plays on the scale of reconstruction, from the macro to the micro: processes, events, repertoires and seemingly marginal figures are integrated into rigorous historical narratives that reveal unimagined or simply overlooked connections (ed. van Orden, Seachanges). In an almost paradoxical way, the historical reconstruction of musical traditions in the Mediterranean may offer itself as a possible application of concepts currently emerging in the debate on the global history of music.

A resounding Mediterranean, extended along the secular routes of globalisation, offers itself as a methodological laboratory. And also as a possible model for other seas or other spaces of encounter between cultures: every body of water, from small seas to oceans, is in the midst of lands that divide and unite at the same time.

UNIVERSITAT DE VALÈNCIA

Facultat de Filologia, Traducció i Comunicació

Blasco Ibañez 32, València (46010)

The Faculty of Language Studies, Translation and Communication holds the following degrees: Audiovisual Communication, Journalism, Double Degree in Audiovisual Communication and Journalism, English studies, Hispanic studies, Catalan philology, Classical Philology, Modern Languages and their Literatures, and Translation and Interlinguistic Mediation.

The Faculty of Philology, Translation and Communication is governed by the Faculty Board, which is composed by the Dean, who chairs it, 24 Teaching and Researching Staff representatives, a  Researching Staff in Training representative, 4 Technical, Management, Administration and Service Staff representatives, and 13 students. The Board discusses and decides on subjects concerning the organization and provision of services of the Faculty. All members of the Faculty can attend the committees: teachers, administrative and services staff and students. Anyone can have a voice, but the right to vote is reserved to those who have been expressly elected for the Faculty Board.

The Dean’s team is responsible for the daily management of the Faculty, which is currently composed by the Dean, the secretary and four vice-deans with different responsibilities. You can the team member’s competences, their e-mail and their office hours on this website. There’s also a number of working committees with representatives from all departments and fields, as well as students, the mission of which is to oversee different fields of the Faculty in little groups.