The Crown of Aragon has been traditionally studied as a politic and cultural entity. However, according to the organisers of the congress, the exploration of connections and divergences in the musical field in particular in the different territories that conformed the kingdom is a pending work in a global and updated study. Can we talk about a musical heritage as an entity of its own inside of this geographical area? This is the question that researchers ask. If so, which were their characteristics and how did they changed over time? What is our impression in the current time?

This year the Generalitat Valenciana celebrates its 600 anniversary as a permanent institution of the Kingdom of Valencia by the king Alfonso the Magnanimous in 1418. This establishment had place only a quarter of century before the maximum territorial expansion of the Crown, with the conquest of the Kingdom of Napoles in 1442. The organisers of the congress consider that this is a good occasion to take stock about the knowledge improvements and to reflect about the new challenges that the research poses about the musical culture in the common frame of the Crown of Aragon using a travel through time between the beginning of this historic institution and its suppression in 1707, along with the legal personality of the kingdom of Valencia and with the Crown itself.

In addition to the research, explains Professor Rosa Isusi-Fagoaga, co-director of the meeting ‘from the higher education we have to attend other duties of the university as for example the transfer of knowledge, the teaching and its social dissemination.  For this reason, the congress includes sessions which connect said features with innovation, which is essential to adapt the academic world to the changes that our society suffers and to give an answer to the new challenges that appear.’ 

The international congress about musical heritage of the Crown of Aragon, according to the other director of this meeting, Frances Villanueva, aims to go further in the reduction of these empty spaces through four specific sessions. Later on, the results of the congress will be published in a monographic work about the actual state of the research in the musical heritage of the Crown of Aragon, as well as new perspectives, innovations and challenges of the 21th century. The meeting, which has been organised by the ‘Associació Cultural COMES’ and the ‘Fundació Cultural CdM’, counts with the collaboration of the ‘Instituto de Creatividad e Innovaciones Educativas de la Universitat de València’, among other institutions.