Cultural history of music
Cultural history of music
Music is created through the interaction of many people: those who compose music, those who publish and perform it, those who promote it, listen to it, think about it, judge it and write about it... Reflecting on this diversity of musical action, thought and perception is the aim of a cultural-historical view of music. It also raises awareness of the fact that musicians are in constant dialogue with the cultural, political, social and gender-specific forces of their time and the past. Finally, the cultural history of music integrates questions about musical spaces, music and migration, references to other arts, forms of knowledge and sciences, everyday music culture and much more.
This diversity of perspectives entails a diversity of methodological approaches that also take up ideas from other disciplines. Bringing these methods into a meaningful dialogue and placing them in a music-cultural context raises awareness of the complexity and polyphony of musical pasts. It is obvious that this does not result in a hermetically sealed building of music history. Rather, it is about a "non-unity of history" (Karin Hausen), which allows for constant rethinking and discovery as well as the diversity of perspectives on music history.
Current research focus in the field of cultural history of music
Music and migration
Making music history legible as a history of migration and thereby critically questioning the effectiveness of national-historical music-historical narratives is an important concern of research on music and migration. At the centre of this research at the Institute of Music are the cultural history of (musical) exile (with a special focus on exile in France), music journalism in exile (in particular the publicist and critic Paul Bekker) and methodological questions of exile and migration research (in discussion with interdisciplinary approaches of histoire croisée and spatial studies). In this way, musical activity can be differentiated transculturally, i.e. research into local and regional history as well as the investigation of transnational musical spaces.
Co-operations
- Research Initiative Music and Migration (University/Mozarteum Salzburg)
- German Exile Archive 1933-1945 of the German National Library Frankfurt a.M.
Music and the history of knowledge
Research on music and the history of knowledge asks how music is integrated into processes of knowledge production: How is history negotiated and communicated in music theatre, for example music history, contemporary political history or the history of science? How can sound become a historical medium? How is the scientific approach to music changing and how can this be analysed in terms of the sociology and history of knowledge? These questions examine the interfaces between science and art in different ways. They explore modes of cognition and the functions of art for science and society, just as they make the functions of scientific thought for art and society transparent.
Co-operations
Musicological gender research
Musicological gender research examines the extent to which culturally constructed gender is effective as a pattern of interpretation in music aesthetics, analysis and historiography and how this pattern of interpretation influences musical culture in the past and present. Seemingly self-evident images of artists or musical practices can thus be scrutinised. At the Institute of Music, the focus is currently on gender, voice and performance (including in music theatre) as well as gender concepts in music historiography.
Co-operations and musicological gender research at other locations
- Centre for Interdisciplinary Women's and Gender Studies (ZFG)
- Research centre Music and Gender (Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media)
- Sophie Drinker Institute Bremen
- Music and Gender on the Internet (Hamburg University of Music and Theatre)