executed by Dr. Sven Oliver Müller

The relation between Music and Society: opera and concert audiences in 19th Century Europe

The long 19th century was not only the era of the industrial and political revolutions – it was also the heyday of “serious music”. Concerts of symphonic music and opera performances were an integral part of the leisure time of the European aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. These productions were not only a musical but also a social sphere. This research project concentrates on the social influence, cultural practice and political significance of leading musical productions in Berlin, London and Vienna in the 19th century. In a transnational perspective it tries to compare the development of common cultural practices and forms of public representation in three mayor European capitals of music. It intends to reveal the primarily social and political function of those entertainments by analysing the behaviour of audiences, rather than by looking at the music itself. Who went to the opera and the concerts? What do the conditions of participation, such as ticket prices, seating arrangements or dress codes, tell us about the images of the world and the values of the audience? Of equal importance was the development of a new mode of listening around the middle of the century. How did a more or less inattentive audience turn into “listeners” during the third quarter of the 19th century? Why did people start listening and stop talking and promenading? How important were the influence of symphonic music and a new concept of art in this process? And finally: Why did opera houses and concert halls became highly contested places of political demonstrations? To put the matter in a nutshell: Unlike any other kind of high culture, the opera houses and the great concert halls are the ideal places to analyse the social practices and cultural values of the European elite.

executed by Dr. Sarah Zalfen together with Dr. Gerhard Brunner (Executive Master in Arts Administration, Universität Zürich)

„Masterpiece-Fidelity“

The term „Masterpiece-Fidelity” (Werktreue) is commonly used as an expression of conflict or a confession of faith. It is a crucial category of reception utilized to implement a specific “historical” taste into a social process. The imagined tradition conveyed in “Masterpiece-Fidelity’s” terminology is not linked to an actual past of a certain piece of art music – it is rather the reference of the present to a currently relevant historicity facilitating the formation of groups and their communication. The discussion about fidelity and its disrespect relegate to the emotional dimension of this subject matter – the vulnerability of cultural values and perspectives upon history, the fear of losing undisputable forms of interpretation and lastly the pleasure of breaking a taboo and the thrill of an “escapade”.

But, what is a “Masterpiece”, and what does “Fidelity” mean in this context? These questions allow a broad spectrum of perspectives upon music and musical theater. The project documents the answers of renowned experts, artists, journalists and administrators of cultural institutions. It also opens up music-historical perspectives on the genesis of the “Masterpiece-“term and the concept of authorship, discusses the opportunities and boundaries of artistic (re-)creation based upon currently available material, contemplates the necessities and sensitivities of audiences and considers conflicts over copyright. This approach offers an interdisciplinary, theoretical as well as practical discussion on the suspenseful relations between “Text-“ and “Masterpiece-Fidelity”, current practices of theater performance and cultural memory, artistic ideals and institutional frameworks.

executed by Dr. Yael Sela Teichler

This project is concerned with Jewish participation in art music and musical culture in Berlin between 1770 and 1830 and the role of music in Jewish modernization at intersections with German Enlightenment (Aufklärung) and early romanticism. Scholarship on Jewish participation in musical culture in German-speaking lands has largely focused on nineteenth- and twentieth-century climactic instances, particularly the lives and works of acknowledged Jewish musicians. The historiographical watershed marking the admission of Jewish-born professional musicians into musical culture in the public sphere seems to have been largely determined by the 1829 performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion, initiated and conducted by the 19-year-old Felix Mendelssohn. This performance also heralded the rise of German nationalism, in which music was pivotal, as Celia Applegate has pointed out.

Yet, already in the course of the eighteenth century, the ambivalence with which music was marked in traditional Judaism during the Middle Ages gave way to an engagement with art music and its aesthetics (next to German literature, theater, and philosophy) as part of an acculturation process. Although, as this study shows, some circles remained ambivalent in their attitude to music outside and in liturgical practices, an emergent Jewish elite that embraced the values of the Aufklärung and the ethics of Bildung, particularly in Prussia. Following the model of Moses Mendelssohn, this elite rapidly adopted music as a social practice and a hallmark of acculturation as collectors, interpreters, patrons, spectators, performers, and even as composers.

The project traces the genealogy of the process by which German Jews began cultivating art music in increasingly public forms of participation during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the philosophical, institutional, and political transformations that enabled Jews to become proponents and even agents of musical culture, while retaining, to various extents, their Jewish identity. The study seeks to understand how music – being a social practice, knowledge, and a set of aesthetic ideals – operated as an emotional experience and as a vehicle in the negotiation of modern German-Jewish identities. This process, it is argued, was embedded in the intertwinement of two developments represented by the 1829 revival performance of J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion: the role of music in the formation of German nationalism, and the civil emancipation of Jews. Berlin constitutes the main focus of this project being a paradigm both of German Enlightenment and Jewish modernization around 1800, while drawing on cultural transfers between Berlin and Vienna, Hamburg, and Königsberg.

executed by Karolin Schmitt-Weidmann

Power Factor Music. Music-Cultural Control in Occupied Germany

After the end of World War II, culture – and especially music – played an all-important role in Germany. The facilitation of culture was meant to contribute to the establishment of a new concept of identity and to foster the ideals of humanity. The attempts to control music culture were characterized by different claims, scopes, and ideas in the four zones. At first, the focus laid on the encouragement of a new concept of German identity. This concept was conceived to be anti-National-Socialist by all of the Allies. During the Cold War, however, these aims shifted for the benefit of a clear ideological distinction between the competing systems. Against the background of the memory culture of the Holocaust, this dissertation project seeks to shed light on the methods of both music-historical as well as emotional consequences of the controlling efforts of the Allies.

executed by Henning Wellmann

Angry Communities?! Anger as a community-building emotional phenomenon in recent music culture

With the emergence of punk music and related the punk culture in the mid-seventies a new phenomenon can be observed in modern popular music culture: publicly displayed and intensively acted out anger. Based on this phenomenon one can reconstruct a development of different musical styles and genres in which the transportation and the extroverted acting out of dismissive, accusatory or rebellious emotions play an essential and central role. In this context of “angry musical scenes, subcultures, genres or styles” a whole variety of different communities came into existence. To examine these processes of community-building and the characteristics of these communities in Germany and Great Britain is the main task of this project.