Ongoing Projects
Cooperative Ensemble Practices in the 19th Century
Some of the leading music and theatre ensembles of 19th-century Europe were organised as cooperatives whose members worked together artistically as equals. Their contemporaries assigned great importance to the non-hierarchical organisation of artists. This historical phenomenon has been all but forgotten today, even though other forms of cooperative work have been the subject of research. The present project will shed light on the organisation and artistic working methods of leading cooperative ensembles, namely the London Philharmonic Society, the Paris Société des concerts du conservatoire and the Berlin theatre society Urania. It also aims to reintroduce historical, cooperative modes of working in the context of today’s artistic practices.
Unbekannte in der Hauptrolle
Interpretations around 1900 beyond the heroic narrative
The pneumatic reproduction systems for piano playing, which enjoyed great popularity from 1905 to around 1930, have proved to be extremely productive sources for interpretation research in recent years. Nevertheless, the selection of objects of analysis and research projects has generally remained committed to a mainstream canon. The project poses the question of the practical performance content of the role recordings outside this canon. It observes the way in which the view of pianistic interpretation around 1900 changes through the analysis of this currently unexplored material and endeavours to develop a theory of piano playing outside the heroic narrative.
Lukas Sarasin und das Phänomen des ‹collegium musicum› um 1800
Lukas Sarasin collected numerous instrumental and vocal compositions (operas, sacred music), employed a professional musician and, as a private individual, organised public concerts. In many towns in German-speaking Switzerland there were music societies (Collegia Musica), which employed more and more professional musicians and also organised public concerts. This relationship between private and public music-making and between amateurs and professional musicians serves as a mirror for the situation in Switzerland today, as the collegia can be seen as the forerunners of today’s amateur music societies.
