Anselm Gerhard

Anselm Gerhard (born March 30, 1958 in Heidelberg ) is a German musicologist and opera researcher .

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Gerhard attended schools in Kiel and Mannheim . He studied in Frankfurt am Main and at the Technical University of Berlin with Carl Dahlhaus (master's degree 1982). From 1982 to 1985 he received a scholarship from the Volkswagenwerk Foundation in Parma and Paris ; in 1985 he received his doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin. From 1985 to 1992 Gerhard worked as a research assistant, later as a university assistant at the musicological seminar at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster (Habilitation 1992), from 1992 to 1994 he worked there as a university lecturer and was a Heisenberg scholar of the German Research Foundation .

Since October 1994 Gerhard has been full professor for musicology and director of the Institute for Musicology at the University of Bern . He was also a visiting professor at the Universities of Freiburg im Üchtland , Pavia (Facoltà di musicologia in Cremona ), Geneva and at the École normal supérieure in Paris; He took on guest lectureships at Stanford University , the Universities of Heidelberg , Basel and Zurich and the Lucerne School of Music . In 2006 he turned down the professorship for theater studies at the University of Bayreuth in connection with the management of the research institute for musical theater at Schloss Thurnau . In 2009 he was awarded the Dent Medal "for outstanding contributions to musicology" by the Royal Musical Association ( London ) .

From 1995 to 2001 Gerhard was President of the Board of Trustees for Music Research at Akademie 91 Zentralschweiz (Lucerne), 1996–2002 founding president of Arbeitsstelle Schweiz Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (Bern), 1997 to 2002 Director-at-large of the International Musicological Society , 1998 to 2002 Member of the steering group musicology of the European Science Foundation (Strasbourg), 2000 to 2007 president of the Bern local group of the Swiss Music Research Society . 1997 to 2001 co-editor of the journal Musiktheorie , since 2001 co-editor of the journal Schubert: Perspektiven , since 2002 co-editor of the Swiss contributions to music research , since 2003 co-editor of the Verdi Forum journal . Journal of the American Institute for Verdi Studies .

One of Gerhard's research focuses is the opera of the 19th century: With his book The Urbanization of the Opera , which is also available in English translation, he developed a perspective on the history of perception and mentality on the French historical opera between Rossini and Meyerbeer and Verdi . There are numerous publications on Verdi, which, in addition to analytical questions, also deal with the social history of Italian opera and the composer's biography. In his habilitation thesis London and Classicism in Music , the emergence of the concept of self-referential instrumental music is related to the British aesthetic debate of the 18th century, thereby emphasizing the British roots of the “idea of ​​absolute music”.

With a conference held in Bern in 1996 , the contributions of which appeared in print in 2000, Gerhard was one of the first music historians to take a critical look at the involvement of German musicology in the Nazi regime. In further contributions to the method and history of the discipline of musicology, he critically dealt with the habit of dealing with historical questions within the framework of national history.

Fonts (selection)

• The urbanization of the opera. Paris and the 19th century musical theater . Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 1992, ISBN 3-476-00850-9 ; English: The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth Century, translated by Mary Whittall. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1998.
• Musicology - a belated discipline? Academic music research in the first half of the 20th century between belief in progress and denial of modernity. Edited by Anselm Gerhard. Metzler, Stuttgart 2000.
• Verdi manual. Edited by Anselm Gerhard and Uwe Schweikert. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2001, 2nd revised edition 2013.
• London and Classicism in Music. The idea of ​​“absolute music” and Muzio Clementi's piano work. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002.
• “Make music, love - and shut up!” Albert Einstein's relationship to music. Edited by Ivana Rentsch and Anselm Gerhard. Schwabe, Basel 2006.
• Giuseppe Verdi . Beck, Munich 2012.
• Antonio Ghislanzoni : How do you make an Italian opera? Italian / German [L'arte di far libretti (1870)]. Edited by Anselm Gerhard. (Paperback books on musicology, 163). Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 2014.

Web links

• Anselm Gerhard in the WorldCat