Kurt Blaukopf

Kurt Blaukopf (born February 15, 1914 in Czernowitz , Austria-Hungary ; died June 14, 1999 in Vienna ) was an Austrian music sociologist.

Life

Kurt Blaukopf established the sub- discipline of musicology known today as music sociology . Blaukopf developed his interest in the connections between social and musical developments early on.

After his family moved from Bukowina to Vienna, he studied law and political science there. But he mainly devoted himself to music-sociological research and published his work, among other things, on European art music, also under the pseudonym HE Wind. After the Anschluss in 1938 he could not stay in Austria. He continued to work in Paris and from 1940 without a degree in Jerusalem, from where he fought for the liberation of Europe from National Socialism. From 1947 he was a freelance musicologist and music critic. He decided not to complete his studies. From 1954 he published the magazine Phono , from 1965 he was editor of HiFi-Stereophonie . From 1962 until his retirement in 1984, he held lectures at the Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, which later became a university, where he worked as an honorary professor from 1974 and finally from 1977 as Austria's first and only full professor of music sociology. The music pedagogical research institute founded by Blaukopf is what later became the Institute for Music Sociology and Music Pedagogical Research and is now the Institute for Music Sociology. Blaukopf received an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1994.

Blaukopf initiated the establishment of the MEDIACULT Institute (International Research Institute for Media, Communication and Cultural Development) and was its director until 1985. His successors were Irmgard Bontinck and, from 1993, Alfred Smudits, whose content also ties in with Blaukopf's work on mediamorphosis. Blaukopf was also a member of the UNESCO Executive Council from 1972 to 1976.

In “Pioneers Empirical Music Research” he published his findings on Austrian art and musicology. His best-known work is the volume "Musik im Wandel der Gesellschaft", published in 1982 and expanded in 1996, which gives a comprehensive overview of his conception of music sociology and the topics he touched. In his text collection “On the way to the sociology of music. In search of home and location ”, which also contains previously unpublished texts, he describes in detail his personal and academic life.

Kurt Blaukopf was in contact with numerous influential intellectuals from the pre- and post-war period, such as B. with Hanns Eisler , Willy Sales alias Andrè Verlon, Theodor W. Adorno and Karl Popper .

He was married to the Mahler researcher Herta Blaukopf geb. Singer, with whom he had their son Michael (* 1962) and with whom he published joint works. The couple was buried in the family grave of the Singer family at Mauer cemetery (group 46A, number 144).

Kurt and Herta Blaukopf's grave at the Mauer cemetery

Fonts (selection)

• The final crisis of bourgeois music and the role of Arnold Schönberg . Krystall-Verlag, Vienna 1935 (published under the pseudonym Hans E. Wind).
• Music sociology. An introduction to the basic concepts with a special focus on the sociology of sound systems . Kiepenheuer, Cologne 1952. (First edition Vienna 1950)
• Gustav Mahler or the contemporary of the future . Fritz Molden Verlag, Vienna 1969.
• Music in a changing society. Basics of the sociology of music . Piper, Munich 1982.
• On the way to the sociology of music. In search of home and location. Commented by Reinhard Müller. Publishing house Nausner and Nausner, Graz / Vienna 1998.

Essays

• Music and sociology of music in the work of Karl Popper. In: W. Lipp (Ed.): Society and Music, Ways of Music Sociology. Duncker-Humblot, Berlin 1992, pp. 161-183.

literature

• Irmgard Bontinck, Otto Brusatti (ed.): Festschrift Kurt Blaukopf . Universal-Edition, Vienna 1975.
• Klaus Zapotoczky : Blaukopf, Kurt. In: Wilhelm Bernsdorf , Horst Knospe (Ed.): Internationales Soziologenlexikon. 2nd Edition. Volume 2, Enke, Stuttgart 1984, p. 78.
• Marcello Sorce Keller : Kurt Blaukopf: “Music in the changing world”: una recensione e una occasione per alcune riflessioni sul presente stato degli studi di sociologia musicale. In: Musica Domani. No. 49, 1983, pp. 79-81.
• Blaukopf, Kurt. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 3: Birk – Braun. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-598-22683-7 , pp. 60-73.

Web links

• Literature by and about Kurt Blaukopf in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Kurt Blaukopf in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
• Information on the website of the Institute for Music Sociology