Music History Commission
The Music History Commission eV is a registered association with its headquarters in Kassel . According to its statutes, the association has the task of continuing the German musical source publications.
history
The Music History Commission was founded in 1953. The naming is intended to document the connection to the Prussian Music History Commission founded in 1892 and its successor institutions. From 1892 to 1931 they had published a total of 65 volumes of the monuments of German music art . During the National Socialist regime , the publication was continued in the source publication Das Erbe deutscher Musik , founded in 1933 . The edition is published by Breitkopf & Härtel , Möseler , Schott , Henry Litolff , Bärenreiter , Peters and Henle .
The work of the commission was funded until 2007 by the Union of German Academies of Sciences within the framework of the joint funding of musical editions. The commission also oversees the German Music History Archive, which the State of Hesse and the City of Kassel have taken on. Harald Heckmann was in charge of the archive from 1954 to 1977 .
organization
Membership can only take place through an appointment approved by the general assembly. As of September 2012, the Music History Commission has fourteen appointed members. The respective president of the Society for Music Research and the respective director of the State Institute for Music Research Prussian Cultural Heritage are also members of the association.
The chairman of the association is Wolfgang Horn, Institute for Musicology at the University of Regensburg (as of 2012).
Pilot projects
The Music History Commission is launching a new edition entitled German Music in a European Context 1806-1914 . To prepare for the long-term research project, the Volkswagen Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation are funding the implementation of three pilot projects. They concern the areas of oratorio , chamber music and orchestral music .
Oratorio
The first pilot project deals with the topic of large German-speaking choral music in the 19th century . The project is carried out at the Institute for Musicology at the University of Regensburg under the direction of Wolfgang Horn.
The work Frithjof op. 23, which Max Bruch composed in 1864 for the line-up vocal solos, male choir and orchestra, has been selected as an example . The research questions focus specifically on Bruch's oratorios and, in general, on the integration of oratorio music into the educational and social history of the 19th century.
Chamber music
The second pilot project is dedicated to Brahms . The edition work related to Brahms' historical position is carried out by the Brahms Institute at the Lübeck University of Music under the direction of Wolfgang Sandberger.
Subject of the research are four works that the composer Johannes Brahms appropriated were: There are chamber music works by Robert Fuchs , Hermann Goetz , Bernhard Scholz and Josef Suk . The dedications show an appreciation of the historical position of the composer Brahms in the conflict between his chamber music tradition and the music of the future at the time. Exemplary representatives of this future music were Liszt's symphonic poems and Wagner's monumental musical dramas.
Orchestral music
The third pilot project is The Concert Overture in the Age of Mendelssohn . The Musicological Institute of the University of Marburg , under the direction of Lothar Schmidt, deals with the innovative development of the overture as a special genre of orchestral music.
This pilot project examines the innovative development of the overture , which gained great importance for symphonic and program music in the 19th century. Questions are also examined that arise with regard to the overture from the history of the institutions in the design of concert programs. This also includes the role of the overture from the opera and drama music categories as a special advertising medium.