Angewandte Interpretationsforschung II

‘Instructive editions’ offer an important, hitherto largely unnoticed witness to academic and professional musical practice in the 19th century.

Factsheet

Situation

They were edited by famous musicians (such as Louis Spohr, Clara Schumann, Hans von Bülow, Hugo Becker and others) and comprise not just detailed expression markings in the musical text but also a commentary on it. These commentaries could take up more than half of the printed page and were also printed separately. In the context of an SNSF professorship, we are evaluating these instructions according to a sound-based list of priorities. They will then be compared both with instructions on musical performance from the time and with findings gained from early musical recordings. On the basis of these sources it is possible to make a reliable evaluation of different interpretational modes in musical practice of the 19th century.