Fields of Research
In its research field “Performance and Interpretation”, the Institute Interpretation examines music and theatre from the 18th to 21st centuries and puts the research findings into practice. Other key areas of research include “Musical Instruments”, “Music Theory”, and “Pop and Jazz in Context”. The research field “Interfaces of Contemporary Music” illuminates the shifts in the relationship between authorship and interpretation in all the arts.
Performance and Interpretation
This field of research deals with the historical performance methods of music and theatre since the 18th century. It also looks at the concepts and actors that determined the performance methods. In doing so, it combines the sciences of various disciplines (music, theatre, literature, image, history) as well as artistic practice. The research topics and results blow back into artistic practice.
Person responsible: Annette Kappeler
Musical instruments
Some of our research topics include the history, construction, conservation and further development of musical instruments. Therefore, our methods are multidisciplinary and bring together leading specialists from the natural sciences, instrument making and source studies. One area of focus is on wind instruments. This is partly thanks to our close collaboration with the Klingendes Museum Bern, whose collection of over 1000 wind instruments provides a unique basis for both research and historical performance practice.
Person responsible: Adrian v. Steiger
Music theory
The projects in the research field “Music Theory” focus on questions of historically informed compositional theory and musical analysis and participate in the international research discourse within the subject. The focus is on the period of the late 18th and 19thcenturies, with methodological and didactic aspects playing a central role. The results can be applied to current teaching practice and open up questions relating to music education.
Person responsible: Claudio Bacciagaluppi
Pop and Jazz in Context
The interdisciplinary research field deals with music, media, cultural and social science perspectives on musical forms, which are expanded to include contexts of meaning from cultural studies, gender studies, sound studies and new approaches to analysis. Complementary to the classical hermeneutic approach of analyzing musical content in terms of its meanings and values, we focus our research on the social, cultural, economic and media contexts in which cultural objects (such as songs) are turned into carriers of meanings and values.
Person responsible: N. N.
Interfaces of Contemporary Music
This field of research is concerned with threshold phenomena in contemporary music that are situated between classical genres and established patterns of thought. The research interest is less directed on work structures than on artistic practices and their social interaction mechanisms. The focus is on the investigation of creative production and organisational processes and experimental research into the artistic means of contemporary music.
Person responsible: Leo Dick
