Ongoing projects
Black Spider
Construction of Collective Identity through Music Theater
This project takes a playful approach to shed new light on how music theatre, and art in general, have been instrumentalised for political storytelling in Switzerland and continue to be thus instrumentalized today. To this end, a group of amateurs and professionals will be familiarised with the Jeremias Gotthelf’s short story The Black Spider and its reception history. The team will then work together, using musical, scenic and documentary means to create a polyphonic, decentred resonant space for Gotthelf’s parable.
Postdigital Musicking
Der multimodal shift in der zeitgenössischen Musikpraxis
Das Projekt untersucht, welchen Einfluss die digitale Revolution seit 2000 auf die zeitgenössische Musikpraxis in Westeuropa ausübt. Hierfür werden Schlüsselproduktionen aus postdigitaler Perspektive analysiert. Diese basiert auf gesicherten gesellschaftsanalytischen Befunden zur (sozial, moralisch und politisch) richtungsweisenden Rolle digitaler Systeme. Ziel des Projekts ist es, Auswirkungen digitaler Technologie auf die Praxis zeitgenössischer Musik ins Bewusstsein zu rücken.
Helvetia through a Twelve-Note Lens
Switzerland was one of the very first countries whose composers engaged with Schoenberg’s method, adapting it to meet their own needs. This project will chart the history of Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-note method in Switzerland, from its initial reception in ca 1923 via its heyday in the late 1940s and 1950s to its decline towards the end of the century, as post-Modernism and neo-tonality asserted themselves. Its intersection with politics and political aesthetics will be investigated, along with transnational aspects of the method.
Schreiben mit Stimmen
Contemporary compositional practices for the voice
‘Schreiben mit Stimmen’ examines compositional strategies and aesthetics of contemporary music as they present themselves in these social and technological contexts. The focus is on compositional strategies that compete with traditional notation, as they are orientated towards both the recorded voice and its extra-musical reference systems.
Im Brennpunkt der Entwicklungen
Founded in 1900 and dissolved in 2017, the Schweizerischer Tonkünstlerverein (STV) was central to the development of contemporary music in Switzerland. Its activities are reflected in an extensive archive. It reflects the cultural and socio-political upheavals and development processes that have been analysed in detail for the period since 1975, focusing on completing aesthetic positions and institutional, socio-political, cultural and media-political conditions.
