Musical Competitions 1766-1870: Outline, Database and Bibliography on the Basis of Music Periodica

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Frank Hentschel
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 273448812

The project aims at gathering comprehensive information about music related competitions from 1766 to 1870. The source material in question is for several reasons highly instructive: 1. It allows musicology to take up the discussions about the broader issues of competition in society recently being lead in other disciplines of the humanities. 2. It offers a guide to important material for later studies on the politics and sociology of aesthetic (musical) judgment. 3. It focusses on musical practices, contents and objects that have not yet been considered in traditional master narratives of music history and that are often unknown although they are of substantial significance from a cultural-historical point of view. The project concentrates on a source type that allows a survey over musical competitions as broad as possible (while at the same time being methodologically consistent and manageable): music periodicals. The concrete goal is threefold: a complete capture of the material in the database (1), a bibliography of theoretical articles and commentaries on competitions (2) and a descriptive outline of music related competitions of the period mentioned (3). The project aims at fundamental research in that it intends to detect, open up and describe the main features of a specific (important, yet unknown) topic using a clearly defined source material.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Andreas Domann