DFG-funded research project “
” (The Sound of the 20th Century: A Study of Musical Aesthetics and Compositional Techniques in the Early 20th Century) Led by: Kordula Knaus, Rahel Schwarz, Lluc Solés i Carbó, 2025–2028

With the new aesthetics and compositional techniques of modernist music around and after 1900, the expectations of concert and opera audiences and the actual musical output of the musical avant-garde increasingly diverged. In many places, critics complained that the “new” music was no longer accessible or comprehensible. Composers and performers responded with various strategies to communicate their music to an audience. Presentation platforms (e.g., concert series or societies) for new music were established. Introductory lectures, essays, interviews, program notes, and discussions accompanied performances and new releases. Radio, a medium that emerged in the 1920s, was also increasingly utilized. Until now, statements by music creators have been viewed in research primarily as statements about their work or their aesthetic views. In this project, for the first time, they are comprehensively understood as communicative acts directed at a real or imagined audience within a music and media world in the midst of upheaval. The goal is to gain insights into the ways in which—and through which media and platforms—avant-garde musicians communicated their music, which target audience they addressed, and within which broader discourses on New Music their statements can be situated. By focusing on communicative, media-based, and performative strategies, the project examines not only the “what” but also the “how” of these dissemination activities. The materiality of media, as well as the dramaturgy and performative “staging” of specific content, will be examined. Theoretical and methodological approaches from communication studies, media studies, and theater studies will thus be applied for the first time to the act of music mediation by music creators.

Third-party-funded research and habilitation project by Dr. Alexander Gurdon (2025–2028)

Music is an essential component of major commemorative events honoring the memory of the Shoah—whether in parliamentary contexts such as the Bundestag or at the memorial sites themselves. Surprisingly, however, the music used and its effects have not yet been the subject of broader research; this externally funded project now seeks to close this gap and provide substantive commentary through comprehensive surveys and analyses. Data is being collected from parliaments, memorial sites, and ensembles dating back to 1996, when January 27 was established as the central day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism.

For the preliminary study from 2019–2022, see:
Gurdon, Alexander: “From Anger to Mozart: On the Role of Music in Shoah Commemoration Events.” In: Ibid. / Hübscher, Sarah / Kreutchen, Christopher (eds.): Resonances // Interventions. Series: verorten. Spaces of Cultural Participation. Edited by Christopher Kreutchen and Barbara Welzel. Bielefeld: Athena / wbv, 2022. pp. 78–90.

Vinzenz Laarmann’s Doctoral Project

Vinzenz Laarmann’s doctoral project is dedicated to analyzing intertextual references in compositions about the Holocaust, with the study limited to the geographical area of Germany during the period from 1990 to 2025. This period encompasses significant milestones in the culture of remembrance, such as the fiftieth and seventy-fifth anniversaries of the Holocaust. Despite music’s central role in the culture of Holocaust remembrance, scholarly engagement with compositions about the Holocaust remains an under-explored field. The research project therefore aims first to compile a corpus of newly created compositions and then to examine them, using specific examples, for their intertextual references. This approach is based on a broadly defined concept of “text” and a narrowly defined concept of “intertextuality.” The results are intended to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of compositions about the Holocaust within their respective intertextual contexts and thus to systematically capture the complexity of music as a medium of remembrance.