Main Areas of Research 2004-2006

The project concerning German music culture in Eastern Europe focused its research activities according to the main aspects of "migration, correlation and interference" towards the central thematic complex of Music Collections as a main area of research in the project. Because within this scope the fundamental musical and cultural studies research into the source being investigated is linked up with further, more penetrating questions concerning the extensive connections of musical life, and concerning its historic, structural and ideal dimensions.

Two further main areas of research could be formulated quite easily at interfaces with this complex. One of them was directed towards the intercultural structures in which the Making of Musical Instruments appears to be embedded, and thus involves consideration of perspectives of economic history, technical history or art history just as much as the history of cultural geography or cultural sociology. The other required a stronger mentality-historical and ideology-critical orientation, because it is here that the problematic role of German 'Choral Singing'  ('Chorgesangswesen') in Eastern Europe has been investigated.