The intangible cultural asset music in the 'life world' and 'monument' field of tension

The approach of understanding music as an intangible cultural asset – and at the same time as a migration asset, points to music as a lived cultural practise and makes one receptive for the music ethnography and folkloristic fields of research. On the one hand, archived historical sources are to be examined as a medial repository, from which it should at least be possible to determine life world connections, even if only fragmentary; on the other, it has to do with designing models from today’s point of view which are targeted at the documentation of micro connections or everyday history connections respectively and – especially in the context of ´flight and forced displacement' – a productive discourse on the possibilities of the museal presentation of sources such as documents.

The project is targeted at a constructive scientific exchange between the historical and ethnographic music research which normally strictly work separately. The reflection of the tangible and intangible components of music culture practises and discourses hereby sees itself as being closely connected with the cultural science-oriented question of perspectives, which enable the dimensions of a (historical or current respectively) musical and auditive culture of remembrance to be described.

The various research strands have been discussed in close dialogue with interdisciplinary cooperation partners and synergetically amalgamated in an international workshop which took place in Bonn, 8. - 10. October 2009. To learn more please take a look at the symposium programme.