Publications on Swiss choral life
Researchers at the University of Bern are making a comic book and an anthology on the history of choral music in Switzerland available online.
According to Caiti Hauck, postdoctoral researcher and head of studies at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Bern, the publications show that the history of Swiss choirs not only reveals aspects of musical life. Historical research on choral life in Switzerland also sheds light on socially relevant topics such as political and social life, the role of women and even the establishment of a national unity around the founding of the Swiss federal state.
Hauck's project "CLEFNI - Choral life in the cities of Bern and Fribourg in the long 19th century" was funded from 2019 to 2023 by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).
Julien Cachemaille, the author of the comic, has already made a name for himself with the science comic La course de pirogues He gained experience in this form of knowledge transfer via pile dwellers in the Late Bronze Age. He sees it as an innovative and increasingly popular format of communication. According to Cachemaille, the use of images makes the text more compact and the information can be conveyed more simply and easily.
The links:
Swiss choral life since 1800: music, practice and contexts:
https://books.unibe.ch/index.php/BB/catalog/book/13
Three Swiss choral singers in the 19th century
https://clefni.unibe.ch/index.php/de/2025/03/05/comic-buch
