Five questions for ...
In the last two years, five new professorships for musicology have been filled at various Swiss universities. To mark this occasion, the SMG conducted a small survey and sent five questions to the new professors Lena van der Hoven, Hanna Walsdorf, Nicolas Donin, Federico Lazzaro and Christoph Riedo.
Helen Gebhart - In this interview, they give an insight into their research, recommend music and discuss musicology in Switzerland.
What topics are you currently researching?
Hanna Walsdorf, University of Basel: There are reasons to celebrate in Basel musicology next year: it will be the 100th anniversary of Karl Nef's appointment as the first full professor - and I was very pleased to see that he was particularly interested in so-called "early music" topics. The research question that arises almost automatically for me as an assistant professor of early music history is the history of research in Basel: What repertoires and practices of early modern music were the focus of interest 100 years ago, under what aspects and conditions were they studied, and how have musicological discourses on historical music-making practices changed since 1923? In cooperation with the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Basel University Library, I will be offering a seminar on this topic in FS 2023 and am planning a small conference for fall 2023.
I have also just submitted an SNSF application for a major research project dedicated to the "night side of music" between 1500 and 1800. However, I don't want to reveal too much about the exact content of the project just yet...
Y a-t-il un morceau de musique que vous aimeriez recommander à tous les lecteurs ?
Federico Lazzaro, Université de Fribourg : The more proposed Pacific 231 (1923) by Arthur Honegger, a key piece in my research on music and mechanics at the beginning of the 20th century, but for those who want to discover a little less well-known piece - the choice is immense! -, why not the Sonatina for violon et piano (1918) by the Hong Kong composer Tibor Harsányi. A Parisian critic described it as being "generally of a very national character: 'Viennese', in fact" (voilà a great subject for debate!).
Musicology in Switzerland: What are the opportunities and challenges?
Lena van der Hoven, University of Bern: For me, the opportunities in musicology in Switzerland lie particularly in the exciting personnel line-ups and orientations of the institutes. While on the one hand a wide range of subject areas are covered, on the other hand there are interesting intersections that can facilitate joint events and projects.
One of the challenges facing research in Switzerland is certainly the fact that, due to Switzerland's lack of full association, researchers cannot apply for calls for proposals under the EU framework programs for research and innovation "Horizon Europe". This means that international research projects led in Switzerland can no longer be funded by the world's largest research program. Unfortunately, this may have a negative impact on international cooperation in the long term.
Nicolas Donin, Université de Genève : I do not yet have a perfect vision of the whole of musicology in Switzerland, but its achievements are evident: research and teaching are of a very high level and supported by an administrative and financial infrastructure that is more efficient than elsewhere; the archive funds are numerous and generally well accessible to research; musical life is rich in a multiplicity of traditions, from local to international, which offer musicologists and the public alike a fantastic terrain for exploration. The challenge for me seems to be the fragmentation, not only linguistic but also cultural and administrative, of the different centers of activity: how to identify common projects across the various university chairs, high schools, professional associations, from Lausanne to Lugano, passing through Berne or Zurich? How to find a critical mass of participants to investigate an emerging topic in a collaborative way? When several institutions join forces and master the organizational complexity of a regrouping, this produces remarkable results, sometimes even unique in their genre, as I have observed with the MA programme in ethnomusicology associating the University of Geneva, the University of Geneva and the HEM Geneva-Neuchâtel since 2016.
According to you, what is the role of research companies such as the SSM?
Christoph Riedo, Université de Genève : I believe that the role of societies such as the SSM is above all to provide a space and a platform for everyone who is interested in musicological issues in the most diverse fields (history of music, ethnomusicology, systematic musicology, etc.). I believe that the SSM should facilitate exchanges and meetings, for example in the form of publications, conferences or rallies. These are activities that are quite traditional for a scientific society. At the same time, I would like our community to do more to share music with a wider public. Although, by community, I mean the whole of the community and do not refer exclusively to the SSM, musical mediation could take on greater importance in the future among the activities proposed by this latter. For example, it would be possible to experiment with modern forms of communication, such as social networks.
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