Research focus: Salzburg's Musical History

Tracing the topicality of content and music: Under the leadership of the Forum Salzburger Volkskultur, a project was started to record the textual and musical variants of Silent Night! Holy Night!, which is jointly supervised by Wolfgang Dreier-Andres for the Salzburger Volksliedwerk and Thomas Hochradner of the Mozarteum University for the Silent Night Society.

Four work contracts were awarded to gather more detailed information on the history and development of schlager, folk music, rock and pop music, and dance schools in the city of Salzburg in the run-up to the symposium "Those were the days. Salzburg's popular music cultures in the 1950s and 1960s". Soundtracks, newspaper clippings, and other materials were collected; the focus of the survey, however, was an oral history project, in the context of which numerous interviews were conducted and documented with eyewitnesses or people who had provided information.

The libretti of cantatas, oratorios and operas in Salzburg's archives and libraries were listed.

In the present data collection, manuscripts and prints with music were recorded that were produced in or for Salzburg in older times. Salzburg" is understood to mean the medieval archdiocese of Salzburg, which extended over the present-day province of Salzburg including the Bavarian Rupertiwinkel and also included parts of Carinthia, Styria and Lower Austria. Included are the proper bishoprics of Chiemsee, Gurk, Seckau and Lavant. Independent institutions, such as the monastery of St. Lambrecht, have not been included in the survey, since they went their own liturgical ways, nor has the monastery of Mattsee, which belonged to the diocese of Passau from 907. On the other hand, the music sources of the Benedictine monastery of Michaelbeuern were included, which, despite its ecclesiastical independence, was liturgically oriented to St. Peter and maintained close exchange with Salzburg. The abundance of material - information on about 270 sources was collected - was first divided into music manuscripts, music prints, and music theoretical representations according to the type of source, and then recorded in a chronological order according to centuries. Work contractors: Veronika Obermeier and Karina Zybina. Project management: Andrea Lindmayr-Brandl.

In a first phase of work, 47 short profiles of a selection of personalities from Salzburg's music history of the 20th and 21st centuries were compiled within the framework of three work contracts. In each case, the curriculum vitae, achievements, awards/prizes, a bibliography, and a concise photo documentation are included. Work contractors: Julia Hinterberger (2012), Sarah Haslinger (2013, 2014). Project management: Thomas Hochradner.

A work contract was used to record the holdings (especially sheet music) of Salzburg's music history in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the manuscript and music collection of the Vienna Library, and the collection of manuscripts and old prints of the Austrian National Library, which cannot be searched online until further notice. Work contractor: Alison Dunlop.

With the aim of comprehensively documenting the history of the house at Mirabellplatz 1, surveys were conducted of the relevant archival records in the Provincial and City Archives of Salzburg, the Archives of the Archdiocese of Salzburg, and the Archives of the University Mozarteum. In addition to an overview of the holdings relevant to the history of the house, important passages of text were excerpted from the records, and a documentation of the available photographs was prepared. Work contractor: Roger Michael Allmannsberger. Project management: Thomas Hochradner.

Im Zuge der Aufarbeitung konnte die über 20.000 Briefe umfassende Korrespondenz erfasst werden. Ferner wurden alle vorhandenen Autographen des Komponisten sowie seine gesamte wissenschaftliche Bibliothek katalogisiert. Darüber hinaus wurden Aufbauarbeiten an einer digitalen Mediendatenbank zur Salzburger Musik gestartet. Im Zuge dieser Arbeiten konnte die systematische Digitalisierung aller relevanten Bestände des Tonbandarchivs vollendet werden. Die aktuellen Aufgaben zielen einerseits auf den physischen Erhalt der Jahrzehnte alten Bestände ab und andererseits auf die Aufarbeitung von rund 40 Regalmetern an bislang nur grob indizierten diversen Restbeständen, die vorrangig Arbeitsmaterial Paumgartners, aber auch vereinzelt Briefe, Kompositionen, Autographe, Notendrucke, Tonträger und Bücher enthalten. Ferner soll der Aufbau der digitalen Mediendatenbank fortgesetzt werden. Werkvertragsnehmerinnen: Anja Arend und Sonja Majkowsky. Projektleitung: Dominik Šedivý.