Jörg Richard Holzmann

Classical guitar studies in Stuttgart with artistic and pedagogical degree. Teaching, concert activities, compositions, prizes in guitar competitions in Spain, India, Korea and the USA.
Studies in musicology, literature and art history in Leipzig and Halle (Saale). Research assistant at the Musical Instrument Museum at the University of Leipzig from 2018 to 2020 and in the research project “Historical Embodiment” at the Bern University of the Arts from 2020 to 2024.
www.joergholzmann.de

Title of the dissertation:
Early (sound)film documents as sources for the musical interpretation practice of the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Supervision:
First supervisor: Prof. Dr. Kai Köpp, Universität Mozarteum Salzburg
Second supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nils Grosch, Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg

Abstract:

When it comes to the question of how to gain insights into historical interpretative decisions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that were not written down or handed down and that exceed auditory analysis possibilities, sooner or later one inevitably ends up with film documents and their multi-layered information content. The additional, moving-visual level can confirm, expand or even revise insights gained from pure sound documents. Aspects such as the execution of specific movement sequences, posture, facial expressions and gestures, (self-)staging and the instruments used provide insights that go beyond purely technical playing or singing knowledge and are also invaluable for the sociology of music, music-related gender studies or organological research. Films with several musicians also allow a closer examination of interactions and their characteristics, such as frequent eye contact or extensive autonomy, equality or hierarchy.

Since sound films have been part of the repertoire of media that are decisive for musicology for around 100 years now, it is surprising that, with a few exceptions, no significant attempts have been made to systematically examine and methodically prepare them with regard to questions of interpretation research. The dissertation project presented here addresses this desideratum and is thus intended to contribute to the establishment of the sound film as a serious source genre for interpretation research.

At the center of the investigations presented here is the act of music-making captured on film, and so it should be noted that the research interest is explicitly not directed at extradiegetic music, but focuses exclusively on the visual (and aural) reproduction of the process of a musical performance. Above all, the research concentrates on the performance tradition of ‘Western art music’ as it was practiced at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century and which differs from that which is customary today. The selection of films must therefore cover a period in which this type of music-making was common practice or focus on musicians who were trained in this tradition and continued to express this in their playing later on.

For this purpose, a source corpus of early sound film documents that is as representative as possible is to be evaluated on the basis of a detailed catalog of criteria in order to subsequently discuss the effects of the implemented observations on self-perception and the perception of others in the context of reenactments, as well as to enable an authentic reproduction of this music-making practice in the performance of today’s musicians.

The corpus of sources used in the work presented here is extremely heterogeneous and constantly changing. Meaningful contributions in a wide variety of formats from the period under investigation must first be located, collected, viewed and categorized. However, the focus on a reproduction of the music-making process that is as close to nature as possible does not necessarily lead to a restriction to pure documentary films. Productions of other genres may also contain scenes that are relevant to the research project, some easily recognizable, others ‘hidden’.

By systematically examining the process of music-making captured on film, musicology can also contribute to the debate surrounding the definition of the genre ‘music film’. As a supplement to the existing, more cultural-scientific works, the research project presented here is thus dedicated for the first time to the ‘elephant in the room’ itself, namely the act of interpreting music captured by the camera.