For a long time, a dripping tap had soaked through the historical holdings of the cathedral music stored in an archive room without anyone noticing. Several centimeters of water had accumulated on the floor. The historical sheet music presented itself with mold stains, washed-out ink and curled paper when it was first recovered.

Musicologist Elisabeth Hilscher from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and her students from the University of Vienna worked for two semesters on the restoration of the historical sources, which were expertly examined, professionally cleaned, documented and cataloged. This means that all of the music will soon be moved to their new location in the cathedral archive, where they will be professionally stored and made accessible again for research and musical practice.

Among the most valuable items now restored are hymns from the late 17th and early 18th centuries as well as copies of works by Georg Reutter the Younger, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn and his brother Michael Haydn from around 1800, which were in use in the cathedral for several decades.

The MIZ lists around 400 specialist ensembles in early and contemporary music alone, whereby the transitions from contemporary music to jazz and electronic music are often fluid. There is also a large number of ensembles with a classical-romantic focus. As associations of freelancers, however, many ensembles do not have a regular, secure income, but are financed by fees, project funding and donations.

The MIZ online focus provides an overview of the independent music scene and highlights its artistic focus and specific problems. It is supplemented by structural data collected by the MIZ on professional ensembles for early and contemporary music in Germany. The specialized ensembles are presented with their respective repertoire focus, their number of members and information on their instrumentation. The focus also includes literature references, statistics and documents on the subject.

The new online focus can be accessed via https://themen.miz.org/fokus-freie-ensembles.

According to Bärenreiter Verlag, the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo will perform the work together with Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It will subsequently be performed in Taipei, Boston, Munich, Lucerne and Vienna.

In the broad field of tension between the individual and the collective, which traditionally defines the genre, the composer is concerned with diverse forms of performance, the publisher continues. The concert will be broadcast live by the BBC.

In addition to Matthias Kuhn, three guest conductors will lead the concerts of the 2020 anniversary season, and talks are currently underway, the ensemble writes. The ensemble is now advertising the position of managing director. The ensemble is looking for a person with knowledge of the national and international contemporary music scene and the foundation landscape as well as experience in cultural policy.

Founded in 2010, Ensemble Proton is the ensemble in residence at the Dampfzentrale in Bern. It performs the Proton am Montag concert series four times a year. In March 2018, it performed at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. As part of further concerts in San Francisco and Seattle, it realized the world premiere of the work "INFR-A-KTION" by Dominique Schafer.

The creation of new repertoire is of great importance for the development and continued existence of a musical project or band, writes Pro Helvetia. Accordingly, it supports the production of new works with contributions.

Every year, around two dozen applications are considered from Swiss formations and labels that are located in the jazz or pop hemisphere. Pro Helvetia is also committed to the international distribution and live presentation of these works.

A selection can be found here:
https://prohelvetia.ch/de/2019/07/klanglandschaften-entdecken/

The IQWiG found that, in particular, accompanying psychological symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety, stress, tension and mood swings are favorably influenced in the short term by music therapy interventions. It recommends that music therapy be regulated by law as part of a future uniform professional and training law in Germany.

According to Lutz Neugebauer, Chairman of the Board of the German Music Therapy Association (DMtG), music and dance therapy is listed as an exclusion in the annex to the German Therapeutic Products Directive from 1992. The reasons for this can neither be found nor verified today. A new assessment is therefore needed. The German Music Therapy Society has long been calling for the exclusion to be withdrawn so that German health insurance companies can offer these forms of therapy to their policyholders.

After the journey to the origin with L'Orfeo in summer 2017, cantus firmus will bring another work by Claudio Monteverdi to the stage of Schloss Waldegg in 2019. Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria tells the story of Odysseus' return home. The opera is considered a key work between the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Andreas Reize conducts the cantus firmus consort and Georg Rootering is responsible for the staging.
 

The role of Ulisse is embodied by Hans-Jörg Mammel. With Jan Börner as L'humana fragilità and Pisandro, Raphael Höhn as Telemaco, Andrea Brown as Fortuna and Minerva, Lisandro Abadie as Tempo, Nettuno and Antinoo, Michael Mogl as Eurimaco and Michael Feyfar as Giove and Eumete, the cast includes six voices that have already appeared in previous productions.

Geneviève Tschumi as Penelope, Dan Dunkelblum as Anfinomo, Alexandra Rawohl as Melanto, Alice Borciani as Amore and Giunone, Eelke van Koot as Iro and Miriam Callegaro as Ericlea are appearing on stage at Waldegg Castle for the first time.

The cantus firmus consort plays on period instruments. Founded by Andreas Reize in 2001, the cantus firmus consort presents itself today as a well-rehearsed ensemble at a high level. All the musicians are specialists who have long been involved in historical performance practice.

Between August 8 and 17, 2019, seven open-air performances will be staged at Schoss Wadegg. In case of bad weather, the performances will take place at the Stadttheater Solothurn.
 

For over ten years, the international research and digitization project RAG of the University of Bern and the Justus Liebig University Giessen has been tracing the lives of these scholars, determining their origins and following their later careers. The information has been collected from a wide variety of historical sources and is now available to the general public in an online database that is also of interest to musicologists.

In addition to famous personalities such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther, the RAG database also contains information on 60,000 other people. Using simple search terms, all the scholars of the Middle Ages can be grouped according to their place of origin, field of study or the universities they attended, their travels can be displayed on a map and their relationships with other people can be visualized interactively.

Info: rag-online.org

For more than 50 years, the Institute of Musicology at the University of Zurich has made considerable contributions to the study and preservation of Gregorian chant in both academic and practical terms. This is reason enough to organize a symposium to show that Gregorian chant research is still being carried out at this location and that practical relevance is still being maintained. For this reason, internationally renowned speakers have been invited to speak on topics that are predominantly Swiss-related and in some cases even linked to the Zurich - Einsiedeln - St. Gallen region. The Friday session is dedicated to various sub-areas and reflects the diversity of current research issues. On Saturday, a block of four papers will be given by participants in the AMRA research project (Liturgical Chants for Irish Saints in Europe).

In keeping with the title of the symposium, the event is not only about the scientific-theoretical examination of Gregorian chant, but also - in keeping with the long-standing Zurich tradition - about the practice of monophonic chant. The practical parts form the framework for the lectures and are partly linked to them in terms of content. The performing scholae are: the Schola Gregoriana Universitatis Turicensis, the Neue Choralschola St. Gallen and the Schola Cantorum Turicensium.

Thanks to the interest-free loan, the continued existence of the Swiss music database musinfo.ch is also guaranteed, writes SME-musinfo. Efforts to expand the platform and increase its relevance could have been intensified as part of a collaboration between SME and the Lucerne School of Music.

The university took over the musinfo.ch database at the beginning of the year and now manages it in cooperation with the SME. The musinfo.ch database was published on the Internet in 2004 and has contained information on the Swiss music scene ever since. Initially concentrating primarily on contemporary serious music, the platform now aims to provide a more comprehensive picture of the local music landscape.
 

The acquired portfolio also includes works by Sofia Gubaidulina, Giya Kancheli and Lera Auerbach.

The German publisher Sikorski is to become part of the Concord Music Publishing Group, which also includes the renowned publisher Boosey & Hawkes. Concord hopes to strengthen its position in the European market, according to its own press release.

Concord consists of three business divisions, in addition to the publishing business, they include record labels and a theater agency. Sikorski was founded in 1930 by Hans Sikorski and focuses on Russian music.

This is 7.9% more than in the same period of the previous year (1/2018: 725.9 million euros in sales according to the 2018 annual financial statements). This is the highest growth rate since 1993. This result is partly due to audio streaming, which grew by 27.7% and further expanded its position as the format with the highest sales.

In addition, CDs (-11.7%) stabilized slightly, with the rate of decline halved compared to the same period of the previous year, while vinyl recorded growth again after a brief pause for breath (7.4%). Downloads, on the other hand, fell significantly but also slightly less than in the first half of 2018 (-16.3%).

According to the German Music Industry Association, the bottom line is that the German recorded music market continues to be characterized by a wide variety of formats - even with the significantly growing importance of audio streaming.

As part of the implementation of the Culture Agenda 2020, the city of Lucerne has been promoting various projects and initiatives under the heading of creative industries since 2016. Individuals, institutions or companies that produce or realize market-oriented products and projects that have a creative-artistic background or are related to this are to benefit in the form of financial support.

The focus of this year's project funding is on market access, market development and networking. The tender documents are available on the website www.kultur.stadtluzern.ch accessible. Applications for a grant can be submitted until September 20, 2019.
 

Father Roman Bannwart, sitting to my left, pushes the slider down; the lights go out in the hall. The "hall" is the gymnasium of Einsiedeln Abbey School, the time: Fasnacht 1966. The orchestra plays a piece of music that I have since learned to call an "overture". It is the first overture in my life - and also the last, so to speak. And it opens Franz Schubert's Singspiel "Die Zwillingsbrüder". I sit to the right of Father Roman in the prompter's box and have to give the singers their cues in the speaking parts.

What Father Roman doesn't know, and I know even less, is that the 1966 Fasnacht opera - alongside the Twin brothers Schubert's one-act play The four-year post a long tradition comes to an end. It is the tradition of opera performances in the monastery, which has been documented in the monastery since 1808. The opera-loving monks and, under their guidance, the pupils of the grammar school dared to try their hand at many things: Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio (1833), to Donizetti's Daughter of the regiment (1860) or to Auber's The mute of Portici (1890). However: From the love drama of the Kidnapping was a father-son story (The Turkish cadets), the regimental daughter became a regimental boy, the mute became a mute - the monks and pupils were probably not supposed to be shown too much of the opposite sex on stage. In later years, this drastic "re-writing" was omitted; the two operas that I experienced were performed more or less in the original, of course with boys in the (female) soprano and alto roles. Father Roman - known throughout Switzerland as a chorale master at the time - did not always just act as chief lighting technician either: a photo in the exhibition shows him in the leading role in an opera by Albert Lortzing in 1937.

In 1965, the year before Schubert and therefore as the second last opera, a piece by a then virtually unknown composer was staged. It was called Orfeo and was by a certain Claudio Monteverdi - strange music! Some 20 years later, I was to experience Nikolaus Harnoncourt's performance at the Zurich Opera House - and some of the opera's melodies seemed strangely familiar to me. The role of Plutone in the Einsiedeln performance was sung by a student called Arthur Helg - as Father Lukas Helg, he is now one of the two curators of the exhibition.

And opera not only had its place on the stage, but also in monastic services: arrangements of passages from Mozart's operas were often performed there - the same music with a new, sacred text. The in-house composers were very skillful in this kind of appropriation and - to put it soberly - also quite unquestioning. Gregorian chant, on the other hand, which today is the "trademark" of monastic worship, was hardly sung at that time.
The emblematic piece of music of the monastery, the polyphonic Hermit Salve Reginawhich the monks sing daily in the Chapel of Grace. The piece exists in various arrangements of the Gregorian (monophonic) original; and the version for male voices only, which is regularly sung in front of the Chapel of Grace today, is musically not unproblematic, as it is actually intended for an upper voice for choirboys.

In addition to Father Roman, our second music teacher and the monastery's bandmaster was Father Daniel Meier; incidentally, he played the Knusperhexe in Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel. He now forgot to celebrate with our year of choirboys the Salute and, after a while, indignantly reprimanded our still uncertain singing along. So although I enjoyed singing the "Salve" - its full-toned, organ-like sound had something overwhelming about it inside the Chapel of Mercy - I was still a little timid for a long time ...

Father Daniel Meier (1921-2004) was a composition student of Paul Hindemith in Zurich for several years; greeting postcards with Hindemith's own drawings even testify to a kind of friendship. Father Daniel is one of an impressive number of monastery composers (over 30 in total), some of whom have composed several hundred works; the youngest to date is the equally prolific Father Theo Flury (*1955). This shows a special development in the history of music: up until the 19th century, important composers also composed sacred music, which could be performed by talented amateurs and was therefore readily taken up by the monastery musicians. However, this changed with the radical new music of the 20th century: sacred music that could be used in Sunday services became the preserve of composers who did not want to represent a modern or avant-garde style, and the Einsiedeln composer-monks were among them. Their fate, however, is that their "utility music" is hardly ever played in the concert hall. But they did not always compose only pious music: the monastery hit is still a groovy Caecilia March for three organs, written by Father Anselm Schubiger in 1845.

Hits of a completely different kind were contained in a print from 1520, which can also be found in the exhibition: The Liber selectarum cantionum - a magnificent volume compiled by the "Swiss" composer Ludwig Senfl - contains 25 works by the most famous composers of the High Renaissance. Josquin Desprez and (somewhat immodestly) Ludwig Senfl himself are represented with most of the works. The strange thing, however, is that the volume shows practically no signs of use; the monks seem to have bought it as an "art object" rather than for everyday use. This may correspond to the fact that the two Renaissance works that we regularly sang in church services were not by composers such as Josquin or Senfl. Rather, they were the Missa Papae Marcelli by G. P. da Palestrina and the Requiem by his pupil G. F. Anerio, which continued the Renaissance style in a somewhat tensionless, elegant melodiousness.

It was precisely this Palestrina style that was declared a model for church music in the 19th century - with not always entirely happy consequences. After all, whereas in the past everything "outdated" had been ruthlessly discarded as unfit for reuse, the music of earlier epochs was now once again taken note of and collected. This historical interest also arose in Einsiedeln Abbey; a real music library was created, the beginnings of which can be traced back to the collecting activities of Father Gall Morel (1803-1872). To name two contrasting examples, the monastery owes him a treasure such as Mozart's handwritten sketch for his Paris Symphony and the curiosity of the pseudo-Renaissance madrigals of the Englishman Robert Lucas Pearsall, who was living at Wartensee Castle (St. Gallen) at the time; he not only donated his own works to the monastery, but also the extensive music library. Donations of this kind helped to make the monastery's music library one of the largest in Europe today.

In the late 19th century, interest in early music also turned to Gregorian chant. The monastery owns the Codex 121 the oldest surviving gradual with monophonic Gregorian chants for the entire church year. The manuscript, written in Einsiedeln before the year 1000, can (naturally) only be seen as a facsimile in the exhibition - but even this, with its mysterious notation of the neumes, is capable of awakening a quiet shiver. At least today. Because it would be a lie to claim that I particularly loved Gregorian chant back then as a monastery pupil; no, it always seemed a bit boring and monotonous to me, even if Father Roman had patiently taught it to us ... So the past can still catch up with us even after more than 50 years.

The exhibition offers a musical history of its own kind: much that is otherwise important does not appear here; and what was important in the monastery was and is only occasionally taken note of outside. But this is precisely what makes the exhibition so appealing, together with the wealth of manuscripts, prints, biographies, contemporary documents and sound samples - presented in a visually inviting way and clearly structured into manageable "chapters". This structure is also followed by accompanying documentation; and Father Lukas Helg's guided tours, which are anything but academic, contribute to the exhibition's appeal. But of course this and that also remains open: Why did that tiny miniature from 1659 with Calvinist (!) psalms come to the monastery ...?