The research on the music library of Elector Maximilian Franz is heading into its next phase. A new project has been granted by the FWF and just recently started at the Department of Musicology/University of Vienna. Under the direction of Birgit Lodes, Elisabeth Reisinger and John D. Wilson are going to consider the sacred music repertoire in Maximilian Franz’s collection of musical materials.

Building organically on the results of “The Operatic Library of Elector Maximilian Franz”, the new project hopes to identify the sacred music sources in Modena that originally were used in Bonn, as well as to analyze these and other documents pertaining to sacred music at the Bonn court to arrive at a renewed and deepened understanding of music’s role in courtly religious practices.

The project’s first phase encompasses a systematic identification of the musical sources, their paper types and copyists, which will be made accessible in an online database. A second level of inquiry will then address broader questions of this music’s adaptation and context within religious services in Bonn, especially with regard to the liturgical reforms of Joseph II and their implications for the performance of concerted masses, but also with an eye toward smaller liturgical genres and the influence of local traditions and possible transfer with other ecclesiastical courts in Mainz and Trier. Finally, what was the impact these sacred repertoires made on its court musicians? Beethoven’s lifelong fascination with sacred music has long been well known. To what degree was this influenced by his early experience in the court chapel, and what lessons might he and his peers (such as Anton Reicha, Bernhard and Andreas Romberg, and Ferdinand Ries) have learned from the music they played and the attitudes towards worship under which they were educated and socialized?

Find informations on the new project here.

News about the „Operatic Library“-Project are to be published soon!