Hauke Egermann – författare

The global COVID-19 pandemic, the resulting lockdown imposed in many countries, as well as related safety measures taken by governments and authorities, have posed significant challenges to classical music culture. However, they may also have had a stimulating effect on music festivals and opera houses’ streaming offerings. This book brings together experts from the fields of musicology and music management to share their current empirical research findings on the pandemic-evoked digital transformation of the classical music scene, addressing either the institutional or the reception perspective. Furthermore, it documents discussions with opera dramaturgs and artistic directors, as well as music managers and event producers in the classical field, to share their practical lockdown experiences and current strategies in dealing with the digital transformation of opera. In this way, the volume combines the perspective of academic researchers with that of practitioners in the field.

This book is particularly useful for students and researchers in music and media management, as well as musicology. It is also intended to help practitioners from concert houses and opera management, such as dramaturges, artistic directors, marketing and communication directors.

By exploring the many different types and forms of contemporary musical instruments, this book contributes to a better understanding of the conditions of instrumentality in the 21st century. Providing insights from science, humanities and the arts, authors from a wide range of disciplines discuss the following questions:

·         What are the conditions under which an object is recognized as a musical instrument?

·         What kind of (mental and physical) knowledge do we access in order to recognize or use something as a musical instrument?

·         How is this knowledge being shaped by cultural conventions and temporal conditions?

·         How do algorithmic processes ''change the game'' of musical performance, and as a result, how do they affect notions of instrumentality?

·         How do we address the question of instrumental identity within an instrument''s design process?

·         What properties can be used to differentiate successful and unsuccessful instruments? Do these properties also contribute to the instrumentality of an object in general? What does success mean within an artistic, commercial, technological, or scientific context?