Typologie der Volksmusik in Österreich. Auswertung der gestaltanalytischen Arbeiten Franz Eibners

Franz Eibner (1914-1986) held a position at the Music Academy in Vienna (today the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna) as a gestalt analyst employing the theories and methods of Heinrich Schenker, which are known throughout the world. Eibner was the first to modify these methods so that they might be applied to folk music. According to the methods, it was possible to identify the inner connections of a specific melodies and graphically to represent them. Already in Franz Eibner`s lifetime these approaches yielded important results for distinguishing typologies and identifying the distinctive characteristics of folk music specific to genre and region. The analytical evidence for folk music at that time was available in isolated cases in the work of Franz Eibner and others, but until now they have not been systematically gathered and examined with any completeness. Scientific evaluation of Franz Eibner`s achievements within the area of gestalt analysis therefore still remains to be accomplished. The scientific estate of Franz Eibner held by the Institute for Folk-Music Research includes publications, unpublished lectures and manuscripts, and sketches and collaborations with his students. Within the framework of the project they will be evaluated according scientific criteria and entered into a databank. This, in turn, will specify data fields for accompanying texts, the availability of sources, archival locations, definitions, and keywords. The sketches, musical examples, essays, and lectures will also be made accessible. One will be able to call up the appropriate sketch with a brief summary for each song or musical piece. The gestalt analysis formulated for a lecture or for an article can be thoroughly reviewed in relation to the specific example through a reference in the sketch. The references to concepts in other disciplinary discourses are particularly important for the international discussion of these results. The influence exerted by the concepts Heinrich Schenker drew from gestalt analysis on terminology in the English and American literature will also provide a basis for reference, and they will also be identified according to their origin in gestalt analysis or music theory in general, as well as according to their use by individual authors. For the first time, one will also find here a means of surveying and ordering all appropriate definitions of concepts in gestalt analysis, as well as Eibner`s alterations of the Schenker`s representational language. The establishment of a databank would lead to the development of a very timely product, that would make the findings of gestalt analysis available and quickly accessible for folk-music research. Future findings, moreover, could be easily ordered, described, and entered into the databank. In this way the Institute for Folk-Music Research will be able to document the work begun by Franz Eibner in its entirety, and to adapt it for the recent studies of folk music undertaken by Peter Barcaba and Martin Eybl. The resulting scientific apparatus will be unique in the world. To the best of our knowledge Schenkerian theory has been applied to folk-music research nowhere else in the world.