Musician Families: Constellations & Concepts

Musical families have strongly influenced and continue to influence European musical culture: a striking number of musicians belonged and still belong to families, some of which are widely branched and often multigenerational. The sheer size of the phenomenon is impressive - names such as Couperin, Bach, Schumann/Bargiel, Wagner, Lasker-Wallfisch and Bartolomey come ad hoc to mind. But the diversity of musical families is also impressive: in some of them, one profession stands in the center, as is the case with the "big names" of Italian violin making. In some, professions and occupations change while in others a persistence of specialization is astonishing. As diverse as this phenomenon is, it is always shaped by general conceptions of the familial, conceptions that have changed considerably in the past centuries. The research project focuses on two case studies of individual families of musicians and, in a further sub-project, investigates long-term historical changes. In doing so, it also focuses on the influence that families of musicians had on music-specific institutions and structures such as court music, opera and theater, ensembles, and orchestras.