Analysis of Musical Interpretation: Herbert von Karajan

Analyses of musical interpretations play an increasingly important role in recent musicology. Until now, research has been focused on soloistic instrumentation (piano music especially), while larger scale works (such as orchestral music) have hardly been considered. The main reason for this is the difficulty in the sufficient differentiation of individual instrumental groups, which is indispensably vital in the highly complex orchestral works of the 19th and 20th centuries. Using the latest computer- assisted methods, which are to be further developed and refined within the scope of this project, the option of an empirical analysis has been unlocked. The application of these methods will initially focus on the works of Herbert von Karajan, but will subsequently open up a general foundation for research into the interpretation of orchestral music (including that of other conductors). There are several reasons for focusing on Karajan. On the one hand, he is a conductor who made use of the at the time newest recording techniques and has achieved more than almost any other pioneer in the field of audio documentation. On the other hand, there exists in this case a very large collection of (in large part still unpublished) music-related and non-musical resources: approximately 1,800 audio recordings from 1939 to 1989, about 100 rehearsal recordings, 700 studio productions, roughly 1000 live concert recordings, concert films, rehearsal documentations, letters, and recorded conversations concerning the details of vinyl and CD recordings of works conducted by Karajan himself. The following methods have been chosen in order to approach a specific profile of the conductor Karajan: <U+F0B7> the comparative analysis of Karajans interpretations of one and the same orchestral work at different times <U+F0B7> the comparative analysis of tempi, articulation, and instrumental balance in selected recordings conducted by Karajan as well as by other conductors of his time <U+F0B7> the music-aesthetical profiling of Karajan as a conductor and media artist <U+F0B7> the development of computerized methods for the relationship between practical performances and scores (performance and sheet music) as well as for the comparative analyses of the recordings of individual works <U+F0B7> the development of possibilities to automatically (computerized) discover and categorise sections that are characterised by marked differences in articulation, tonal balance, tempi, treatment of the individual instrument groups, etc. in comparative recordings in order to demonstrate Karajans specific interpretation profile. This decidedly interdisciplinary and data-based research approach is carried out in close cooperation between musicology and computer science and will lend new and ground-breaking impulses to the still relatively young musicological discipline of interpretation research.