Research

The development of electronic sound synthesis has given birth to a vast repertoire of new musical sounds and techniques, yet it has also allowed performers to become disconnected from the physical production of sound. In the post-1945 aesthetic focus on electronically organised musical sound, musical performance and sometimes even live performers were abandoned altogether. Although music for fixed media has established itself as a musical genre in its own right, live electronic performance has been rediscovered in contemporary music during the last decades. This new movement calls for novel musical instruments, which can embody, control, or trigger electronic sound processes. Despite the multitude of concepts and prototypes of such musical instruments, which could be labeled electroacoustic, hybrid, or digital, presented each year, none of them has permanently established itself in musical education and concert life. In the project, an interdisciplinary team of researchers working in musicology, musical acoustics and technology, composition and design research will identify requirements for successful new musical instruments, document and exhibit key concepts, and develop prototypes for new musical instruments, which will be concurrently tested in live artistic contexts and empirically evaluated using qualitative and quantitative research methods. Through this process, a series of innovative, intuitive, and versatile musical instruments will be developed and disseminated, as an inspiration for both composers, performers, and listeners of contemporary music.