Kulturtransferforschung und Musikwissenschaft

Discusses the research paradigm of ‘transferts culturels’ (cultural transfers), as established by French C.N.R.S. scholars Michel Espagne and Michael Werner in the 1980s and rapidly evolving in the context of French-German research after 1989, from the point of view of musicology. Ideological categories like ‘nation’ and ‘culture’ are weighed against frames that allow for more precise definitions, like local/regional repertoires or culture politics. Likewise, the opposed theoretical concepts of ‘reception’ and ‘production’ fundamentally affect the conceptualization of the musical ‘work’ entity. Taking cultural transfers into account has helped stimulating practice-oriented views of music history that no longer consider modifications or adaptations of works only as derivatives or even misunderstandings of ‘the original’, but, to the contrary, acknowledge them as historical facts and cultural expressions in their own rights. The examples of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Eduard Hanslick’s Die moderne Oper show how this was already a controversial issue in the 19th century under the impression of the international nature of the standard (French) opera repertoire of the time. A concluding section points out the possibilities for the coverage of culture transfer processes arising from the implementation of the FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) model in bibliographic authority data on the ‘work’ level. (Autor)