Austrian and Alpine Folk Music

by Ulrich Morgenstern

Austrian and Alpine folk music covers rural and urban traditions of Austria and the adjacent Alpine regions of neighboring countries.

Until 1945, folk music discourses were largely focused on organized revival („Volksmusikpflege“, lit.: cultivation of folk music). This hampered the integration in academic comparative musicology. Moreover German-nationalist and later National Socialist motiations were dominating. The comparatively few scholarly voices supported the leading ideology or subordinated themselves – or they have been entirely isolated.

In the 1960ies it was Walter Deutsch who focused primarily (in close cooperation with Franz Eibner) on stylistic and fieldwork-based studies. Their results were presented in the Schriften zur Volksmusik and later in the Series Corpus Musicae Popularis Austriacae (COMPA).

1975 the Department launched large fieldwork projects in all parts of Austria, often in cooperation with the Austrian Folk Song Society. Increasingly the social context of music making the personality of the musician became key issues.

Rudolf Pietsch in his work at the Department (1981-2012) combined research and documentation of Austrian-Alpine folk music, including Viennese instrumental music (see also the series CD-Reihe Tondokumente zur Volksmusik in Österreich) with his prominent role as as a pedagogue and a musician. Unlike the traditional „Volksmusikpflege“ his folk music activities were not based on fixed ideas of an „authentic“ repertoire. They were based on dacade-long, dialogical fieldwork practice.

Research on Austrian-Alpine folk music is, naturally, closely connected with the topics Multipart music, and Folk musical instruments and instrumental folk music. The traditional research topics of the IVA, as particularly represented in the writings by Walter Deutsch, Gerlinde Haid und Rudolf Pietsch in recent years have been increasingly extended to history of research, and revival/revitalization movements.

Besides Schriften zur Volksmusik, see the bio-bibliography of Gerlinde Haid and the publication list Morgenstern, in particular:

„Ka Göd – ka Musi“ – Volksmusik als bezahlte Dienstleistung […] (2017)
Musikalische Lernorte im privaten und öffentlichen Raum […] (2016)

and also:

Folk Music Research in Austria and Germany […] (2015).