Lexikon Schriften über Musik – Max-Planck-Institut für empirische Ästhetik

Lexicon of Writings on Music

While lexicons of relevant texts have long been available in many disciplines, such tools are missing for the large range of writings on music. This is despite the fact that alongside compositions and musical practices themselves, texts about music represent a valuable collection of sources on music history. They can also provide important insights into the aesthetic understanding and conception of music from the perspective of the composer’s craft. The lexicon created through this project will appear in three volumes. It will offer access to, describe, and comment on music-related texts since antiquity. The first volume will be devoted to texts with an accent on music theory. In volumes two and three, the focus will be on published writings tied more to the aesthetics of music.

A special feature of the project is that the types of text included will expand the boundaries of the usual canon represented in lexicons and encyclopedias, insofar as such works address problems relevant to the aesthetics or philosophy of music. These lesser-known writings emerge from the belletristic realm, and from the world of compositional instruction, instrumental schools and manuals for singing; we will also include texts by composers aimed at artistic self-assurance as well as some connected to religious rites and sovereign representation. Attention is also paid to non-European writings—and thus to texts that have only played a role in marginalized discourses but that seem suitable for expanding the corpus of central musical writings, affording new discoveries and interpretations. Alongside the book project, there will be—as the outcome of a second step—a digital edition of the little-known or unknown texts commented on in the lexicon.

You will find a list of the texts discussed in the lexicon here ( Status of volumes only preliminary)