Russian reedpipes in museums, in organology and public discourses

Until two decades ago, reed aerophones were nearly absent in the Russian revival scene – due to the loss of ergological skills and, sometimes, to a lower emblematical value as national instruments. Nowadays, non-academic revivalists have gained much more knowledge about these, and many other types of traditional musical instruments, than ethno-organologists. […] by Ulrich Morgenstern (Germany | Austria)

Ulrich Morgenstern (Germany | Austria)
Ulrich Morgenstern was born in Gießen, Germany (1964), and from 1986 to 1993 studied Systematic Musicology, East Slavic Studies and History at the University of Hamburg. In 2003 he gained a PhD in Systematic Musicology, gaining a further post-doctoral qualification (Habilitation) in Systematic musicology at the same University in 2011. He has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Frankfurt a.M. (2009–2011) and Cologne (2012), and in 2012 was appointed Professor of History and Theory of Folk Music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. His specialist areas of research are: European folk music and folk musical instruments with a special focus on Russia; multipart instrumental music; European history of folk music research and music anthropology, history of performer-centred research; revival movements and contemporary folk music scenes in Russia, Germany, and Austria; folk music research, ethnomusicology, and political ideologies. Fieldwork studies since 1989 have included: European Russia, Belarus, Hungary, Croatia, Austria, Romania, Turkey, and Georgia.
He is a member of the International Council for Traditional Music (Chair of the Study Group on Music and Dance of the Slavic World), European Seminar in Ethnomusicology, and the Galpin Society.
Photo: Valentina Roșu