Idea and principles

The most important in music can not be found in the score (Gustav Mahler)

The problems of interpretation increase with the time past. The construction of musical instruments keep embodied that component of beauty linking sound with the ideas of music. Scientific organology only rarely focussed on the sound as such changed in time but the exploration of the construction influencing individual sound.

Musicians as well as craftsmen were trained thoroughly in past and present. In pre-industrial ages craftsmen were educated to be able to freely design and develop their sound ideas when attaining mastership. Within the structure of their work this goal of expressivity is preserved that can be revealed in the original instrument. Structure, technics, and the original ideas within are important documents of cultural history.

Our Institute is dedicated to the cultural legacy of musical instruments which permit us to access a poetic potential over the ages within their specific expressions of crafts and arts. The revelation of this poetic potential requires a hermeneutical process to link the ideas of sound and expression to the traces of technical constructions.

Our Institute is welcoming all projects to research these structures and to contribute to a research of the links of composition, instrument, and history of ideas.

It is our obligation to encourage scientific methods of instrument research. Archival sources, methods to achieve precise dimensions, determination of materials, analysis of production techniques are applied and developped further. A practical application analogous to experimental archeology in a manner of a reverse engineering process forms a basis for modern interpretation.

Helmut Balk

Our values

Openness:

Transparency, willingness to communicate, knowledge sharing and transfer.

"For us, transparency means traceability at all levels, without special prerequisites. We aim to make our insights, processes, findings, and methods transparent by sharing them with the team, our target audiences, and the interested public. To achieve this, we strive for a lively exchange of knowledge and experience."

COMPETENCE:

Professionalism and willingness to learn become tangible.

"We learn historical craft techniques and the design of the original musical instrument and make it tangible again through our professional work of reverse engineering*."

*) refers to the process of extracting design elements from an existing finished system or product by examining its structures, states, and behaviors. A plan is thus created from the finished object. Unlike a functional replication (the usual reproduction), which can also be based on analyses using the black-box principle, reverse engineering aims to replicate the existing object as accurately as possible.

method

Observe, gather knowledge, remain open to theories, tact.

"By fostering an open culture of error, observing carefully, and conducting thorough research, we avoid preconceived opinions and theories. Through purposeful timing, we ensure the realization of our important concerns."