The Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG) is one of the most important players in Switzerland's cultural life. The largest part of broadcast content consists of music. This makes the SRG one of the most significant actors in the Swiss music scene. For decades, radio has acted as a leading medium for contemporary classical music in particular, offering performers and composers a forum and making their music accessible to different audiences. However, the role of SRG in the dissemination and promotion of contemporary classical music has hardly been studied scientifically.
The project addresses this question and explores the effects of SRG music promotion as well as the effects of networking between radio, music creators and various audiences. This network of effects appears to be of particular interest from a music-historical and sociological perspective. SRG broadcasts not only existing music in its programmes, but also orders new music. The starting point for the research work of the project is therefore the composition commissions which the SRG has awarded since its foundation in 1931. As a preliminary step for the project, an inventory list of SRG composition commissions was created (https://zenodo.org/records/7432686).
The project covers the research areas of structures and actors, products and audiences. The resulting research questions will be dealt with in an interdisciplinary manner using approaches from musicology, history and media studies. In the area of structures and actors (framework conditions of composition commissions), the impact of media and cultural policy conditions as well as the institutional organisation of the SRG on music production in general and the awarding of composition commissions in particular will be examined. Through radio broadcasts, concerts and the awarding of composition commissions, the developments of contemporary Swiss music were promoted, documented and communicated to the public. The exchange of programmes with other radio stations also helped Swiss music production to gain a certain amount of attention abroad. In the research area of products (commissioned compositions), the more than 500 commissioned pieces inventoried are analysed by means of whether they had a style-forming effect or whether they form a representative cross-section of Swiss music production over the period under investigation. We are also interested in whether something like a sounding Swissness can be derived from the works. The pieces will be historically contextualised and examined to see whether extra-musical ascriptions of meaning and interpretations can be related to musical elements of the pieces. The research area of audience (reception) focuses on how the pieces were judged by musicians, music critics and the general radio audience and what reactions they provoked: for example, did the SRG commissions contribute to the formation of a musical canon of recent Swiss serious music?
The project makes visible the complex interactions between SRG, artistic actors and audiences that were decisive for the production and reception of contemporary Swiss music. It thus closes a research gap in Swiss music and media history.