String Chamber Music of the Classical German School, 1840-1900: A Scholarly Investigation through Reconstructive Performance

Welcome to the web pages of this project. This website comprises some of the chief research findings of the above project, undertaken by David Milsom under the AHRC Fellowships in the Creative and Performing Arts scheme, between 2006 and 2009.

The project’s main focus and purpose was to record a number of string chamber works of the so-called ‘classical’ German tradition in order to ‘reconstruct’, in so far as present scholarly knowledge allows, the probable performing practices of this tradition, with a particular focus upon three distinct repertories and violinists: Louis Spohr (1784-1859), Ferdinand David (1810-1873) and Joseph Joachim (1833-1907).

The site can be navigated by means of the links below, which comprise written commentaries, analyses and sound files of the project recordings. The ‘Project Archive’ link opens up the project website as it was during the course of the project, last revised in January, 2009. A full copy of the project archive can be found at the British Library.