About
Maria Fuchs studied musicology, comparative literature and gender studies at the University of Vienna and the Freie University of Berlin. She graduated in 2009 with the master thesis Die Ordnung der Affekte: Eine Annäherung an das Fundament der musikalischen Affektenlehre des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts.
She was a doctoral fellow at the University of Vienna and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) with a research stay at the Humboldt University in Berlin. In 2015 she received her doctorate from the University of Vienna with a dissertation on the theory and practice of silent film music in the Weimar Republic.
During her diploma and doctoral studies, she worked as a dramaturg and assistant in the field of music theatre and performance for the Wiener Mozartjahr 2006, HAU-Berlin, Tanztage Berlin, Gessnerallee Zurich, among others, and realized her own radio works e.g. for "Klangkunst" (Deutschlandradio Kultur).
In 2007 she was coordinator of the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) at the festival Klangspuren in Schwaz in Tyrol. From 2006 to 2011 she worked as a freelance journalist in the experimental and pop-cultural music field.
From 2015 to 2023 she was a lecturer at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the Berlin University of the Arts, and the University of Salzburg.
2019 Research Sholarship of the Gerda Henkel Foundation, which was not taken up. From 2020 to 2022, she was an Erwin Schrödinger Fellow (FWF) postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Popular Culture and Music at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg and head of the research project »Soundscapes of ›Heimat‹: Mapping Musical Signatures in Heimatfilm and Bergfilm (1930–1970)«, and from 2022 to 2023 she was a senior postdoctoral researcher at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna as part of the FWF project.
Photo by Carolina Frank
Publications
Book
World Music and its Critique: Postcolonial Approaches to Global Music, ed. by Maria Fuchs, Knut Holtsträter and Johannes Müske, Freiburg: Waxmann 2023 (= Yearbook “Lied und Populäre Kultur“ / “Song and Popular Culture“ 67).
Stummfilmmusik. Theorie und Praxis im "Allgemeinen Handbuch der Film-Musik" (1927), Schüren: Marburg 2016 (= Marburger Schriften zur Medienforschung 68).
Reviews
WDR3, Magazin Tonart, 21.9.2017 (Stefan Keim)
http://www.hhprinzler.de/2017/10/stummfilmmusik (Hans Helmut Prinzler)
Filmblatt 22, 64/65, spring 2018 (Eunice Martins)
35 Milimeter Retro Filmmagazin, no. 26, April 2018 (Burkhard Götze)
Professional Production 7–8/ 2018 (Philippe Dériaz)
MEDIENwissenschaft 4, 2018 (Sebastian Richter)
Selected Articles
Peer-reviewed
Journal article
"The Musical Landscape of Attraction: Unheard Generic Heimat in German Cinema", Music and the Moving Image, in review.
"The Silences of the Woods: Heimat and Anti-Heimat", 19th-Century Music, Special Issue on Film Music, ed. Berthold Hoeckner, forthcoming.
"Transculturality of the Alps. The Role of Image and Sound in a European 'Multiple Bergfilm' of the 1930s" (with Maria Adorno), in: Cinema & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal, 141–164, DOI: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/view/17960/18788.
"Hermann Kretzschmar’s forgotten heirs: ‘Silent’ Film Music as Applied Musical Hermeneutics", in: Music and the Moving Image, 12 (3), 2019, 3–24.
Book-chapter
"Of Romantic Wanderers, Pastorals and Heroic Chords: The Musical Construction of Heimat in German-Austrian Film", in: Jeremy Barham (ed.), Revisiting Austrian and German Music: from the "Spring of Nations" to the Cold War, New York & London: Routledge, in progress.
"The Kinotheken and Giuseppe Becce’s Scoring Practices in Germany’s Early Sound Film", in: Jeremy Barham (ed.), Routledge Companion to the Music and Sound of World Cinema from the First ‘Talkies’ to the 1940s, New York & London: Routledge 2023, 75–96.
Cultural Mobility, Ernö Rapée and 'American Showmanship Scores in German Picture Theatres'", in: Eli Rodríguez, Victoria, Marín-López and Vega Pichaco Belén (eds.), En, desde y hacia las Américas. Músicas y migraciones transoceánicas, Madrid: Dykinson, 2021, 607–619.
"The hermeneutic framing of film illustration practice. The 'Allgemeine Handbuch der Film-Musik' in the context of a historico-musicological tradition", in: Claus Tieber and Anna Windisch (eds.), The Sounds of Silent Films. New Perspectives on History, Theory and Practice, Palgrave Macmillian: Hampshire, 2014, 156–171.
Lemmata
"Erdmann, Hans und Becce, Giuseppe, Allgemeines Handbuch der Film-Musik", in: Hartmut Grimm (†), Melanie Wald-Fuhrmann and Felix Wörner (eds.), Lexikon der Schriften der Musik, Band 2: Schriften zur Musikästhetik, Bärenreiter: Kassel, 2022, 267–269.
Editor-reviewed
Book-chapter
"World Music and its Critique: Postcolonial Approaches to Global Music" (with Johannes Müske), in: Maria Fuchs und Johannes Müske (eds.), World Music and its Critique: Postcolonial Approaches to Global Music, Special Issue, Yearbook "Song and Popular Culture" 67, Münster: Waxmann 2023, 15–27.
"Soundtrack der Alpen: Multiple Bergfilme Luis Trenkers“, in: Sophia Hannah Mehrbrey und Daniel Winkler (eds.), Luis Trenker als transalpiner Medienakteur, Film-Konzepte, München: text+kritik, 2024, 18–28.
"Intermediales Verhältnis von bewegtem Bild, Ton und Affekt: Zu einer frühen Theorie und Ästhetik von Filmmusik", in: Carola Bebermeier und Sabine Meine (eds.), Musik im Blick. Visuelle Perspektiven auf auditive Kulturen, Wien: Böhlau (= Musik – Kultur – Gender), 2023, 200–216.
"Musical Branding of the Alps: Aural Dimension and Transhistorical Remembrence of Luis Trenker’s Mountain Films", in: Simone Dotto (ed.), Retuning the Screen Sound Methods and the Aural Dimension of Film & Media History 2022, 117–127.
"Plurimedialität des Schlagers. Genrekino, populäres Lied und kulturelle Erinnerung der Alpen", in: Michael Fischer / Johannes Müske (ed.), Schlager erforschen. Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf ein marginalisiertes Forschungsthema, Münster: Waxmann, 2023, 183–200.
"'Silent Film' Music in the Weimar Republic: Its Reception in Contemporary Criticism and by Modernist Composers", in: Jordi Ballester and Gérman Gan Quesada (eds.), Music Criticism 1900-1950, Prepols Publishers: Turnhout, 2018 (= Music, Criticism, & Politics), 399–421.
"Kunst oder Nichtkunst. Zur Kritik der Musik für den Stummfilm im Deutschland der 1920er Jahre", in: Fritz Trümpi and Simon Obert (eds.), Musikkritik. Historische Zugänge und systematische Perspektiven, Mille Tre: Wien, 2015 (= Anklänge 2015 – Wiener Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft), 111–133.
Journal article
"Screen Music and Multiple Versions: Transdisciplinary Perspectives and approaches" (with Maria Adorno), ffk Journal. Film- und Fernsehwissenschaftliches Kolloquium, 2023, 1–9.
Varia
"Neues Filmerleben durch Musik. Die Soundtracks zu Paul Wegeners Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam", Universum Film, 13–17, 2019.
Mit Sophie Schasiepen: "Ausweichmanöver a lá Poor-is-sexy-Attitüde. Ein paar Aspekte zu popästhetischer Intervention anhand des Interviews mit dem Musik-Performance-Projekt Crazy Bitch in A Cave", in: skug – Journal für Musik, Vol. 89, 1–3/2012.
"web 2.0 als virtuelle hausmusikszene. annelie gahl über melanzane und identität", in: Spuren – Musikzeitung für Gegenwart (= Zeitung des Musikfestivals Klangspuren Schwaz), Sep. 2009, 5.
"Rotating Identities. Ignaz Schick zwischen (Harsh) Noise, Free Jazz, Lower Case und Neue Musik", in: skug– Journal für Musik, Vol. 70, 3–5/2007.
Contact
Maria Fuchs
mail@mariafuchs.org