In 2022, the Archiv Frau und Musik began its fourth project as part of the Digital German Women’s Archive (DDF). This year, the focus is on the archive’s concert-related media. In over 40 years of archiving history, program booklets, flyers and posters have been collected; these date back to the 1940s, and show which works by women composers were performed, and where.
For example, this unique collection makes it possible to document, the premiere of Fanny Hensel’s String Quartet in A flat major, as well as concerts by Elke Mascha Blankenburg in her home garden. Next, the collection will be indexed and made searchable in the database of the Archiv Frau und Musik.
In this process, we are cooperating with the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) as well as the Bavarian State Library Munich (BSB). In the future, the SLUB’s musiconn.performance database will enable searching the archive’s concert-related media such as flyers and posters. Furthermore, websites and social media posts digitally advertising current concerts will be collected in cooperation with the BSB Munich.
As in past DDF projects, part of our media will be professionally digitised. This will secure our holdings and make them digitally accessible to the public. In addition, four online essays focusing on individual concert series and festivals, and the experiences of women composers within the concert world and in concert documentation past and present, will be made digitally accessible.