Research into Folk Music in the Lake Constance Region

In the research field “Folk music research in the Lake Constance region”, the Haid folk collection in the library of the Vorarlberg State Conservatory is being scientifically analyzed. It is one of the most important and relevant collections on the Alemannic language area.

The “Folk Collection Haid” is a collection of primary and secondary sources on the “folk movement” of the 1970s and 1980s in the Alemannic language regions of Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and France.
The university professor and doctor couple Gerlinde Haid (1943-2012, folk music researcher) and Hans Haid (1938-2019, folklorist and writer) began collecting the sources privately in the 1970s. For over forty years, the collection was expanded with “participant observation” under musicological and sociolinguistic aspects. In 2012, the couple donated the collection to Evelyn Fink-Mennel with the task of making it accessible. It is now part of the library of the Vorarlberg State Conservatory as the “Haid Folk Collection”.

The published and unpublished materials include books, magazines, sound recordings (LPs), songbooks/pamphlets, newspaper articles, manuscripts, and various correspondence. The record collection also includes LPs by Italian and French singer-songwriters, chansoniers, and folk groups from the German-speaking world.
In addition to the relevant “folk collection”, the Vorarlberg State Conservatory’s library also includes a considerable collection from the private library of folk music researcher Gerlinde Haid with scientific literature and practical material on folk music of the (not only German-speaking) Alps.

This relevant folk collection is unique due to its international orientation and the unique extent to which its materials on the Austrian folk movement have survived. In contrast to the German folk movement (from the 1960s onwards), which has been analyzed many times and in many different ways, the Austrian folk movement (from the 1970s onwards) has only been dealt with marginally. The “Haid Folk Collection” provides the basis for a source-based, scholarly presentation

In addition, the research field of folk music research in the Lake Constance region explores open research questions on Alemannic folk music and transfers them to music education contexts, as well as developing research approaches to the area of tension between folk music and migration in the Lake Constance region.