Bernhard Ernst Scharl - Music pedagogy

Staging of elemental music performances

In the tense field between process and product

This research project examines the staging processes of elementary music performances from the perspective of elementary music educators.

Elementary music is never music alone, but always combined with movement and language. As an independent form of music-making, elementary music-making, the practical form of elementary music education, is open to prerequisites, i.e. it can be learned and experienced by everyone and is therefore possible for people of all ages, regardless of previous musical experience. By intensively perceiving, experiencing and understanding music in all its diversity, it opens up spaces for experience on a physical, emotional and cognitive level.

One of the guiding principles here is process orientation. However, in the context of elementary music education, there are performance situations in various forms of performance. Like any form of performance, these require staging. For the people leading this process, the performance situation poses specific challenges regarding the considerations on the process orientation of elementary music making. In contrast to productions in an institutional theater environment, where there is usually a division of responsibilities for the individual theatrical components, elementary music educators are responsible for a variety of tasks in the planning, implementation and execution of performances in elementary music education contexts.

Based on these considerations, this dissertation uses a qualitative interview study to explore the questions of how elementary music teachers shape the staging process of elementary music performances, what role considerations of the performance situation and elementary music-making play, as well as what challenges arise as a result and how these are met.

First supervisor: Univ.Prof.ⁱⁿ  Dr.ⁱⁿ   Irena Müller-Brozović, ABPU
Second supervisor: Univ.Prof. Dr. Peter Röbke, mdw

Bernhard Ernst Scharl is a performer and music and theater educator. His scientific, pedagogical and artistic work is always at the intersection of music, theater and pedagogy. In his perception, these areas are not only on an equal footing. They complement each other.

Bernhard Ernst Scharl began studying at the St. Pölten Conservatory for Church Music ("Lied.Messe.Oratorium.") while still at school. He also studied solo singing, music theater directing and vocal pedagogy in Vienna and Berlin. He completed the latter with distinction with a master's thesis on the political dimensions of Hans Werner Henze's operas ("Hans Werner Henze in Discourse with his Librettists - Opera as a Political Medium") and a focus on "Music Theater Pedagogy" and "Music.Theater.Film.Gender.".

Engagements as a singer have taken him to various stages and concert platforms in Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan. He has worked both in professional theaters and in the independent scene as a performer, stages musical and spoken theater and regularly performs with various formations as an improvisational theater player.

Pedagogical work for Bernhard Ernst Scharl is an artistic activity, whereby work with people of infant, child, youth and adult age as well as integration groups are equally at the center of his activities. A particular concern of his is to enable all people, regardless of age, social, cognitive and physical abilities, to participate in artistic processes.

Bernhard Ernst Scharl teaches music and theater pedagogy, particularly at colleges for elementary and social pedagogy in St. Pölten, and is currently pursuing a doctorate at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz.