short vita

Christoph Müller-Oberhäuser studied music and history at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln and at the University of Cologne. In January 2020 he finished his PhD project on the history of choral competitions in 19th-century Germany. During his studies he was awarded scholarships by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne. In 2018 he spent one semester at the KU Leuven (ERASMUS programme). His PhD project was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

After completing his PhD he held a position as research assistant at Osnabrück University in a project on musical picture postcards. Since October 2020 he has been teaching and conducting research at the Berlin University of the Arts. His main interests are the social and cultural history of music with a special focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of musical competitions, men’s studies and the relationship between music and photography. In his current Post-Doc research project he is investigating representations of contemporary history on European opera stages in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Current research projects

(1) Contemporary history on European opera stages (1945–2000)

Since the 1980s topics of contemporary history have increasingly found their way onto the opera stage. This is true first of all for the US (e.g. with the operas of John Adams) and somewhat later also for Europe. In my postdoc project I will first trace the social and political conditions under which events of contemporary history could be presented on stage. Second, on the basis of a corpus of music theatre works I will examine how the concrete transformation of (real) events into stage action and above all into music was realised by different composers/librettists/directors. Third, the question of the acceptance of this type of opera in Europe is addressed. The focus of my research is on operas in which real personalities from public life are shown as protagonists on stage. One important focus of my research is the search for 'new' heroes and heroines. In the winter term 2022/23 a lecture series on the figure of the hero/heroine in music took place at the Berlin University of the Arts (LIVE Talk "Musical Heroes"), organised by my colleagues Susanne Heiter, Dorothea Hilzinger and myself. A thematic issue of the journal Die Tonkunst (02/2024) was published in connection with this lecture series.

(2) Music & Competition

Competition and contests are regarded as extremely ambivalent in the field of music. On the one hand, it is hard to imagine contemporary musical life and the biographies of many musicians without them. On the other hand, they often meet with rejection even among those involved and are regarded as inappropriate for the artistic field. This raises the question of what is specific about competition in the field of music (e.g. in comparison to the field of sport) and how, from an historical perspective, this paradoxical situation has come about. In the winter term 2021/22 an online lecture series on this topic was held at the Berlin University of the Arts (LIVE Talk "Music & Competition"). This was followed by an international conference on "Competition & Music" from 8th to 10th June 2023, organised by Tobias Werron (Bielefeld University) and myself. Together with Tobias Werron and Lisa McCormick (University of Edinburgh) I am currently editing the Oxford Handbook of Competition in Music for Oxford University Press.

(3) Music on picture postcards

In the last two decades picture postcards have been discovered in many disciplines as an interesting and relevant source especially for the period around 1900. This is also true for musicology. In connection with my former work at the University of Osnabrück in the project "Das visuelle Wissen von der Musik zwischen Deutschem Kaiserreich und Zweitem Weltkrieg" (directed by Dietrich Helms), I am interested in picture postcards with references to Irish music, the question of the significance of picture postcards for the dissemination of ideas of a musical canon, as well as in references to the medium itself in compositions and (pop) songs. For the results of the project see the volume “Musik per Post” which was edited by Dietrich Helms, Jan Lehmann and myself, and was published recently.

Publications and conference papers