Joshua Navon, a fifth-year PhD student in Historical Musicology, has been awarded a 10-month research grant by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) to continue research on his dissertation, ‘Making Musical Expertise: The Emergence of German Institutionalized Training, 1843-1914’. During this period, he will be hosted by the History Department at the Freie Universität Berlin, and will undertake archival research in a variety of German conservatory, university, and state archives.
Josh’s research interests are focused on various aspects of musical culture in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States. His dissertation project, advised by Prof. Walter Frisch, explores the emergence of elite music-educational institutions in the middle and latter decades of the nineteenth century in Germany. Drawing heavily from perspectives developed in the history of science, the sociology of culture, and the sociology of expertise, it assesses how the emergence of music conservatories and Musikwissenschaft in German universities affected not only the ways that musicians and music scholars were trained, but also the kinds of knowledge and practice cultivated within communities of art musicians.
