Roland Eberlein

Born in Trossingen, Eberlein studied musicology in Göttingen, Gießen and Cologne. He received his doctorate in 1988, followed by his habilitation in 1996. In 1994 he was a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg. After the Bologna Process came into force he no longer aspired to a professorship.[1] Since 2005 he has been a member of the board of directors of the Walcker Foundation for Organ Science Research. Since 2011 he has been in charge of its business.[2] In 2008 Eberlein founded the Siebenquart publishing house, which specializes in scientific books about the musical instrument organ.[3]

Today he works as a publisher, freelance researcher and private lecturer at the University of Cologne. His research focuses on musical perception, the origin of tonality and the history of the pipe organ.

Eberlein is descended as great-grandson of Gerhard Eberlein (1858-1923) of the Silesian pastoral family Eberlein.

Eberlein was initially engaged in the experimental study of musical perception. In the course of his experiments he came to the insight that pattern recognition plays an essential role in musical perception: Frequently recurring melodic turns and harmonic sequences are stored as harmonic-melodic interval patterns in the course of musical experience in adolescence and are henceforth recognized in newly sounding music. The recognition of patterns enables on the one hand the construction of expectations of continuation (e.g. in dissonances and sixth chords) and the closing effect of cadences, and on the other hand the perception of tones in octave intervals as harmonically equivalent.[4]

Building on these insights, Eberlein described the formation of the typical harmonic sequences of tonal music in the course of music history and tried to justify each individual step of this development as part of a circular process: A musical practice of one kind or another forms the musicians' musical perception by learning the recurring musical patterns and thereby forming expectations of continuation. On the basis of the musical perception thus formed, rules of theory of composition are formulated. These rules can interact in a completely unforeseen way generations or even centuries later, and profoundly change the musical practice then in existence. These changes, in turn, bring about a change in musical perception and new rules of musical composition - and so on. This sphere of activity is influenced on the one hand by the universals of musical perception and on the other hand by Geistesgeschichte, i.e. the intellectual currents and tendencies existing at a given time.[5]

After the publication of his habilitation thesis Die Entstehung der tonalen Klangsyntax (The Origin of Tonal Sound Syntax) in 1994, Eberlein turned his attention to organ history. His scientific activity in this field is characterized by the attempt to bring together the many individual insights gained since about 1930 in countless research papers on individual organ builders and on the organ history of individual regions into an overall picture of organ history. In organ circles Eberlein became known especially through his encyclopedia of organ stop Orgelregister, ihre Namen und ihre Geschichte, which is considered a standard work, as well as through his Geschichte der Orgel, the first comprehensive German-language presentation of organ history from its beginnings to the present day, which has been published in book form since 1929.[6]

From 2004 onwards, Eberlein was one of the first to draw the attention of the organ world in letters to the editor, lectures and numerous articles to the increasing population ageing of the organ public, the dwindling interest of the younger generations in the organ and the resulting consequences: discontinuation of concert series, lack of young organists, neglect of organs, decline of organ workshops. Eberlein postulates as a major cause of this development the steadily growing gap between the traditional repertoire of organists, which has remained unchanged for decades, and the musical preferences of broad sections of society, which have changed rapidly in recent decades. He therefore advocates adapting the organ repertoire to the changing musical tastes of our time.[7]

• Literature by and about Roland Eberlein in the German National Library catalogue