In the eighteenth century, the Viennese court was a center of European social and cultural life. Accordingly, it maintained an extensive network for representation, in which the Viennese court theatres (and their personnel) functioned as important institutions of cultural agency. For the years 1758 to 1763, the cultural activities of the Viennese court have been documented in theatre chronicles that have been compiled by the ballet master Philipp Gumpenhuber. Gumpenhuber’s theatre chronicles represent an important and unique source for eighteenth-century music history. However, these chronicles provide not only insights into the Viennese court’s various theatrical ventures, but also into the broader social and political court life.

Only recently has research on eighteenth-century music theatre employed an expanded concept of the music theatre as an artwork, which perceives music theatre as a “performance” rather than a “text”. Equally this musical performance is shaped by various “agents” in conjunction with their sociocultural contexts. This so-called “performative turn”, based on concepts from cultural and theatre studies, has permanently changed the study of music theatre history. It offers a variety of interdisciplinary interconnections – also for the project “Digital Edition of Philipp Gumpenhuber’s Theatre Chronicles (1758–1763)”.

The project, carried out at the University of Graz with Ingeborg Zechner as principal investigator, pursues the goal of developing a digital edition (GuDiE) that makes Gumpenhuber’s theatre chronicles accessible to both scholars and the interested public. The digital edition GuDiE generates fundamental, scientifically curated data. This “linked data” consecutively forms the starting point for further digital projects on eighteenth-century European cultural history. GuDiE also provides valuable data for existing digital historical research projects on the Viennese court. Through the methodological interaction of the disciplines musicology, history and digital humanities, GuDiE creates significant insights into the complex interplay of socio-cultural, political, and economic factors influencing the practices of court theatres in the eighteenth century.

GuDiE is carried out in cooperation with the Center for Information Modeling at the University of Graz, the Austrian National Library, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Austrian Academy of Sciences (projects theadok.at and VieCPro), and the Institute Public Sector Transformation at the Bern University of Applied Sciences.