Gravesaner Blätter 19551955
Conversion into digital format, 2015

Gravesaner Blätter list of contents
Gravesaner Blätter collection online

Gravesaner Blätter was a quarterly musical and scientific journal published by Hermann Scherchen between 1955 and 1966 (from 1957 in German and English and with the front cover designed by Le Corbusier). It documented the activities of the Electroacoustic Experimental Studio in Gravesano alongside the publication of international contributions from the music and sound research field.

The topics covered included concert hall acoustics, instrument tuning, recording techniques, loudspeaker systems, equipment maintenance, compositional technique and aesthetics, psychoacoustics, and music sociology. The journal was distributed worldwide, and audio demonstrations called the 'Gravesaner Blätter Scientific Record' series accompanied the journal at irregular intervals and included sound experiments, demonstrations, and new and unreleased compositions recorded at the studio. 

The conversion of the Gravesaner Blätter into digital format was made in 2015. The project was dictated by the need to promote and disseminate Hermann Scherchen's work to a broader audience. I also decided to compile a list of contents as a guide for readers. I presented the archive in 2015 for the exhibition Hermann Scherchen: Alles Hörbar Machen I at Studio Dabbeni in Lugano, close to Gravesano, and Hermann Scherchen: Alles Hörbar Machen II at Galerie Barbara Wien in Berlin, Scherchen's birthplace.

In 2017, I donated the entire digital collection of Gravesaner Blätter to the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, which manages the Hermann Scherchen archive, to be made public and accessible on their online database.

Studio Dabbeni, Lugano, 2015. Photo: Alessandro Zambianchi