A PETITION TO SAVE THE "MONUMENTA MUSICAE BYZANTINAE"
https://www.change.org/p/rektor-adm-ku-dk-save-the-monumenta-musicae-byzantinae
(Please follow the link, if you would like to support the petition!)
To the Rector of the University of Copenhagen (prof. Henrik C. Wegener: rektor@adm.ku.dk)
To the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Copenhagen (prof. Jesper Kallestrup: dekan@hum.ku.dk)
To the Head of the Saxo Institute of the University of Copenhagen (prof. Stuart James Ward: stuart@hum.ku.dk)
Dear Sirs,
We are writing to you as the Editorial Board of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, to express our alarm at your proposal to dismiss Prof. Christian Troelsgård from his position as Associate Professor in the Saxo Institute.
The Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae (MMB) was established in Copenhagen in 1935 under the direction of Prof. Carsten Høeg, and quickly became a world-renowned scientific enterprise devoted to the study and publication of Byzantine musical and liturgical sources. The University of Copenhagen has been central to the activities of the MMB ever since. As you are doubtless aware, it houses a comprehensive library and archive which has supported a sustained and highly productive programme of research and publication by a very international body of scholars. Students of the successive directors of the MMB have gone on to secure prestigious positions around the world in the fields of Classics, Byzantine Studies and Musicology. The MMB volumes are published under the auspices of the Union Académique Internationale, with the support of the Carlsberg Foundation and several other funding bodies, and are universally admired for the quality of their research as well as for their high production standards.
In consideration of the worldwide recognised leading role of the MMB in research on Byzantine music and liturgy, we are deeply concerned by the unexpected news that the intense research activities conducted within the MMB project are in serious danger of coming to an abrupt end. We gather that, for reasons of ‘necessary cut-backs’, the University plans in a few weeks to dismiss – after 26 years of honoured service – the MMB Director Prof. Christian Troelsgård, a highly esteemed scholar and teacher, on the vague grounds that his position no longer ‘matches the future development of the Faculty’.
Since Prof. Troelsgård represents the one and only institutional affiliation of the MMB project in Denmark, this would lead to a sudden cessation of all of the MMB’s research activities, which have for more than 80 years been centred in the University of Copenhagen, and to the lamentable dispersal of a whole scholarly tradition that has represented a jewel in the crown of Danish (and European) research in the humanities thoughout this period. In fact, the consequences of this dismissal on research in the field of Byzantine music and chant would be really dramatic, not only in Denmark: the MMB has since its inception been designated as a ‘research enterprise’ under the auspices of the Union Académique Internationale, a status in which it was recently re-accredited, and the dismantling of its leading research unit in Denmark would condemn the whole international project (with partner-scholars in Austria, Italy, Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom, the United States, and many other countries) to a sudden and definitive closure. The MMB has attracted long-term research funding to the University of Copenhagen over many decades, flourishing successively under the leadership of its founder Prof. Carsten Høeg, then Prof. Jørgen Raasted, and especially now under Prof. Troelsgård’s careful and dedicated guidance. The hasty liquidation of a research school that is so well established in the University of Copenhagen would put at stake a unique and important European research tradition.
We are not party to the ‘future development of the Faculty’ on which grounds you propose to dismiss Prof. Troelsgård, but we respectfully remind you that he is universally regarded as a leading scholar in all branches of the study of Byzantine chant, known internationally through his many books and articles of consistently exceptional quality, and widely respected in the University through his co-ordination of several externally-funded research projects and as a member of the Academic Council of the Faculty of Humanities. In Demark he is honoured as a member of the Royal Danish Academy, and internationally he sits on many advisory panels for leading journals and research projects. His graduate students have taken the field of research into many new directions under his careful guidance, and have developed successful careers in many countries, widening interest in the field of Byzantine chant across the world.
Byzantine music should not be considered an exotic and sophisticated research field reserved for the happy few who are engaged in it: it has important repercussions on our understanding of many aspects of the different cultures of the world we live in. The Byzantine chant tradition is the real core of the Orthodox liturgy in Greece, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Balkans, Southern Italy, and the Middle East, and is therefore an important key to our understanding of the mentality of the different peoples living in this wide area. Language, rite and music constitute fundamental aspects of the cultural identity of the Eastern-Mediterranean Christian communities, many of which are now often under threat. Weakening the study of these traditions would lead to an impoverishment of our understanding of this part of world culture, and could also be seen as turning our backs on these populations on a cultural level. In the context of the study and research activities of the Saxo Institute, Prof. Troelsgård’s teaching and research have the potential to make one of the closest and most direct connections between the ancient world and the lives of many of the most marginalised communities of today. Far from being an arcane and obscurantist discipline, Byzantine chant is a field which can inspire students to embrace the study of Classical and Eastern languages, Theology, Music, History, Ethnography and Social Anthropology.
Perhaps it is not a consequence you intended in your proposal to dismiss Christian Troelsgård, but we fear that the result in the sudden annihilation of the research centre which has placed Copenhagen at the centre of this branch of historical enquiry for the best part of the last century would have serious consequences in terms of our understanding of global culture, and not only of European or global academic studies. Therefore we strongly encourage you to reconsider your decision to cut short a career in which we continue to foresee much promising contribution to the wider understanding of society.
ON BEHALF OF THE MMB EDITORIAL BOARD
Prof. Nicolas BELL (Trinity College, Cambridge)
Prof. Francesco D’AIUTO (University of Rome "Tor Vergata")
Prof. Sysse Gudrun ENGBERG (University of Copenhagen, emerita)
Prof. Christian HANNICK (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, emeritus)
Prof. Christian THODBERG (University of Aarhus, emeritus)
Prof. Gerda WOLFRAM (University of Vienna, emerita)
and
Prof. John D. BERGSAGEL (former Director of MMB; University of Copenhagen, emeritus)
Prof. Tore Tvarnø LIND (secretary of MMB; University of Copenhagen)
Useful links
The Saxo Institute:
Homepage of the MMB:
The microfilm collection (and an additional international source catalogue with useful information):
http://www.igl.ku.dk/MMB/catbyz.html
Christian Troelsgård’s permanently updated list of the standard abridged version repertoire of stichera idiomela of the menaion part within the sticherarion (very useful to identify missing parts of a sticherarion manuscript):
http://www.igl.ku.dk/MMB/standard.html
The «Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Âge Grec et Latin» (CIMAGL), an available publication series of the Saxo Institute:
https://cimagl.saxo.ku.dk/access/
Homepage of the related studies of Ottoman music “Corpus Musicae Ottomanicae” (CMO):
https://corpus-musicae-ottomanicae.de/
Middle Ages and Renaissance manuscripts at the collections of “The Royal Danish Library” (Copenhagen):
http://www.kb.dk/en/nb/materialer/haandskrifter/HA/e-mss/mdr.html
Comments
If you are anyway inscribed there, I would like to ask you, whether you could be so kind to spread the link to the petition (whereever you like, by the way, it does not necessarily to be a network of NING).
Dear friends of the MMB
So far 2648 have signed the petition. Not very much, but many famous scholars supported the petition and made the new regime at Saxo Institute understand that their own reputation is at stake.
The result is not overwhelming, but Christian Troelsgård thanked us in a letter and wrote that the head of Saxo Institute changed his mind and agreed to a 50% position "(given that sufficient external funding has been raised before that time)”, so that “he can continue his Byzantine chant research activities”. Everyone who is obviously more competent in this field than they are, knows that this means to do a full-time job for half the wage. Nobody can say so far, whether this deal will really work out.
I just quote the whole letter that Christian send to many scholars and supporters some days ago:
Finally, there is a (not too bad) solution – it has really meant something that so many colleagues have been encouraging and helping me during these two very difficult months! Thank you! I have written the following statement, and will follow up on it by writing to each of you individually, but this is, in short, what I can say right now:
The Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae can continue at the University of Copenhagen, where the project was founded in 1931. The notice of dismissing the present project director, associate professor Christian Troelsgård, has today (3 July 2019) been called back, and an agreement has been made, according to which prof. Troelsgård for 3 years can continue his Byzantine chant research activities, with the possibility of prolongation, given that sufficient external funding has been raised before that time. His position, though, will be only part time (50%).
A personal, final remark:
I do thank all of you who have protested against the discontinuation and consequent loss of a precious research tradition, established by my predecessors and colleagues, and I am very much looking forward to collaborating with you about the future development of Byzantine chant research. I’ll as soon as possible write individually to each of you with whom I have common projects and working plans, and to all those, who have helped me to explain the value of the MMB to the university authorities.
Christian Troelsgård, director of the MMB, 3 July 2019
I inserted some useful links which might prove to anyone, how important the Saxo Institute is for everyday work (including the closely related CMO project whose success is due to the reputation of MMB, but also as fragile as the MMB)!
Please support this petition before it is too late!
This weekend the number has passed 2000 supporters. The outrageous decision to shut down MMB has provoked comments by scholars coming from very different fields in Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, the US, Canada, the UK, Spain, Italy, Russia, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Greece, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Island.
Please help not to destroy the reputation of Copenhagen and the Saxo Institute by a bad and temporary influence of badly qualified scholars!
We will hit today the 1000 mark of supporters!
But Dominique is right, the petition rather attracts quality than quantity.
Among the commentators are not only Peter Jeffery, Alexander Lingas, Yuliya Artamanova, Giuseppe Sanfratello, Nina-Maria Wanek, Evstathios Makris, Ioannis Papathanasiou, Ioannis Arvanitis, Costin Moisil, Silvia Tessari and the Cypriote-Armenian scholar Haig Utidjian and other scholar associated with MMB, but also big names of Byzantine studies like John Burke, Judith Herrin and Johannes Preiser-Kapeller!
By the way, talking about Cantus planus, I received right now a roundletter by James Borders, one of the initiators of the petition and elected chair of the Study Group Cantus Planus with the IMS. It has some more informations about it which I would like to share with you:
En fait, c'est une pétite famille !
Mais, ce n'est pas la permière fois qu'on doit être confronté cette 'indifférence, apart des collègues comme Peter Jeffery qui avait plus ou moins établi l'interdisciplinarité chez Cantus planus.
Entre scholaires on fait toujours ce bêtise :
« On commence par l'interdisciplinarité, on regresse vers la transdisciplinarité. On finit toujours avec la monodisciplinarité ! »
oui, je suis étonné du si petit nombre de signataires...
The petition has received this morning 500 supporters and many prominent scholars did comment about the meaning of such a loss!
Please try to help that we can prevent such a loss, by passing the petition on to everyone whom it might concern.
Also studies of Western plainchant traditions have relied over decades on findings and publications within the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae.
It would be real shame for the academic world as a whole, if it becomes the victim of intrigant leadership which is a sad and well-known fact in the history of academic institutions.
I can tell you concerning Berlin, that not even the most powerful musicologist supported by early postcommunist ideologies was up to keep his promises.
In this case there is no ideology which ever might provide a ground for such an absurd sacrifice!
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