Research

What the platform offers

• Catalogues: the Discography with line-ups, recording dates and catalogue numbers, the Catalogue of works with instrumentation, first performance, ISWC and availability of scores, the Chronology, the directory of People as well as Press and Literature.
• Evidence: Every record is documented with its source, with a page reference where there is one. Contradictions between sources are named and not smoothed over, for example in dates relating to the Jazzzwio, to teaching in Graz or to years of release.
• Permanent identifiers: Releases carry identifiers of the form HP-T-nnnn, works HP-W-nnnn. How to cite them is explained under Citing.
• Open data: Discography, works, chronology, people, press and literature are available as CSV and JSON for download (Open data).
• Personal access: With personal access you can save lists and retrieve additional, non-public materials.
• Material on request: Listening copies of recordings, scans of scores, programme booklets and press, as well as information from the estate, can be requested for research projects (Research enquiry). Each request is assessed individually; for recordings and images the rights of third parties must also be taken into account.

Key literature

• Nikolaus Kohler: Harry Pepl. Ein Porträt des Musikers und Komponisten. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna 2006. With interviews that Kohler conducted with Pepl himself.
• Stefan Heckel: Instant Composing. Das Spätwerk des Jazzgitarristen und Komponisten Harry Pepl. Doctoral dissertation, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna 2024. With case studies, transcriptions and 22 conversations with contemporary witnesses and musicians.
• Christian Haudej: final thesis at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Kunstuniversität Graz), 1999, with interview and stylistic analyses.
• Peter Stachel: article “Pepl, Harry”, in: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon online.
• Thomas Albert Zlabinger: Free from Jazz. The Jazz and Improvised Music Scene in Vienna after Ossiach (1971-2011). Dissertation, City University of New York 2013.

Further titles are listed in the Literature archive.

INA (France)

The INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuel) in Paris holds the archives of French radio and television. Under “Harry Pepl” its public catalogue lists concert recordings and broadcasts by Radio France, France Musique and FR3 from 1983 to 1987, among them concerts with Michel Portal, Daniel Humair and Dave Holland, with Air Mail and with the quintet of Enrico Rava and Dino Saluzzi, plus two broadcasts from 2007 and 2008 with his music (search the catalogue). Each record is in the Press archive with a link, the concerts in the Chronology.¹

• Preliminary research: in the online catalogue of the INAthèque, freely accessible, with title, date, performers and track list for each programme.
• Consultation: for research purposes only and only on site in the INAthèque’s consultation centres, under the conditions of each centre; the INA does not provide copies.
• Copies for rights holders: they can apply for a copy to the INA department responsible; it first checks whether the INA owns or manages the rights to the programme. This can take a long time.

Open research questions

The work done so far points, among other things, to these tasks:

• The paradox of simultaneity. Pepl's tracks, recorded alone and one after another, sound like a band improvising together. How does this impression arise, which auditory cues carry it, and does it match Pepl's own star ratings? The appraisal The paradox of simultaneity frames the question with literature from jazz studies, the sociology of music and music psychology, and with first measurements.
• Reappraising the 1980s. Pepl's most productive decade, from the ECM recordings with Werner Pirchner and Jack DeJohnette through Air Mail, the years with Michel Portal and “Cracked Mirrors” to the first MIDI works, has hardly been studied musicologically or historically: networks, tours, international press, radio recordings, press in Austria, Germany and France.
• A songbook of the jazz compositions. The estate holds lead sheets of the jazz pieces, many of them never printed. Editing them as a songbook, checked against the recordings and Pepl's phrasing, would provide a basis for teaching and performance.
• Opening up the scores of the concert works. The works for the Kronos Quartet, the Artis-Quartett, Ensemble Wien, Ensemble Kontrapunkte and STUDIO PERCUSSION graz survive as computer scores, edited versions and recordings. Stefan Heckel's analyses (2024) offer the starting point for a critical edition and for questions about notating improvised music.²
• Processing the home-studio material. From 1995 to 2005 Pepl recorded every day in his home studio, first on ADAT (digital multitrack tape format), from 2002 also directly by hard-disk recording; guitar, bass, piano and drums are available as separate tracks or instrument groups (stems).³ Inventory, dating and evaluation of this holding are only beginning; for recordings surviving only as a mix, Heckel suggests also examining the separation of the tracks with present-day methods.⁴
• Comparing original, notation and interpretation. Pepl himself wished for a comparison between his original recording, the written score and the performance, for example for the string quartet for the Artis Quartet or for the work for STUDIO PERCUSSION graz.⁵
• Transcriptions and stylistic analyses. Kohler found analyses of the music itself lacking. So far only individual transcriptions exist, for example of “More Far Out Than East” and “Alone Is a Golden Stone”.⁶
• Completing the catalogue of works for the years 1988 to 1994. The titles are unknown of ten works premiered on 20 January 1989 at the ORF Studio Tyrol (ORF: Austria's public broadcaster) and of seven works that Thomas Larcher played there on 17 February 1991. Works for Thomas Demenga, Heinrich Schiff, the Altenberg Trio and the Austrian Art Ensemble are also only patchily documented.⁷
• Evaluating broadcast archives. In the ORF archive and at German broadcasters there are recordings that are only partly known.⁸
• Reception in France. Pepl's years with the group of Michel Portal, the recordings of French radio and the French press have scarcely been studied. The original article in which Le Monde called him a ‚Gigant der Improvisation‘ [“giant of improvisation”] was kept in the archive of gamsbART (Graz) under the aegis of Heimo Steps.⁹ New sources for these questions are the concert recordings by Radio France at the INA (see above), the archives of the Banlieues Bleues festival (Montreuil 1986) and the Jazz sous les pommiers festival (Coutances 1986), the concert listings and reviews in Le Monde between 1983 and 1988, and Portal's albums “Turbulence” and “Men's Land” at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where some of them can be heard digitally on site; the shelfmarks are given on the album pages.¹⁰
• Clarifying dates. The start of the Jazzzwio, the end of his teaching, premieres by the internationally renowned Kronos Quartet and the years of release of individual albums are given differently in the sources.
• Performance practice today. How can music that exists only as a recording be played anew with ensembles? Heckel's attempt with a verbal score and the live project with Pepl's original tracks are first answers.¹¹
• An improvisation machine in the spirit of Pepl. Pepl's late work, the pieces of the Lonely Single Swinger Band from his home studio in Hernstein (Lower Austria, Austria), survives as digital multitrack recordings, made from 1995 to 2005 on ADAT and from 2002 also by hard-disk recording, with guitar, bass, piano and drums as separate tracks or instrument groups (stems). There is a further distinctive feature: Pepl rated his recordings himself, like an archivist, in file folders using a system of one to five stars, noting day, month and year, the tracks used, the mix and sometimes the title. According to the family, this self-curated rating of his own material would be a unique layer of metadata, both for a generative model and for archiving; whether the folders have survived is being clarified.³ The questions this material raises for research on interaction and music psychology are outlined in the appraisal The paradox of simultaneity. As early as the 1980s, with MIDI guitar, computer and sequencer, Pepl made technology part of composing (Real-time Composing). This raises the question of whether a generative AI model trained on these tracks could learn Pepl's way of improvising and layering voices and carry it on as an ongoing “improvisation machine”, in dialogue with living musicians, as the posthumous projects have already been doing with his original tracks since 2015. Equally open are the accompanying questions of artistic authorship, of the estate's copyright and neighbouring rights, of ethics, and of the securing and cataloguing of the ADAT tapes and hard disks. The estate is open to cooperation with universities and research institutions (research enquiry).¹²

Anyone working on one of these questions, or able to contribute material and pointers, can reach us via the contact form. Pointers to new theses and publications are welcome for the bibliography.