Research Catalogue

Johannes Boer is a senior teacher-researcher at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. From September 2006 until January 2020 Johannes Boer served as the Head of the Early Music Department of that institution. Coming from a background of professional viola da gamba player and musicologist, he is active in a variety of organizations. Related to the actual job is his engagement with the STIMU, a foundation for historical performance practice, which was founded in 1972, and ever since was a bridge between performers and musicologists. From 2002 until 2008 he has been leading the Foundation and organized symposia in cooperation with the Utrecht Early Music Festival.

As a viola da gamba player Johannes Boer has been touring in all sorts of combinations of ensembles, covering the bulk of the repertoire for the instrument. As a scholar performer several projects concentrating on the viola da gamba resulted in articles, lectures at symposia and cd recordings. The viol in the Dutch Republic in the 17^th century culminated in a cd with compositions from that time. The Berlin school in the second half of the 18^th century is another topic that keeps coming back in his researches.

In the realm of that educational position he started a PhD research at docARTES in 2014. The core of this work is of epistemological nature and concentrates on the link of tacit knowledge in the past and in present historically informed performance. For that purpose, a case study is made of the creation of opera, which goes back to 1607-1608 when Claudio Monteverdi worked on his Arianna. The merging of new music and historical performance on period instruments mobilizes a plethora of substudies which all contribute to the central issue of applied knowledge. A first episode in the research process was marked by the production of a new opera, one year in the life of Claudio Monteverdi (the first about this composer), La Tragedia di Claudio M, performed six times in The Netherlands and in the Opera festival of Copenhagen 2018.