String Instruments

The Institute of String Instruments is home to the departments of strings (violin, viola, cello, double-bass), plucked instruments (guitar, dulcimer [hackbrett], harp, zither), the minor in folk music [Volksmusik] and the artistic major Steirische Harmonika. The team of professors and instructors is international in background and widely acclaimed for their artistry and expertise; together, they are able to offer an unusually wide education for all instruments covered by the Institute, and round this off with research into their instruments’ properties, pedagogical aspects of instrumental education and, also, take performance training to the highest level of artistry.

Our students enjoy a good number of projects undertaken in cooperation with the famous orchestra of the city, Bruckner Orchester Linz, and the Music School System of the State of Upper Austria alike, opening up an attractive range of networking and career opportunities even while still a student. In addition, students and professors give concerts side by side, in various chamber music settings, at our home Brucker University, in the lively arts scene in the region, and in Diatonic Expeditions into cutting-edge, creative folk music.

Since the academic year of 2022/23, the Institute is chaired by Director Alexander Maurer – the first person world-wide to achieve the highest post-doctoral academic honours, Habilitation, in Steirische Harmonika.

T. +43 732 701000 560

Alice-Harnoncourt-Platz 1, 4040 Linz

Maurer, Alexander

Assoz.Univ.Prof.

Institute Director

Nova, Sabine

Univ.Prof.

Deputy Institute Director

Schweiger, Verena

Mag.art.

Institute Secretary

T +43 732 701000 374

The Guadagnini violin of the ABU

Since summer 2021, the Anton Bruckner University has been in possession of a particularly valuable string instrument: a 270-year-old violin by Italian violin maker Giovanni Battista Guadagnini. The violin, built in Milan in 1750, was privately owned and was donated to the university. Since then, the precious instrument with its special sound has been made available on loan to one ABU student per academic year. For our students, playing our Guadagnini violin means following in the footsteps of Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, and Régis Pasquier, who brought this violin maker world fame. They feel an immediate connection to a sound tradition that has shaped music history. For scholarship holders, studying at the Bruckner University becomes an experience that uniquely combines the past and the future.