Magazine - iscm.org · Helmut Lachenmann – György Kurtág – György Ligeti Gottfried Michael Koenig – Hans Werner Henze New Music in the Radio and Radio Art New Music is Always

New MusicWorld

Magazine

Contemporary Music in the Federal Republic of Germany – an Overview

Electronic MusicThe German Association for Electroacoustic Music DEGEMThe Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe ZKMExperimentalstudio for Acoustical Art

Ensemble PortraitsEnsemble Modern – Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgartensemble recherche – musikFabrik

Sound Art – “Klangkunst”

On ComposersYounghi Pagh-Paan – Alan Hilario – Jenö Takács – Nam June PaikHelmut Lachenmann – György Kurtág – György LigetiGottfried Michael Koenig – Hans Werner Henze

New Music in the Radio and Radio ArtNew Music is Always Living Radio History: the Radio Series “Living History. Awakening. Retrospects. Courses of Time”Acoustic (Media) Art: Ars Acustica and the Idea of a Unique Art Form for Radio – an Examination of the Historical Conditions in Germany

Views from the neighboursAustria – Luxemburg – Switzerland

The World Music DaysOver Eight Decades of New Music – Does the ISCM World Music Days Festival Need a Revival?

Contemporary Music in Germanyedited by Stefan Fricke for the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM)16July 2006

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Editorial

The probably most emphatic declaration of belief in the New Mu-sic comes from Hermann Scherchen. The native of Berlin (1891–1966), conductor and composer, founder of the “New Music Soci-ety” in Berlin (1919) and of the magazine Melos (1920) specializ-ing in present-day music, member of the jury at the first music fes-tival of the International Society for Contemporary Music in Salz-burg (1923) – the ISCM made him an honorary member in 1961 –wrote in 1940, in truly cruel times, to his wife Xiao Shusien: “Withcontemporary music, the present wishes to present, illuminateand order itself while at the same time confirming, beautifying orjudging what is past; but it also points to the future, leads it in andmakes it become reality. These are the reasons why we must lookcritically at contemporary music, penetrate it […], understand it,get to know it, love it, must fight with it, for it and through it.”

This credo, at the same time an excellent diagnosis of the socialrelevance of the New Music, has lost none of its validity in themore than sixty years since it was written. It appeals to us to oc-cupy ourselves anew, again and again, with the topical ideas inmusic of our contemporaries, to get them a hearing, in order inthis way to broaden our (musical) thinking, to investigate posi-tions, to change attitudes, to experience the undreamt-of, to gath-er experience, also to be delighted and to have fun – world-wide.

In 2006, the ISCM World Music Days takes place in Stuttgart andthus now for the 9th time in Germany (Frankfurt/Main 1927 and1951; Baden-Baden 1955; Cologne 1960; Hamburg 1969; Bonn1977; Cologne – Bonn – Frankfurt/Main 1987; Ruhr District 1995),in a country which holds a unique position in the global musiclandscape, having a distinctive and functioning infrastructure inthe New Music, including the oldest festival world-wide of NewMusic, the Donaueschingen Music Days, founded in 1921. Buthere, too, everything is no longer gold that glitters, if this were ev-er at all true in any sector of contemporary music. Neverthelessthere is here as always a definitely imposing and extraordinarilyactive scene with international radiation. The 16th edition of theWorld New Music Magazine of the ISCM has information on se-lected aspects and phenomena of the New Music in Germany.

Stefan Fricke

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Contents

Contemporary Music in the Federal Republic of Germanyby Stefan Fricke 5

A View from a Neighbour I: Austriaby Wolfgang Liebhart 17

…what we are is nothing, what we seek is everythingThe ensemble rechercheby Georg Waßmuth 19

The German Association for Electroacoustic Music DEGEM 24

The Power from Inside: The Composer Younghi Pagh-Paanby Max Nyffeler 29

Sounds Quest for … the Ensemble Modernby Stefan Fricke 36

A View from a Neighbour II: LuxembourgA Conversation between Sigrid Konrad and Bernhard Günther 41

Sound in MotionThe Experimentalstudio for Acoustical Artby Lydia Jeschke 43

Objections to the Status Quo –On the Music of Alan Hilarioby Stefan Fricke 49

Sounds Typically German – “Klangkunst”by Christoph Metzger 53

Gottfried Michael Koenig 80by Stefan Fricke 59

The Quest for an Unknown VoiceThe Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgartby Annette Eckerle 61

New Music is Always Living Radio HistoryA Conversation between Stefan Fricke and Armin Köhler 65

Meeting with Kurtág in Post-War Budapestby György Ligeti 70

The Sound of TomorrowThe Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe Reinvents Itself with Each New Activityby Achim Heidenreich 74

Congratulations to Hans Werner Henze on his 80th Birthdayby Andreas Krause 78

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Broken, Conjured-Up MagicNotes on a Conversation, for the Greater Part Unpublished, between Helmut Lachenmann, Stefan Fricke and Thomas Schäfer 80

A View from a Neighbour III: SwitzerlandA Conversation on Relationships between Sigrid Konrad and Michael Kunkel 84

Reinhard Oehlschlägel 70by Rainer Nonnenmann 86

Working in the musikFabrikby Rolf W. Stoll 88

Acoustic (Media) Art: Ars Acustica and the Idea of a Unique Art Form for Radio – an Examination of the Historical Conditions in Germanyby Andreas Hagelüken 90

On the Death of György Ligetiby Reinhard Oehlschlägel 103

A Life Dedicated to Contemporary MusicMemories of the Cellist Siegfried Palmby Stefan Drees 106

Jenö Takács (1902–2005)by Wolfgang Liebhart 108

Nam June Paik †by Stefan Fricke 109

Over Eight Decades of New Music – Does the ISCM WORLD MUSIC DAYS Festival Need a Revival?by Richard Tsang 113

ISCM World Music Days & Music Biennial ZagrebZagreb 15–24 April 2005by Andreas Engström 115

Scelsi’s one Note Saves the Day in ZagrebMichael Blake 118

ISCM Addresses 121

Authors 124

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Editor: Stefan Fricke for the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM)

Editorial Board: Michael BlakeAndreas EngströmKeith HamelSigrid Konrad (coord.)John McLachlanPaul SteenhuisenAna Dorota Wladyczka

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ISSN 1019-7117ISBN 978-3-89727-336-8

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www.pfau-verlag.de World New Music Magazine 16 · 5

Contemporary Music in the Federal Republic of Germanyby Stefan Fricke

Variety and Situation

In international comparison, the infrastruc-ture of contemporary music in the FederalRepublic of Germany is unique in its varie-ty. The number of German-language termsalone, synonymous with the “serious” mu-sic of the last hundred years and the per-formance and publication associated withit, is immense and permits a first impres-sion of the broad spectrum of aestheticpresent-day sounds in Germany, e.g. con-temporary music, the music of the 20th/21st Century, modern music, music of our/the times, present-day music, topical oracute music, new or the New Music(sometimes also newest music). This broadfield is enriched by terms mostly coined byjournalists or concert organizers, for someyears by terms wider in content, such assound art, audiovisual art, music perform-ance, acoustic art, listening art, radiopho-nie or Ars acustica, Music in the Net. Thephenomena belonging to them are often tobe found in the border area betweengraphic art and serious music. Theypresent themselves as sounding rooms orobjects and/or play aesthetically with themanifold production technical possibilitiesof the (new) media, transcending the tradi-tional boundaries of artistic genres. Theseforms of expression are also often at homein the area of contemporary music and arepresented at appropriate festivals and of-ten presented as such in the musical press.The same is true of the improvised musicmoving between established jazz and “se-rious” avant-garde, as well as of the so-called New Music Theatre disassociatedwith narrative opera and experiencingmuch acclaim in recent times. In short,contemporary music is neither a stableterm with sharp contours, nor does it de-note an aesthetically precisely marked ter-

rain. Rather, it signifies a remarkably variedproduction of today’s sound art and of theprevious decades, as well as a topicalmany-sided scene, open and becomingmore open, which is fed principally by thespirit of “serious” music – up to now, any-way. For the transitions to successful formsof the considerably more rapidly develop-ing popular music – and vice versa, fromthis to the New Music – are becoming in-creasingly fluid. Former boundaries anddemarcation lines are disappearing rapid-ly, so that the spectrum of what the termcontemporary music denotes will expandeven further in future.

The constantly-growing multiplicity ofaesthetic forms of expression in contem-porary music forms a marked characteristicof our times, a feature which is to be as-sessed positively – never before in the lasthundred years have there been as manyspecial ensembles as there are at the mo-ment. This dynamism of development, no-ticeable especially since the 1980s, is,however, diametrically opposed to an in-creasing dwindling of finances. The im-mense cuts in the area of the arts have notstopped short of contemporary music,which, like any other form of “serious”music (and that through the ages), needsmaterial support per se. Local communi-ties, States and Federation as well a publicradio stations, which have hitherto beenthe financial supports of contemporarymusic in the Federal Republic of Germany,have been reducing their commitment foryears. In this way, an existing, even flour-ishing infrastructure has in many places al-ready been destroyed, in others it is not oris no longer possible to build up a newone to the extent necessary to make possi-ble for the future a musical life adequatefor a cultured society and a musical herit-age for tomorrow. “So if we speak of ‘cul-

6 · World New Music Magazine 16 www.pfau-verlag.de

tural heritage’,” the composer WolfgangRihm judged at the end of the 1990s, “weshould understand that it does not onlymean what is supplied as an inheritancefor consumption and – at best – restora-tion, but principally what we ourselveshand on. A culture which only consumeswhat is available leaves only rubbish as itsmark. But it is exactly this miscalculationwhich at present characterizes the officialeveryday attitude to the arts.”1 And in thisway, this is distancing itself increasinglyfrom a society culturally productive andalive in its times, within which contempo-rary music has a central place. As early asthe mid-eighties, the composer KarlheinzStockhausen formulated a revolutionaryanswer to the question “what status shouldmusic have in general?”, an answer, how-ever, which hitherto has remained a desid-eratum. “The status of music should be toat least five percent the creative produc-tion of New Music (up to the end of the19th Century almost all performed musicwas New Music!) and fifty percent histori-cal orientation and study through perform-ances of traditional music. In a progressivesociety, the proportion should even beseventy-five percent New Music and twen-ty-five percent old music. Otherwise musicwill have no part in spiritual evolution.”2

At the moment, contemporary music isextremely far from such percentages. Andit is very much to be feared that, just as it isenjoying growing stability and acceptancefrom the public, it will be driven into

bankruptcy by a state policy of economyin the arts. More than just the first signs ofthis are already visible, have in part evenbecome reality. Thus the present status ofcontemporary music in the Federal Repub-lic of Germany is shown to be ambivalent.On the one hand, a continuous increase ofcomposers, interpreters, music scientists,producers and publicists can be confirmedin this area, together with a growing publicvery interested in present-day forms ofmusical expression and permitted to ex-amine them at a very high level. On theother hand, this growth in quantity andaesthetics is at present being noticeably re-stricted by drastic financial cuts in publicfunds.

The arts authorities have never consid-ered contemporary music worthy of ex-traordinarily high financial contributions inrelation to the performance industry ofclassic-romantic tradition. Nevetheless, forover five decades they made possible a re-markably fertile breeding-ground onwhich the variety of today was able to de-velop at all. But with today’s economymeasures they are taking away not onlythe security of existence in the arts theythemselves declared necessary, but also fu-ture prospects. Over and above this theyare destroying the unique radiant powerwhich the contemporary musical land-scape of Germany possesses international-ly. Improvements of this precarious situa-tion are at the moment not in sight, the ex-tent of its consequences not yet predicta-ble.

Concert and Festival LandscapePublic Radio

With the Donaueschingen Days of Music,which have taken place annually since1921, the musical life of Germany possess-es not only the oldest festival of contem-porary music in the world, but at the sametime one of the most internationally-re-nowned up to the present day. The festi-

photo: Stefan Fricke


val, which is supported substantially bythe South-West German Radio (SWR, for-merly SWF) in cooperation with the locali-ty and other partners – the internationallyvery influential Witten Days of New Cham-ber Music have also been supported (since1968) by an alliance of West German Radio(WDR) and the locality – are accompaniedby further ones organized solely by publicstations: UltraSchall in Berlin (by Deutsch-landRadio Berlin and RBB, since 1999),Music in the 20th/21st Century of the Saar-land Radio (since 1970) – in 2000, RadioBremen discontinued its pro musica nova,founded in 1961. They are complementedby concert series in contemporary musicpresented by the stations themselves: Mu-sica Viva (Munich, BR, since 1945), Musicof the Times (Cologne, WDR, since 1951),das neue werk (“the new works”) (Ham-burg, NDR, since 1951), Musik unserer Zeit(“Music of our Times”), more recently At-tacca (Stuttgart, SWR, since 1954), Musikder Gegenwart (“Music of the PresentDay”) (Berlin, SFB/RBB, 1955–2005), arsnova (SWR, since 1966), Forum NeueMusik (Frankfurt/Main, HR, since 1989).

If this catalogue of festival and concertseries shows the extraordinary importanceof public radio stations for contemporarymusic in Germany, this is of all the moreweight in the life of the arts because it isprecisely the instrumentalists and vocalistsof the public stations who are particularlycommitted to the creation of present-daymusic – in concerts as in broadcasts, liveor recorded, making the performancesavailable to the public. In addition, each ofthe present public stations employs an ed-itor of contemporary music, some several.They are responsible for each profile ofthe music programmes broadcast in thisfield, as well as for the programmes orient-ed towards the education and politics ofthe arts, providing information once orseveral times a week on the most variedaspects of the New Music. In addition, theyare in charge of contemporary music pro-ductions and festival and concert pro-

grammes. Many editorial offices for NewMusic have developed and realized theirown series of programmes, setting pro-gramming and pedagogical standards forthe communication of contemporary musicand thus reaching an extremely large andbroad public. For example, the series of agood hundred programmes Vom Innenund Außen der Klänge – Die Hörgeschichteder Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts (“On theInside and Outside of Sounds – A Historyfor the Listener of the Music of the 20thCentury”) (2002–2004) and the almost fifty-part series Erlebte Geschichte – Aufbrüche,Rückblicke, Zeitläufe (“Living History –Awakenings, Retrospects, Courses ofTime”) (2006–2007) (both SWR).

At the institutional meeting-point of pro-duction and distribution (including infor-mation and publication) public radio hasproved one of the most important infra-structural pillars of New Music, the rele-vance of which, by means of the comple-mentary programming of projects not con-nected with the station (recordings of con-certs, productions with free ensembles, re-ports and essays by free authors) cannotbe estimated highly enough, at least forthe field of sound radio. In each televisionprogramme, the appearance of contempo-rary music is, in contrast, shrinkingly smalland is becoming smaller. But in the area ofsound radio, too, the tendency is growingto establish contemporary music less firmlyin the programme and in public events

photo: Stefan Fricke


and to withdraw completely even from theestablished cooperation in festivals. Forexample, the directorship of SWR terminat-ed cooperation with the Stuttgart festivalEclat at the beginning of 2005. And it isvery much to be feared that, in the nextfew years, further such quite successfuland livelihood-guaranteeing alliances willbe ended by the radio stations. The exactconsequences for the contemporary musi-cal landscape in Germany cannot be exact-ly predicted in this field. However – andthis requires no special prophesy – this im-mense withdrawal by the radio stations,which is accompanied by an increasing re-duction in the recordings of concerts byother organizers, will tear great holes inthe unique artistic biotope of contempo-rary music, which has so far developed ex-tremely productively. The decade-long ar-tistic commission of the radio people andorganizers, valid and founded on broacast-ing law, is being seriously questioned bythose at the moment responsible and inpart already negatively answered – withdrastic consequences, not only for contem-porary music.

Of course, the German radio stations arenot the only organizers of festivals of NewMusic in the Federal Republic. But becauseof their own orchestras, often very open tocontemporary music, and the particular in-frastructure of the stations, as well as thecommunication competence of their edi-tors and free associates specializing inNew Music, they play a particularly out-standing role in this segment of the festivaland concert business. In addition, it mustbe confirmed that it has always been, andstill is, precisely this unique institutionalcombination of ideas, possibilities and re-alizations that has not only made musicalhistory in recent decades but has lastinglypromoted and is still promoting the devel-opment of music.

In connection to the subject of New Mu-sic and radio stations, it must be notedhere that contemporary serious music hashad as good as no place at all in the pro-

grammes of the many private radio and TVstations in Germany.

Communities, States and Federation

In almost every large German city, as wellas in several smaller cities and communi-ties, famous festivals, concert series and/orinitiatives for contemporary music can befound. It must even be confirmed thatthese increased rather than decreased inthe course of the 1980s. Over a hundredsuch activities in communities of most var-ied nature can be listed. Many of them areonly short-lived, others on the other handhave existed for many years and havethemselves become institutions. (Otherlarge-format events such as the Baltic SeaBiennial of Sound Art, every two yearssince 2004 – or the great Berlin sound artretrospective sonambiente – 1996 and2006 – place in the centre of their pro-grammes exclusively works of an elaborat-ed concept of music and art, thus goingbeyond the scope of a normal festival.)Occasionally, contemporary music is inte-grated into community festivals, music fes-tivals or concert series, so that it forms apillar of the programme beside other mu-sic forms. As examples of this, the Interna-tional Beethoven Festival Bonn, the Co-logne Musik Triennale or the DüsseldorfAltstadt-Herbst (“Autumn in the Old City”)might be mentioned.

At music festivals orientated to the re-gion, for example the Schleswig-HolsteinMusic Festival, the Music Festival Saar orthematic projects such as the Piano FestivalRuhr, contemporary material, together withbrand-new and older material is also oftenon the programme. The same is true ofevents with several genres of art, like theBerlin Festival Weeks, in which contempo-rary music forms a central point on theprogramme side by side with other artisticprojects. Even if these mixed-conceptevents are financially (still) well-equipped,with their own infrastructure, festivals con-


centrating purely on contemporary musicin very varied cities and which are basedon the initiative of single persons or of as-sociations often have a hard time holdingtheir own over a longer period. They sel-dom have continuous financial means attheir disposal, which deprives them ofplanning security, and often events alreadyplanned have to be cancelled. On accountof the empty public coffers, the organizershave for years had to see about arts spon-soring and patronage. The acquisition offunds from the business world or partlyfrom foundations close to it conditions theexistence of contemporary music events.Certainly, all possibilities here have by nomeans been exhausted yet. However, busi-ness and industry, patrons and foundations– apart from a few exceptions, of course –have shown hitherto no particular interestin contemporary music. Also the questionarises here as to whether the Federal Re-public of Germany, which calls itself a na-tion of culture, and whose present govern-ment would like to add to the Constitutionthe attested right to culture, is willing to fi-

nance its duties in this respect from otherthan tax revenues. At least the Federation,as lately as 2002, installed a Festival ofTopical Music, the MaerzMusik within theBerlin Festival, which it wholly finances,and this “Music in the Month of March” be-longs to the best-equipped festivals withinthe contemporary musical scene. On theother hand, others, like the Inventionenfounded in the 1980s, which is producedby the DAAD (German Academic Ex-change Service, Artists-in-Berlin pro-gramme) together with the Technical Uni-versity of Berlin – to name just one exam-ple – must work with steadily dwindlingbudgets. At the same time it must be re-corded positively that, with the establish-ing of the Federal Cultural Foundation inHalle/Saale, some festivals of New Musicand sound art have at times been support-ed lastingly, some have been made possi-ble at all by this. This institution, createdand supported by the Federation, belongswithout doubt to the most important andfinancially strongest instruments of promo-tion of the New Music, and in addition de-velops its own programmes.

Orchestras and Free Ensembles

The presently still existing 120 German artsorchestras financed by the communities orby the Federal States (only very seldom bythe Federation itself) and in whose reper-toires contemporary music is also to befound – however, in varied concentrations– are struggling against constantly shrink-ing budgets at the same time (e.g. by edu-cation projects) against the decrease innumbers of season-ticket holders. Many ofthese orchestras are very much committedto contemporary music, others occasional-ly play works composed in the last hun-dred years, others again not at all. The rea-sons for this are manifold; they lie partly inthe disinterest of some orchestra members,partly with the conductors engaged andwith programme arrangers. Here, much

Dieter Schnebel at the Baltic Sea Biennial of Sound Art, photo: Stefan Fricke


could and must be improved in order thatpresent-day music can take its appropriateplace in society. This is in analogy true forthe musical theatre business, whose mainemphasis is on the repertoire of the 19thCentury.

The greater part of performances ofpresent-day music is done by the 200-plusfree ensembles resident in the Federal Re-public which have specialized in the per-formance of contemporary music, amongwhich an average of 1.7 first performancesper day were given in 2005 and 2006. Inspite of this great and future-oriented com-mitment, only extremely few ensembleswork on a more or less solid financial ba-sis. Among these at the moment are theEnsemble Modern (Frankfurt/Main), themusikFabrik NRW (Cologne), the Ensem-ble Recherche (Freiburg i. Br.) and theNeue Vocalsolisten (Stuttgart). All other en-sembles, among them many international-ly-renowned, must struggle for survival; astruggle which many ensembles have lostin recent years, and which further oneswill also lose if the infrastructure does notchange for the better. Seen in general,however, the number of new ensembles iseven increasing, which nevertheless mustnot hide the dominant desolate pecuniarysituation of most formations. Here, newand lasting conceptions for financing andpromotion must urgently be developed.

Publicity – Archives

Apart from regular reports in diverse radioprogrammes- some dedicated completelyto contemporary music – of German radiostations and the equally regular articles inthe arts supplements of German daily pa-pers – which, all told have become rarer inrecent years –, information on the NewMusic is mainly to be found in specialistmagazines which report mainly or exclu-sively on it. Among these are the NeueZeitschrift für Musik, founded in 1834 (sixissues per year; Mainz), the Neue Musikzei-

tung (since 1952; eleven issues; Regens-burg), the MusikTexte (since 1983; five is-sues; Cologne) and Musik & Ästhetik (since1997; four issues; Horben). Some of themmaintain their own topical Internet portal,for example the Neue Zeitschrift für Musikhas the information site www.musik-derzeit.de. In addition there are numerousimportant and interesting portals andhomepages on contemporary music to befound in the Internet, maintained partly bypublishers, associations, societies, concertorganizers and other institutions, but partlyalso by private persons (see, for examplewww.beckmesser.de). Worth mentioningis also the magazine KunstMusik (Co-logne) which has appeared half-yearlysince 2003 and gathers together exclusive-ly (auto-)poetological contributions fromcomposers and sound artists. Incidentally,the very extensive programme publica-tions of various festivals also contain basicinformation on the (aesthetic, political, so-cial…) aspects of New Music.

An ambitious publication project whichis also at home in Germany is the interna-tionally-orientated encyclopaedia Kompo-nisten der Gegenwart (“Present-Day Com-posers”), which since 1992 has been pub-lishing continuously the biographies of

Karlheinz Stockhausen 1962 at the electroacou-stic studio of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Colognephoto: © WDR Cologne


composers plus comprehensive introduc-tions to their work (Edition text + kritik,Munich). Just as informative, primarily inthe area of music science is the twelve-vol-ume Handbuch der Musik im 20. Jahrhun-dert (1999–2008), presenting larger subjectcomplexes on contemporary music in con-nection with each other (Laaber-Verlag,Laaber). Besides the great German musicpublishers or those represented by abranch in Germany, long established andprincipally in the area of printed music,e.g. Bärenreiter (Kassel), Boosey &Hawkes/Bote + Bock (Berlin), Ricordi(Munich), Schott (Mainz), Sikorski (Ham-burg), Breitkopf & Härtel (Wiesbaden) orPeters (Frankfurt/Main), there is a series ofsmaller publishers committed to contem-porary music, e.g. the Edition Modern/TreMedia (Karlsruhe) or the Edition JulianeKlein (Wedel). But many composers tendto publish their scores privately. In the ar-ea of books on contemporary music, thefollowing publishers deserve special men-tion: the Pfau-Verlag (Saarbrücken), theWolke-Verlag (Hofheim) and the Kehrer-Verlag (Heidelberg), specializing in litera-ture on sound art. The great literature andnon-fiction publishers only very seldomproduce books on the New Music, just asthe great popular magazines report on itonly very sparsely (which, incidentally,was otherwise in the 1960s and 1970s.)

In the area of the recording industry, themost important German labels concentrat-ing entirely or considerably on contempo-rary music are, among others, Wergo(Mainz), col legno (Munich), Cybele (Düs-seldorf) Edition Zeitklang (Adenbüttel),Edition RZ (Berlin), Maria de Alvear WorldEdition (Cologne). And the German MusicCouncil issues two CD series of its own:

a) since 1986, the Edition ZeitgenössischeMusik (“Contemporary Music Edition”),which meanwhile includes over sixty por-trait CDs of German composers, male andfemale (issued by Wergo, Mainz). This se-ries is extended annually by around one ortwo portraits; the composers, who can

themselves apply to be included, are se-lected by a jury appointed by the GermanMusic Council. The musical compilation ofthe CD (including booklet) lies in thehands of the composer selected.

b) the edition Musik in Deutschland1950–2000 documents the developmentof contemporary music in the two Germanstates (German Democratic Republic andFederal Republic of Germany) up to 1990as well as in the united Germany to theturn of the millennium. It consists of sixsubject areas: concert music, electronicmusic, music theatre, applied music, jazzand popular music. Besides works by Ger-man composers, the edition also presentspieces by composers of other nationalitiesas far as Germany was the main area oftheir activity or their œuvre was importantfor the development of music in Germany.The management of the edition – Her-

Cover of the yearbooks of the German ISCM sec-tion which between 1957 and 1981 documented almost all activities of New Music in the Federal Republic of Germany


mann Danuser and Frank Schneider, to-gether with a scientific advisory committee– appoints per CD an author, usually a mu-sic scientist or music journalist specializingin the appropriate subject, to select themusic and write the booklet commentarywhich is always particularly exhaustive.The project, aimed at producing more than160 CDs in all, will be concluded in 2008(appears at BMG Classics, Munich).

Two important archives specializing incontemporary music are the Darmstadt In-ternational Music Institute, at the sametime the German information centre forcontemporary music with a comprehen-sive special library, and the Dresden Cen-tre for Contemporary Music. Darmstadt isalso the home of the Jazz Institute with alarge thematic research archive on impro-vised music. In addition, various acade-mies such as the Academy of the Arts Ber-lin possess comprehensive legacies of var-ious modern composers, interpreters andmusic scientists.

Training

Numerous activities in the field of contem-porary music take place in the more than20 music colleges in Germany with numer-ous branches in further cities, all offeringstudies in composition – many also have acourse in electronic or electroacoustic mu-sic. These, however, are seldom organizedinto special courses in New Music or con-centrated in a college institute of New Mu-sic. In the comparison of colleges, a verylarge difference is apparent in the extent towhich contemporary music is taught. Inthe final analysis, it depends on the com-mitment of the teaching staff – but ofcourse also of the students. Thus college-related centres of New Music can tempo-rarily vary greatly. Contemporary music isalso taught at some municipal musicschools, for example the RheinischeMusikschule in Cologne. But there is noschool of music in Germany concentrating

its teaching exclusively on contemporarymusic, nor any institute of music science ata German university devoting research andteaching exclusively to this subject. At leastthe Institute of Musical Science at the Uni-versity of Cologne has had a Chair of “Mu-sic in the 20th/21st Century” since the1990s; it is at the moment the only one inGermany. Certainly, a great interest in con-temporary music, resulting in growingnumbers of dissertations and theses on thesubject for the master’s degree and fordoctorates, can be found at the moment inacademic music science, which has beenincreasingly reduced nationwide for someyears (many institutes will be closed in thenear future).

Up to now, the College of Media in Co-logne, the College of Art in Brunswick andthe College of Art Saar have organized spe-cial courses of study in the area of soundart and audiovisual art. The course ofstudy “Soundstudies”, organized at theUniversity of Art in Berlin in 2002, howev-er, does not only promote the training ofthe free sound artist; here, acoustic possi-

28th International Summer Course for New Music, Darmstadt 1976, lecture by György Ligetiphoto: Manfred Melzer© Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD)


bilities and forms of participation applica-ble to economic-industrial life are alsotaught.

In general, similar projects having as acentral practical or theoretical theme, forexample the relationship between NewMusic and architecture, sound design,sound art and radio art, are meanwhile tobe found at numerous academic colleges,if often only selective in the form of spe-cial teaching posts or guest professorships.In addition, their existence depends great-ly on the interests of each professor ordean responsible for temporary lecture-ships.

At this point the situation of electronic orelectroacoustic music in Germany, whichfor years was able to claim an internation-ally outstanding position, also deservesparticular comment. Whereas in the 1950sand 1960s several studios of electronic mu-sic were established at radio stations andcolleges, the new millennium was accom-panied by widespread closing or partialclosing of these institutions. The reasonsfor this are very varied – lack of money,new conditions of production and newpossibilities of realization. For the near fu-ture, it is a matter of observing develop-ments in this sector very sensitively andcritically and reacting in time to ill-consid-ered and precipitate changes. Neverthe-less, the Artists-in-Berlin programme of theGAES 2001 at the Technical University ofBerlin has made possible the establish-ment of the Edgard Varèse Guest Profes-sorship in electronic music and computermusic, which is held for one semester inturn by an internationally renowned com-poser or theorist.

The International Summer Course forNew Music in Darmstadt, founded in 1946and unique world-wide, belongs to the ex-ceptions within the field of training in con-temporary music in Germany. Here everytwo years, around 300 students are taughtthe subjects composition, interpretationand musicology by around two dozen lec-turers for two weeks. On their own initia-

tive, the Ensemble Modern, founded in1980, have established the InternationalEnsemble Modern Academy in Frankfurt/Main in order to pass on in the frameworkof aesthetic interdisciplinary forums theirexperience in dealing with New Music. Inaddition, there has existed since 2004 theEnsemble Academy Freiburg of the ensem-ble recherche, in whose events – partly incooperation with the Freiburg Baroque Or-chestra – practical and theoretical aspectsof contemporary music are also taught. Afurther important free teaching institutionis the Institute of New Music and MusicalEducation in Darmstadt which has con-ducted work conferences lasting severaldays once a year since 1946, in which aes-thetic and pedagogical positions on con-temporary music are conveyed. In addi-tion, the German section of the Interna-tional Society for Contemporary Music (IS-CM), in cooperation with the EnsembleModern, has organized almost every yearsince 1996 a forum specializing in contem-porary music for the new generation of

Cover of the “Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik”


young composers, interpreters and musi-cologists, offering the participants the pos-

sibility of applying and testing their talentsin a concrete practical context, and devel-oping further their knowledge and ideas incooperation with different lecturers.

All these central institutions and initia-tives for the specialized training in contem-porary music in Germany – the list couldand must be complemented by severalsmaller, mostly temporary platforms andproject-oriented undertakings – are onshaky legs on account of the momentarypolicy of economy in Germany. The con-tinuation and further development of emi-nently important, ambitious and alreadysuccessful projects is threatened.

Associations – Societies – Initiatives

The Association for New Music e.V.(GNM) and the German section of the In-ternational Society for Contemporary Mu-sic (ISCM) is the oldest (since 1922) andlargest umbrella organization of all inter-ested persons and interest groups in con-temporary music in Germany. Membersare private individuals from varied profes-sions, as well as several institutions andfirms (radio stations, concert halls, socie-ties, publishers). In various cities and re-

gions (e.g. Berlin, Frankfurt/Main, Ham-burg, Cologne, Munich, the Ruhr), theGNM has so-called regional groups en-gaged intensively in promoting contempo-rary music in concerts and in aestheticallyand cultural-politically oriented discussiongroups. The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ele-ktroakustische Musik (DEGEM) (“GermanAssociation for Electroacoustical Music”),members of which come from the area ofelectronic or electroacoustic music, andwhich maintains its own CD series (ap-pearing at Cybele, Düsseldorf), is a mem-ber of the GNM, which itself is a memberof the German Music Council, which it ad-vises on questions of contemporary music.Over and above this, the GNM; or one ofits members has already organized the an-nual World Music Days of the ISM in Ger-many several times (last time in Stuttgart inJuly 2006, in overall charge realized byMusik der Jahrhunderte (“Music of theCenturies”).

Altogether, the number of societies andinitiatives in contemporary music in Ger-many is very large; they can be found innearly every town. Many are active locallyor regionally, others – like the GNM – tothe greatest possible extent nationally andinternationally. The spectrum ranges fromthe Institut für Klangkunst (Berlin), Freun-de Guter Musik (Berlin), via projektgruppeneue musik (Bremen), Aktive Musik (Es-sen/Duisburg), Initiative Musik und Infor-matik (GMIK, Cologne), musica nova(Leipzig) to Klang Projekte (Weimar). Sev-eral of these initiatives, varied in their con-tent, are only short-lived; on the otherhand, new ones come into being continu-ally, partly with other conceptions and ide-as. After all, contemporary music, like allpresent-day art forms, is not a rigid con-struction but is constantly changing andwith it the enterprises, which are almost al-ways based on private initiatives. Furtherinformation, constantly up-dated, on thehomepage of the Music Information Centre(MIZ) in Bonn – see www.miz.org.

Solf Schaefer, director of the International Music Institute Darmstadt and the composer Wolfgang Rihm, photo: Stefan Fricke


Prizes – Grants – Promotion

Contemporary music in Germany, like themodern forms of expression in the otherarts, knows many prizes, grants and formsof promotion, as well as the temporary po-sition of a composer-in-residence, oftenpublicly advertised. They cannot all be list-ed here individually, as many have beengiven up (compulsorily), but new onesarise in their place, others are in the courseof developing. Detailed information aboutthem can be found on the homepage ofthe Music Information Centre (MIZ) inBonn – see www.miz.org. It arrangesmany links in this matter enabling a surveyto be made of the number and kinds ofpromotion possibilities in contemporarymusic in Germany. Projects in contempo-rary music are promoted in the frameworkof their requirements – with financial orcash value means – primarily by institu-tions such as the Kulturstiftung des Bundes(“Federal Arts Foundation”) (Halle), Zen-trum für Kunst und Medientechnologie(“Centre for Art and Media Technology”)Karlsruhe (ZKM) (work grants), Karl Sczu-ka Prize for Acoustic Art (at South-WestGerman Radio, Baden-Baden), the Ger-man Sound Art Prize (Marl Museum ofSculpture), the Sound Art Grant of the Ber-lin Senate, the foundations of each FederalState, various arts foundations of Germanbusiness firms (e.g. Siemens, Allianz,Deutsche Bank) and the Concert of theGerman Music Council.

The Public – The Prospects – The Balance

Contemporary music in Germany is nolonger purely art in a niche. The numberof those in this country who are interestedin topical, advanced-subtle art sound pro-ductions, who listen to them and have acritical look at them, is growing constantly,especially recently. Present-day music hasfound its public in spite of all prophecies

to the contrary. One must meantime speakof more than one public, the topical formsof musical articulation being so manifold,many-coloured and different, reflectingour times and the parallel worlds aroundus with the aesthetic means of today. Thisdevelopment, to be evaluated as extremelypositive, is the result of decades of com-mitment by composers, interpreters, musi-cologists, agents and event organizers. Acommitment which of course must not beallowed to break off, if the biotope of new,successful music is not to be endangeredjust as it has become capable of life. Acommitment which continues to needbroad support, for which at the same timepermanent material as well as idealisticpromotion by society is necessary.

Of course, the social-economic infra-structures of contemporary music in Ger-many are neither desolate nor underdevel-oped. But we must by no means be satis-fied with these findings. The time it takesto fell a tree stands in no relation to thedecades of its growing. The subject of“Contemporary Music in Society”, whichhas always been a fragile one, is in con-stant need of attention, care and commit-ment, vision, imagination and the best pos-sible basic structures.

Here, it is a matter of designing inde-pendent as well as future-oriented concep-tions for the New Music at different levels,of discussing them and finally also of an-choring them in society as a whole. But weshould not wait too long to do so.

Translation: John A. Hannah

Notes

1 Wolfgang Rihm, Bemerkungen zur Autorschaftin Kunst, Kultur und Staat, in: Musik-Kulturheute. Bärenreiter-Almanach, Kassel 1998, p. 10.

2 Die globale Verschmutzung mit Abfallmusik.Karlheinz Stockhausens Antworten auf einen Fra-gebogen der UNESCO, in: Frankfurter AllgemeineZeitung, March 29th 1986.


A View from a Neighbour I: Austriaby Wolfgang Liebhart

“America, you are better off!” – this quota-tion – this quotation comes from JohannWolfgang von Goethe’s poem To the Unit-ed States (original: Den Vereinigten Staat-en). There the poet refers to the reputedlightness of being in the USA, which at thattime looked back on a yet relatively shorthistory. Among Austrian artists as well aseconomists an adaptation of this phraseexists which shall be examined below: Ifyou want to become somebody in Austria,go to Germany! But can this kind of self-image – “Germany, you are better off!” –be upheld in this days?

Since at least the Austrian “Anschluss”(connection) to Nazi Germany in 1938, inthe remainder of the once so powerfulDanube monarchy there is something likea paranoid anxiety of becoming dominat-ed again by the large northern neighbour(anyhow about 8 million Austrians facesome 80 million Germans). And this notonly in political or economic, but above allin linguistic and cultural respects.

Apropos language! According to the Vi-ennese author Karl Kraus the most appre-ciable difference between the neighbour-ing countries is their common language.Though in Austria there always has beenan anticipatory obeisance concerning thevarious orthographic reforms, in terms oforiginal Austrian expressions, however, theconsciousness of Austrian identity canreach degrees – beyond all politicalbounds –, that nearly reminds of guerrillamovements. In no way are people in thiscountry willing to accept – at least notwithout a struggle – that the Austrian iden-tity is undermined by forced German con-cepts. Yet not only linguistically, but alsoeconomically both countries are connectedclosely. Germany’s economic miracle ofthe fifties and sixties is now in the past.Since the German Unification in 1989 the

economy continuously got worse – whomwould this have surprised? Perhaps onlythe Austrians who emigrated to the north-ern neighbour country in the post-war pe-riod in order to participate in the boom.Now, at the beginning of the 21st Century,many Germans are coming to Austria, theformer “Kakanien”, as foreign workers,which is recognized here with a certainsatisfaction.

Such successes are very important forthe Austrian identity, as they still are rareenough (after all one of the last ones datesalmost thirty years back – the 3:2 victory ofthe Austrian national team on the Germancounterpart in the soccer world champion-ship 1978 in Córdoba, Argentina).

A career, however, can be made on bothsides, in the boardrooms of internationalcompanies. In large German groups, me-dia business etc. some “Ösis” (Austrians)are in the driver’s seat, and vice versa, lat-ter almost always in the beginning is at-tended by a certain grumbling, but in theend the Austrians bow to their fate, andthe initial displeasure swiftly yields to fatal-ism.

Similar mechanisms can be found in thebilateral cultural and political contacts be-tween

Austria and Germany, as both countriesare connected by narrow cultural and po-litical common points. An age-long sharedhistory, continuous debates over decadeson a large and a small German solution inthe 19th Century, the circumstances of theAustrian Anschluss to Nazi-Germany in1938 under threat of violence, but alsojoined by large jubilation of thousands ofthe later “Ostmärker”; the political careerof Adolf Hitler, out of whom the Austriansgladly make a German – all this has leftbehind traces, and also wounds. Neitherthe time of national-socialism nor the sep-


aration after 1945 was entirely workedthrough in both countries. Since that timeAustria always endeavoured to maintainthe myth of a “liberated” country, Germa-ny on the other hand was regarded as aconquered nation. Who would be sur-prised on the fact that the different ways ofdealing with the Nazi past often burdenedseverely the bilateral relationship?

In the economic as well as in the culturalfield, there is something like a healthycompetition, if there wasn’t just always thisnon-self-confident Austrian anxiety of be-ing dominated by the large neighbour.Prejudices and clichés on both sides con-stantly lead to ambivalent tensions be-tween mutual ingratiation and rejection.

In the 1920s Arnold Schoenberg prophe-sied “German music” an at least centennialpredominance. As recent developmentsshow, this politically incorrect and loftystatement did not prove true, except per-haps in matters of the relationship be-tween Austria and Germany. While Aus-tria, motivated by its rejection of NationalSocialism, almost entirely banished itscomposer elite after World War II, Germa-ny (then West Germany) quickly filled itsNew Music vacuum with a young compos-ers’ avant-garde. And, extremely importantfestivals were founded.

Austria today can boast of only one sig-nificant contemporary music festival,namely Wien Modern. The second festival,Hörgänge, was already programmed todeath years ago.

In the middle of the 1990s, favouredthrough a generous government aid sys-tem, in Austria the number of first per-formances in all kind of New Music in-creased strongly. There was a specialboom of experimental music theatre. Sup-port not only took place by commissioningcompositions but also by financing numer-ous ensembles that offered a broad aes-thetic spectrum to a large, interested audi-ence. Now, some ten years later, not muchof all that can be perceived. Extensiveeconomy in the culture budgets of the last

years led to great changes in the culturalpolicy. First-class ensembles had to giveup, because the financial ground was cutfrom under their feet. The remaining, apartfrom the renowned klangforum, arestrongly restricted in their activities. Plural-ism in the Austrian music scene disap-peared in favour of a musical monoculturethat eventually reflects a distorted pictureof Austrian contemporary music output.

In contrast since 1945 the music scene ofour neighbour developed continuouslyand became a leader in the field of con-temporary music in Europe. In order to beperceived as an Austrian composer in Ger-many, it is indispensable to be representedwith works at least at the Summer Courseat Darmstadt and/or the DonaueschingenMusic Days. Because the music scenethere is on a much larger scale lobbiesseem to be less influential than they are inAustria. Does Austria after all just play therole of a province, that only throws an en-vious glance at the alleged “cultural Mec-ca” Germany? Current events aroundawarding or not the Düsseldorf HeinrichHeine Prize to the Austrian author PeterHandke leave doubts about that. An inde-pendent jury justified its choice with theargument, that Handke “stubborn likeHeinrich Heine pursues in his work hisway to an open truth”. What followed thejury’s decision, though, was an unsavouryprovincial farce. It came to a downrightchase and media execution of the laureate,who was unfairly accused to have playeddown the war crimes of Slobodan Milose-vic. Once more, by defamation of an artist,it came to an attack on the right of thefreedom of speech on part of conservativeprovincial politicians. The virus of the pet-ty bourgeois knows no bounds. Somehowcalming, isn’t it?


The German Association for Electroacoustic Music DEGEM

The German Association for Electroacous-tic Music “DEGEM” was founded in Berlinon April 26th, 1991 as “DecimE – Con-féderation Internationale de Musique Elec-troacoustique”. It is a member of the Ger-man Music Council and of the GermanISCM-Section.

The DEGEM promotes electroacousticmusic in a national as well as in an interna-tional context. The organisation of specialconferences, courses and concerts, the in-ternational exchange of information aswell as the publication of writings andsound storage media serve this aim. It isactively engaged in the annual internation-al conference SMC (Sound and MusicComputing). And since June 2005, theDEGEM provides, in technical cooperationwith the Centre of Art and Media Technol-ogy (ZKM), Karlsruhe, a webradio channelpresenting an interesting spectrum of pro-grammes all in some way or other con-cerned with electroacoustic art. The Web-Radio’s homepage can be visited underwww.degem.de/webradio.

The contents of DEGEM WebRadio areclassified in diverse categories such as liverecordings of concerts, conferences, por-traits of studios, projects and researchprojects, composers’ portraits as well asfeatures concerned with topical discus-sions. Furthermore, broadcasting time isreserved for reports on festivals, confer-ences congresses and exhibitions as wellas productions taken from archives of elec-troacoustic music.

This offer aims at providing a platformfor electroacoustic music of all styles andgenres. Here, electroacoustic art may belistened to, discussed and reflected in thecontext of current performances. Privateelectronical studios as well as universitystudios offer space for presenting theirwork; there will be portraits of musicians

and composers, labels and projects, re-search programmes and current events.

Supported by the ZKM, the WebRadioarchive has been created to compile theprogramme contributions of the WebRa-dio. The archive will also be open to thepublic. It supplements the DEGEM ar-chive, which has been created in coopera-tion with the ZKM Karlsruhe and collects,for the first time, all productions of electro-

DEGEM Publications

Internationale Dokumentation Elektroakusti-scher Musik (18000 works, 380 studios), Saar-brücken: Pfau 1996.

Die Analyse elektroakustischer Musik – eineHerausforderung an die Musikwissenschaft?.Contributions by K. Ebbeke, G. M. Koenig, E.Ungeheuer, D. Reith, K.-E. Ziegenrücker, A.Ruschkowski, J. Stenzl und Th. Nagel, Saar-brücken: Pfau 1991/1997.

Quarterly Messages containing informationfrom all areas of EM incl. an internationalschedule of events. The 45 editions pu-blished from 1991 till 2003 have been sent toall members and subscribers as well as to in-formation centers and institutions of interna-tional importance. Please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

CD with 6 productions by the studio of the Aka-demie der Künste in Berlin (1992).

CD series CD01–08 (since 1995) containingworks by members and guests. See www.cy-bele.de.

CD-ROM Klangkunst in Deutschland (SoundArt in Germany) with works by W. Cee, M.Harenberg, R. Minard, J. Ravenna, J. S. Sister-manns, S. Schäfer/J. Krebs, Mainz: Schott/Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 2000. Seewww.musikderzeit.de.

CD-ROM Netzmusik (Net Music) on the topic ofmusical creation in the internet, Mainz:Schott/Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 2004. Seewww.musikderzeit.de.

DVD 50 Jahre Elektronisches Studio der TU Ber-lin (50 Years Studio TU Berlin), Albany(N.Y.): EMF Media 2005. See www.emf.org.


acoustic music created/composed in Ger-many, rendering them publicly available.

The DEGEM’s work is altruistic and pur-sues exclusively non-profit aims. It is fi-nanced exclusively from member’s contri-butions and donations.

Persons as well as institutions, especiallycomposers, musical scientists, recordingand sound engineers, interpreters, ensem-bles, studios as well as institutions and na-tional and international organizers may ap-ply for membership in the DEGEM. It aimsto reach all persons composing, playing,

teaching, learning, researching on, per-forming, organising and promoting elec-troacoustic music. The DEGEM is an offi-cial partner of the ISCM World New MusicFestival 2006 in Stuttgart presenting vari-ous projects of electroacoustic art. TheDEGEM WebRadio is also involved as amedia partner of the ISCM World New Mu-sic Festival 2006 preparing and reinforcingof projects as well as broadcasting of topi-cal reports.

www.degem.de

The DEGEM CD “90 Seconds of Reality”

The concept of reality is beyond definition.In the 13th Century, when Meister Eckarttranslated the Latin “actualitas” into theGerman “Wirksamkeit” (“actuality”), themystic was not considering the current ver-nacular and the term “reality,” which hasbeen a guiding force in our common lan-guage since the 18th Century. He wasthinking much more about the results ofeffecting or acting. Music – regardless ofhow one would like to define it – is some-thing that always exists as the result of aparticular deed. Music – indeed, art in gen-eral – does not simply exist; it is not natu-ral. Music requires the craftsman, the crea-tor, the composer, the musician, the onewho is acting or effecting, in order for it tocome about. John Cage – and a few beforehim – taught us that there is no silence inthe world, that an acoustic void is nothingbut an illusion, a pious hope. Something isalways making sound. The unpremeditat-ed sounds around us, which are the resultof something moving, is what he called si-lence. The world abounds with sounds forus to hear in order that we should experi-ence something from the world, somethingmore than we otherwise might. And this iswhat we have been doing since time im-

memorial – albeit incompletely and ofcourse not on a global scale, but we do itmore frequently and in a more concentrat-ed way, perhaps than ever before. And wedo it with an extraordinarily advanced un-derstanding of music. This is because eve-rything in our acoustic environment couldbe considered music. At the very least, allthe sounds around us have had the poten-tial to become music ever since we mas-tered the ability to capture, record and re-produce any sonic event at any time andin any place. With these sounds we take


action, create works, construct objectivitiesfrom realities, produce actualities, demandaction from listeners as to whether thatwhich is to be heard is to be affirmed orrejected, make offers, formulate new reali-ties, and make music out of all that exists.At the beginning of the 17th Century, an-other German mystic, Jakob Böhme, saidthat “Every thing speaks its own revela-tion.” The shoemaker from Görlitz thus es-tablished a tradition of investigation andinvention, which through Joseph vonEichendorf, Oskar Fischinger, John Cage,Marcel Duchamp and a number of others

has forever changed the way art is created:the aesthetic investigation of the everydayin terms of the concreteness of its objects,the remixing of actualities so as to makethem effective, in order that we may com-prehend them as realities. The German As-sociation for Electroacoustic Music presentsthe compact disk 90 Seconds of Reality forjust such a purpose. It’s about miniatures,shards of reality, each about 90 seconds induration, each disclosing what it is, eacheffecting precisely which reality has be-come an artistic actuality.

Stefan Fricke

The DEGEM DVD “50 Years Studio TU Berlin”

The Electronic Studio at the Technical Uni-versity (TU) in Berlin celebrates its 50thanniversary in 2004. The conditions for anelectronic music studio began to material-ize around 1949 when Hans Heinz Stuck-enschmidt assumed his professorship inmusic history. Initially the task was to in-troduce samples of music and sound intolectures, using audiotape players andrecord players in a specially designed “stu-dio lecture room.” However, Fritz Winckel,lecturer in the music history departmentsince 1952, had more in mind. In 1954 heorganized a series of lectures on the topicof “music and technology” in which it islikely that Berlin’s very first electronic con-cert was held. Beginning in the winter se-mester of 1954/55 he offered the lectureentitled “Studio Technology” and enabledthe first studio production, specifically forthe “Mechanisches Theater” (MechanicalTheatre), a puppet show created by HarryKramer, with tape music in the style of Mu-sique concrète composed by WilfriedSchröpfer.

The succeeding years were distinguishedby fund raising efforts for the creation of a

research and production studio. In an ex-emplary act of initiative, Winckel managedto construct a “universal mixing desk” andfashion the first of the studio devices. In1957 he was named Professor and beganlecturing on the scientific basis of languageand music. In 1958 Boris Blacher began toexperiment with the possibilities the studiooffered. Around 1961, the spatial, techno-logical and personnel-related aspects ofthe studio were merged and it becamepossible to initiate an archive for “experi-mental” music and organize regular indus-try exhibitions for studio technology. WithBlacher as his guest, Stuckenschmidt be-gan the first in his legendary series Musikim technischen Zeitalter (Music in the Ageof Technology), which was produced andbroadcast by SFB television.

The time from 1964 to 1970 was signifi-cantly shaped by the “Arbeitskreis für elek-tronische Musik” (Workgroup for Experi-mental Music, comprised of Blacher,Krause, Rüfer, Winckel). Aside from con-tinued activities with electroacoustic mu-sic, Winckel organized concerts and pres-tigious international conventions (1964,


1968). Following the first quadraphonictape work Skalen 2:3:4 by Boris Blacher in1964, the studio, led by the Tonmeister Rü-diger Rüfer in 1966, realized 1966 Blacher’sZwischenfälle bei einer Notlandung (Inci-dents of an Emergency Landing) for theHamburg Staatsoper, where for the firsttime entire scenes were designed only formusic from speakers, and 1970 Musik fürOsaka, a spatial work for the sphericalGerman pavilion at the Osaka World’s Fair.

1970 was a year of unstable transform inthe field. The TU studio was seriously en-dangered in 1975 when Blacher died, Win-kel retired and Rüfer left Berlin. ManfredKrause was the last remaining lecturer andguardian of the department, supported bythe new studio head Folkmar Hein and In-grid Bihler, who were on staff as research-ers and lecturers.

In 1975 Frank Michael Beyer, Professorof Composition at the Hochschule derKünste (former HdK, today: UdK = Univer-sity of Arts), and Folkmar Hein foundedthe group “Klangwerkstatt” (Sound Work-shop). The lasting success of this phase isevidenced by the continuation of thecourse of study, which at the time wascontractually secured in a joint effort be-tween the TU and the HdK and led to theappointment of Manfred Krause as Profes-sor of Communication Science in 1979.

The Electronic Studio was first openedup by virtue of its contacts to the interna-tional world of electroacoustic music,achieved mainly by the efforts of HerbertBrün and Jozef Patkowski, both guest pro-fessors at the HdK teaching in the TU stu-dio and the cooperation developed withthe Artists-in-Berlin programme of theDAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Aus-tauschdienst, i.e. German Academic Ex-change Service). The concerts and studioproductions which resulted around thetime of 1980 can be distinguished as a ver-itable breakthrough for the TU studio, withfar-reaching effects, including the estab-lishment of the “Inventionen” festival in1982. By 1984, the world of computer mu-

sic began to be thoroughly explored,thanks to generous contributions from In-dustry (DEC) and with the help of GuestProfessor Klaus Buhlert.

These developments culminated in theconstruction of a new studio in 1996. Thefacility was perfectly suited to every kindof modern spatial-acoustic stimulation andwas used accordingly for teaching and re-search, composition and acoustic soundprojection, and as a meeting point for stu-dents, lecturers and guests. Since 2001 ithas been expanded to include a smallwave field synthesis array.

The DVD 50 Years Studio TU Berlin con-tains works by Boris Blacher, HerbertBrün, Ricardo Mandolini, Unsuk Chin,Franz Martin Olbrisch, Kirsten Reese, Cle-mens Nachtmann, Orm Finnendahl, DanielTeige, Hans Tutschku, Robin Minard,Trevor Wishart, Sukhi Kang/Robert Dar-roll, and Kotoka Suzuki/Claudia Rohr-moser.

Folkmar Hein


A View from a Neighbour II: LuxembourgA Conversation between Sigrid Konrad and Bernhard Günther

How is Germany seen in Luxembourg?

Germany has 82.4 million inhabitants, Lux-embourg about 460,000 – even with thesefigures in mind, one must differentiatewhen answering this question: of course,not all people in Luxembourg adhere to thesame cliché about all people in Germany(the growing time distance to World War IIhelps, in fact, to differentiate nowadays, al-though two generations ago, Germanswere putting a lot of effort into renderingthemselves quite unpopular in Luxem-bourg). The extreme diversity of culturalbackgrounds in Luxembourg has to be tak-en into account when talking about “the”Luxembourg perspective – the many inhab-itants with Portuguese, Italian, French,Capverdian roots will probably not think ofGermany as a major factor or influence intheir lives. On the contrary, for many “na-tive” people of Luxembourg, Germany isan important reference point, e.g. havinglearnt German as their second language atschool (after Luxembourgish, which in it-self is closer to German than to French andDutch), and reading German more oftenthan Luxembourgish, even in local news-papers.

Does the Luxembourgian musical life – ifat all – orientate itself on France or on Ger-many?

One major cultural difference betweenLuxembourg and Germany is the fact thatyou’re almost constantly balancing differ-ent perspectives in Luxembourg: Germanmusic life, media etc. will always be seenin relation to Benelux (don’t forget theNetherlands and Belgium) and French per-spectives, at least. Plus, the rich musicalcultures of Portugal, Italy, Africa, formerYugoslavia. Plus, of course, the own tradi-

tions of the Grand-Duchy. Plus, especiallyregarding pop culture, England and theUSA which are certainly more influentialthan Germany. On the contrary, the Ger-man perspective seems to be focused onGermany itself to a large extent. Somemore specific differences: the educationalsystem in Luxembourg, especially for mu-sic (solfège), is certainly closer to Francethan to Germany. The TV and radio infra-structure is completely different from Ger-many (and from France), as public radioplays only a minor role (RTL was born inLuxembourg, after all). Anyway, Paris iscloser than Berlin (with the TGV train con-nection from 2007 onwards, Paris will evenbe closer than Cologne). With regard tofood, there is a saying that Luxembourgcombines French quality with German-sized portions. It is an advantage to be freeto choose between several cultural per-spectives, attitudes, traditions and influenc-es. This can certainly be learned in Luxem-bourg much more easily than in Germany.

How is the German New Music scene seenin Luxembourg?

Michael Jarrell once told me about a kindof demographical competition betweenthe followers of Pierre Boulez and those ofHenri Dutilleux in France – they soonfound out that only a certain part of theFrench population was interested in musicat all; then, only a small part of those wasinterested in classical music; again, only atiny part of those in contemporary music.Similarly, there seems to be no “general”notion about German contemporary mu-sic, as there is hardly a general notionabout contemporary music at all. Ofcourse, there are composers, musicians,journalists, promoters etc. in Luxembourgwho are in close contact with their col-


leagues in Germany; but then again, per-haps Strasbourg, Brussels, Salzburg, Basel,Zurich, Vienna and Paris are sometimescloser than Donaueschingen, Witten, Stutt-gart, Saarbrücken, Munich or Berlin. Ofcourse, the SWR Symphony Orchestra orthe ensemble recherche can be heard atthe Philharmonie Luxembourg alongsidethe Ensemble InterContemporain, the En-semble L’Itinéraire, Ictus Ensemble or Con-trechamps. There was a birthday concertfor Helmut Lachenmann in 2005; there willbe a portrait of Mauricio Kagel, played bythe Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxem-bourg at the rainy days festival in Novem-ber 2006, etc., but statistically, Gérard Gri-sey, Maurice Ohana or Iannis Xenakis aremore represented in CD productions orconcerts in Luxembourg than Germancomposers.

Is there any envy about the infrastructureof New Music in Germany?

Actually, it might even be the other wayround: if you multiply the number of en-sembles, festivals, institutions, composersetc. in Luxembourg by 180 (the relation ofthe population in both countries), especial-ly if you take into account recent develop-ments – the Philharmonie as a concert hallof truly European scope opened June 2005;the MUDAM as an urban contemporary artmuseum opens July 2006; in 2007 Luxem-bourg and the Greater Region will be theEuropean Capital of Culture, launchingmany international cooperations. Perhaps,living in a small country, you learn that en-vy isn’t the most helpful attitude at all. Per-haps living in close proximity to the institu-tions of the European Union, in a city with30 % commuters driving in from neigh-bouring countries each day, you don’t tendto think on an exclusively national scaletoo much. So if there is anything interestingabout Germany, seen from Luxembourg, itwill be the quality of diverse, urban, con-temporary culture and discourse on a Euro-pean scale, wherever it may be found.


Sound in MotionThe Experimentalstudio for Acoustical Artby Lydia Jeschke

An experiment is, by the very nature of theword, a scientific investigation or a riskyventure. The etymological root bears wit-ness both to the risk (Latin: periculum =danger) and to the dependability of the ex-perience which makes experts of thosewho have carried out such experiments.

All of these levels of meaning apply tothe Freiburg Experimentalstudio whohave, to be precise, existed much longerthan their name, which they received as aninstitution of the Heinrich Strobel Founda-tion 25 years ago. Already in the 1950s,technical personnel from the Südwestfunkhad already begun developing devices foraltering sound electronically. In 1953/54,the engineers Fred Bürck and Bruno Heckdeveloped their first “sound transformer”which could transpose sounding tones andthat, the truly revolutionary part, at themoment they sounded. Just several yearsafter the founding of the Südwestfunk,therefore, one of the first instruments ofthe field which would come to be referredto as “live electronics” already existed. Thedevice was, however, very sensitive and,depending on atmospheric conditions,sometimes only functional for several min-utes. But it was recognized as indicative offuture developments and attracted the at-tention of the international music worldupon itself and the innovative technicaldepartment of the broadcaster in Baden-Baden.

In the 1960s, these first efforts were de-veloped further and soon they were not farfrom ring modulators dependable enoughfor use in the concert hall. The history ofthe Experimentalstudio as an institutionbegins with the first live concert applica-tion of two sound transformers with ringmodulators. The Experimental studio’s taskbecame that of setting sounds and stagnant

ways of listening into motion in ever-newways.

Mobile Parameters: location, time and timbre of sound

In 1969, Karlheinz Stockhausen received acommission from Heinrich Strobel for acomposition for the Donaueschingen Mu-sic Days. In 1970, the piece was premieredthere: Mantra for two pianos and electro-acoustic transformation. This composition,with piano sounds in extraordinary, unpre-dictable timbres transformed in real timeby a device developed by Hans PeterHaller and Peter Lawo, was a sensationand lead to the foundation of the Experi-mentalstudio of the Heinrich Strobel Foun-dation of the Südwestfunk in the years im-mediately thereafter. Sounds produced byinstruments had, with the help of electron-ic filters and ring modulators, taken on awhole new spectrum of flexibility regard-ing timbre and even pitch which gave it amobility beyond all expectation. Outsidethe city of Freiburg in the lovely Günterstalat the foot of the Schauinsland, the labora-tory took up residence in what was, inthose days, a regional studio of the Süd-westfunk. For over twenty years, electro-acoustic high tech was produced here inidyllic isolation in a former mill betweenwoods and meadow. Impulses for globaltechnological development went out fromhere which, among other things, helped tolay the groundwork for the foundation ofthe IRCAM studios in Paris.

Primarily as the result of the work ofHans Peter Haller, who was made the firstdirector of the Studio in 1971, two proto-types of other early Experimentalstudio in-struments had been developed which


were capable of throwing sounds of theirusual concert hall orbit. It became possibleto “transport” sounds, to shift them both intime and in space. Whereas so-called “de-layers” caused the sound to be delayed adeterminate length of time, a famous ma-chine developed by Haller and Lawo, theso-called Halaphon (HA(ller)-LA(wo)-PHON) made it possible to move the livesound around the concert hall at will. TheHalaphon was presented for the first timein a public concert for the premier ofCristóbal Halffter’s Planto por las víctimasde la violencia in Donaueschingen in Oc-tober 1971.

Already these few examples from thepre- and early history of the Studio suggesthow radically these electronic transforma-tions altered the acoustic result of thesounds produced by instruments, shakingthe very foundations of traditional nota-tional givens – pitch together withinstrument-specific overtone spectra, tim-ing and direction of the sound. This dawn-

ing of new possibilities with regard tosound processing bore aesthetic conse-quences for the compositions, just as (con-versely) aesthetic considerations stimulat-ed the development of new electronic in-struments. The Experimentalstudio, found-ed first and foremost to provide radio anew instrumentarium for research and mu-sical processing of new sonic possibilities,that is to say, to create a medium for theexpression of current social developments,became a location for this dynamic ex-change, this conflict.

Music and Technology

In an age of ever-increasing specialization,composing electronic and live-electronicmusic seems almost impossible, given thatthe necessary musical competence andtechnological understanding rarely are em-bodied in a single person. The predomi-nance of one or the other aspect is the cru-

Experimentalstudio für akustische Kunst e.V., Reinold Braig, Bernd Noll, Thomas Hummel, Johannes Caspar Walter, Konstanze Stratz, Michael Acker, and André Richard, photo: © SWR/Klaus Fröhlich


cial point in many compositions employ-ing electronics – they either sound techni-cally immature, using banal effects fortheir own sake or, on the other hand, theyseem to be mere electronic demonstrationswhose aesthetic demands are insufficientbeyond the expression of an enthusiasmfor technical possibilities. The Experimen-talstudio of the Heinrich Strobel Founda-tion pursues the path of unifying art andtechnology in a spirit of active dialogue.Generally, compositions with electronicscome about here as collaborations be-tween composers and technicians. For thisreason, the studio is equipped, on the onehand, with a full-time staff of technicalspecialists. On the other hand, the Hein-rich Strobel Foundation provides compos-ers grants which make it possible for themto work with the technicians in the studio,either to generally expand their artistic andtechnological horizons or to produce spe-cific compositional projects.

The intimate size of the Experimentalstu-dio, with a fistful of full-time staff mem-bers, has occasionally prevented simulta-neous work on multiple large-scale pro-ductions. On the other hand, it is eminent-ly suited to fostering the dialogue betweentechnicians and musicians, helping to pro-mote mutual understanding of goals andvisions. The most prominent example ofsuch a successful and long-term collabora-tion between music and technology is Lui-gi Nono’s work at the studio. It is no secretthat Nono himself was by no means an ex-pert in advanced studio technology whenhe came to Freiburg in the early 1980s.Weeks and sometimes months of experi-ments as well as a constant, enduring ex-change with Hans Peter Haller, RudolfStrauß and the other staff in the studio leadto Nono’s various live-electronic composi-tions. This dialogue resulted in new devel-opments on both sides: techniques like thegate-controls between various musicians,developed for Boulez’ …explosante-fixe…,delays and Halaphon were stimulated byNono’s compositional demands and re-

fined as a result of detailed experimentswith musicians in the studio. For example,the gating controls now took various play-ing techniques of the musicians into ac-count. On the other hand, Nono’s workwith spatial composition and microtonalmaterial in his late non-electronic compo-sitions could hardly have come aboutwithout his experience with electronics. Inthe long run, both Nono and the Studioprofited from their willingness to engagein dialogue beyond the boundaries of theirrespective vocabularies, an aspect of thecontext in which the Studio’s regular peda-gogical activities in the form of seminars,workshops and lecture can be understood.

This dialogue necessarily carries over in-to the concerts with live electronics. Whena performer produces a sound on his in-strument and someone else at a mixingboard instantly influences the quality ofthe sound, meaningful results can only beachieved as the product of careful plan-ning and coordination between both par-ties. In spite of the fact that one of them isgenerally referred to as a musician and theother as a technician, the borders here aredynamic and flexible. For this very reason,many compositions play on this situationby demanding spontaneous reactionsamong the performers or, as in the exam-ple of gate controls above, the players canbe specially networked to make it possibleto compose ensemble performances of anentirely new dimension.

Besides research and studio productions,the preparation and execution of publicperformances is an important further as-pect of the Freiburg Experimentalstudio’sactivity. In order to fulfil international en-gagements, it is not rare for the entire stu-dio with most of its staff to pack up and goout “on the road”. It is especially in con-cert performances with electronics that an-other, seemingly clear relationship in termsof musical reception is called into ques-tion.


Hearing and Seeing

The discrepancy between that which is no-tated in a score, and that which eventuallysounds – a fundamental, but rarely-ad-dressed phenomenon, not only in contem-porary music – became most evidentthrough the introduction of electronic ap-plications in music. It is very rare to findthe electroacoustic transformations in acomposition with live electronics notatedprecisely alongside the traditional scoringfor the instrumentalists and even when thisis the case, it is hardly in a form that wouldbe as universally understood by someonereading the score as, say, a treble clef sign.It is almost by necessity that the acousticalproduct is irritating to the aural expecta-tions that arise on the basis of what is no-tated – a situation, however, with whichprimarily performers and those occupiedwith musical analysis are confronted. Theconcert audience experiences a similarlyirritating situation of its own: the visual im-pression of a wind player who raises hisinstrument to his lips does not correspondwith the acoustic result when the sound,having been processed by live electronics,is perceived only after a delay of severalseconds as a typical string instrumentaltimbre coming from the back corner of theconcert hall. The sense of vision can notlonger assist in anticipating the auditive re-sult, meaning that listening skills are chal-lenged in new ways.

What must appear to the layman on firstsight as the optical epitome of cold tech-nology (black boxes, switches, cables)leads the listener to a significant new sen-sual quality of hearing. For precisely thisreason, Nono’s “Tragedy of Listening”,Prometeo would have been inconceivablewithout the Experimentalstudio’s electron-ics, as is the case with Pierre Boulez’ …ex-plosante-fixe…, Dieter Schnebel’s Sympho-nie X or Silvia Fómina’s Auguri Aquae.Many compositions that come about in co-operation with the Studio are aestheticchallenges for the audience’s ears.

The Digital Age

In the 25-year history of the Experimentalstudio, the late 1980s and early 1990s werea period of transition into a new era. AfterAndré Richard took over as director of theStudio succeeding Hans Peter Haller in1989, the studio relocated from its idyllichousing in a former Black Forest mill tothe new, centrally-located regional radiobuilding in Freiburg with larger, moremodern facilities. Nono’s death in 1990 al-so ended an artistic cooperation with theStudio’s longtime advisor which had attimes exerted a great influence upon theStudio’s work.

The new orientation was characterized,on the one hand, by the comprehensivedigitalization of the studio’s technologyand, on the other hand, by the implemen-tation of musical computer applications.The objectives and advantages of this ef-fort can be demonstrated on the basis oftwo ambitious long-term projects:

Sound management in the most globalsense is made possible by the Matrix-mix-er, a device developed by staff members atthe Experimental Studio. This fully digitalmachine, which was first used in publicperformance for the world premier ofHans Zender’s opera Don Quijote in 1993in Stuttgart, makes it possible to coordinateall electronic processes in the course of alive performance in an extremely complexmanner. All ports to and from devices,speakers and microphones are not onlyprogrammable (as was already the casewith the predecessor of the Matrix-mixer),but can also be opened and closed atwhatever speeds and according to whatev-er settings desired. The functions of manyformerly external devices, such as the spa-tial sound controller (Halaphon, etc.) arenow integrated into the Matrix-mixer itself.The result is the prototype of a complete,highly portable and very versatile worksta-tion which can be used for the realizationof live concerts.


A project still in development is the es-tablishment of a comprehensive databaseof instrumental sounds, ISIS (= Instrumen-tal Sounds Information System), collectedand organized by members of the Experi-mentalstudio together with renowned in-strumentalists. The mobility of the soundsin this case is in their accessibility. Withspecial emphasis on contemporary instru-mental techniques, comprehensive record-ings are made of each individual instru-ment with comments by the musicians,providing detailed illustrated informationon notation, history and construction. Thiscollection of data, much more comprehen-sive than usual sampler libraries, is usefulnot only for scientific analysis but for com-positional practice, a significant and grow-ing document for these fields.

A concise summary of the various facetsof the term “experiment” is as difficult asmaking a comprehensive statement aboutthe historical development, goals and ac-

tivities of the since 1998 called Experimen-talstudio of the Heinrich Strobel Founda-tion of the SWR (as for the fusion of Süd-westrundfunk and Südfunk). Were one topostulate a mysterious common impulsebehind all of the forms of work there onand with musical sound, and seek to for-mulate an image of that, the image wouldhave to be one of constant shaking at theapparent limits of possibility itself, the in-cessant attempt to push back those bound-aries, indeed, to make the very walls ofpossibility vibrate, resound. There can beno question as to the social relevance ofsuch work.

In October 2006 Detlef Heusinger willsucceed André Richard as director of thestudio which was re-named to “Experi-mentalstudio für akustische Kunst e.V.”this year since now besides the Südwest-rundfunk also the Bayerischer Rundfunkparticipates responsibility.

Translation: Gregory Johns


WORLD NEW MUSIC MAGAZINE

# 1 The Other – Strange and Familiar, Latin American Art Music, Bolivian Art Music, Wilhelm Zobl

# 2 Cage and Nancarrow in Conversation, New Music America Festivals, Argentine Juan Carlos Paz, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Switzerland, From the Aserbaijanian Border, ISCM History

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# 5 Tôru Takemitsu, Alvin Lucier, Dieter Schnebel, Mariano Etkin, Yuji Takahashi; Brazil, Argentina, Ireland, Romania, Serbia,

Choon-Me Kim: Conditions of Korean Composers

# 6 Isang Yun, Toru Takemitsu, José Maceda, Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen, Fernand Vandenbogaerde, Denmark, England, Puerto Rico, William Ortiz: Musical Snobism

# 7 Arne Mellnäs, David Tudor, Conlon Nancarrow, Chile, Argentina, Estonia, Australian Electronics, Korean Composers and Music, Asian Composers in Manila, New Music Institutions

# 8 Howard Skempton, C. Newman, Michael Nyman, Young British Composers, Composing in Latin America, Valerie Ross, Jô Kondô, Conlon Nancarrow, Myriam Marbe, Moscow Forum

# 9 Alfred Schnittke, Peteris Vasks, Karin Rehnqvist, Kevin Volans, Adriana Hölszky, Anatol Vieru, Paul Sacher, Australia, Yugoslavia, Romanian Contemporary Music, Folklore As Inspiration Source

# 10 Claude Lenners, Galina Ustvolskaya, Kaija Saariaho, Pauline Oliveros, Per Nørgård, Franco Donatoni, Yannis Papaioannou, Ramón Santos, Luxembourg, Women Composers in Latin America, South Africa, Eero Tarasti

# 11 New Music in Japan, Juliana Hodkinson, Lois V Vierk, Tôru Takemitsu, Yoritsune Matsudaira, Makoto Shinohara, Western & Traditional Music in Japan

# 12 New Music in China, Chou Wen-chung, Hong Kong Composers, Doming Lam, Western Idioms in China, From Mozart to Mao to Mozart, Tan Dun, Chen Qigang

# 13 Slovenian Music, Vinko Globokar, Lojze Lebic, Pro Musica Viva Ljubljana, Zhu Jianer, Per Nørgård, Jô Kondô, Luciano Berio, Maki Ishii, Sergio Ortega

# 14 Klaus Huber, Liza Lim, Jim Burton, Dror Feiler, Bob Ostertag, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, James Tenney, Abel Ehrlich, José Maceda

# 15 Croatian Modern(ism) and Modernist Classicism, An Insight Into Croatian Contemporary Music, The Project “Nordic-Balkan-Culture-Switch”, Next Polish Composers’ Generation, Richard Barrett, Hugh Davies

Available from MusikTexte GbR, P. O. Box 190155, 50498 Köln, Germanye-mail: [email protected], internet: www.musiktexte.de


Objections to the Status Quo –On the Music of Alan Hilarioby Stefan Fricke

For much of what Alan Hilario wants todraw attention to in his music, it is almosttoo late. The greater part of indigenouscultures have been destroyed by the indus-trial nations; the countries of the southernhemisphere have been taken over eco-nomically by those of the north, and verysoon a fifth world will follow on the thirdand fourth. The composer Alan Hilario,born in Manila (Philippines) in 1967, alsoknows very well that art can donothing against these abuses:“That is a dilemma: there is aclear political message in mypieces; on the other hand, Ihave a particular way of writingmusic which can achieve noth-ing on the realist political stage.It remains in the concert hall.But perhaps it will change thepolitical consciousness of oneperson or another.”1

His “musique engagée” cer-tainly has the potential for this.Hilario’s compositions are basedon analyses of existing condi-tions, principally of the disproportionaterelations between the rich and the poorstates, they are the result of observations ofthe processes of cultural assimilation. Atthe same time, they are committed to theaesthetic thinking of the avant-garde, inwhich he was instructed during his courseof studies in composition under MathiasSpahlinger and Mesias Maiguashca inFreiburg. Admittedly, it was already in Ma-nila that he discovered the primary motiva-tion for his successful sound conceptions,in the library of the British Council, in thetexts of Edgard Varèse, for example, in theprinted copies of the latter’s lectures held atvarious universities in the USA. There, thequalified violinist Hilario, still a schoolboy,

found guiding impulses, among others thestatement: “The true basis of a creativework is lack of respect! The true basis of acreative work is experiment – bold experi-ment!”2

The music of Alan Hilario, who has livedin Germany since 1992 – at first as a grant-holder of the DAAD (German AcademicExchange Service) –, follows this demandas emphatically as it has its basis exclusive-

ly in political content; admit-tedly, this is not to be dis-covered at first sight. Thatwould be much too trivialfor Alan Hilario, and thusaesthetically unacceptablefor him.

Kibô, a piece for violin,composed in 1997, translat-ed from Tagalog, Hilario’smother tongue, meansroughly “movement after si-lence”. Thus it lies quiteclearly in the inflationary “si-lence” trend of recent dec-

ades, but neither this nor the externalpoint of departure of the piece – the firstand third strings of the instrument aremissing, the other two are tuned a goodtwo octaves lower – reveals anythingabout its background. The sound resultproduced this way, which cannot be regu-lated exactly by the interpreter on accountof the loosened strings – an intention ofthe composer – does evoke ideas andsometimes memories of something insome way similar, heard somewhere be-fore, for example in Lisbon. For manyyears, a blind man played his violin there,day in, day out, in the pedestrian precinctleading down to the Tejo in order to addto his meagre pension, if he had any at all.

Alan Hilario© by Alan Hilario


(He was not playing in his usual place atthe beginning of January 2006 – is he stillliving?) His violin indeed had only twostrings and he could hardly play. At leastno pieces of music so current as to lure es-cudos or euros from people’s pockets. Itsounded horrible, alarming as Hilario’sKibô, which holds a similar observation. InManila, explains Hilario, many peoplemake music on the street, playing againstpoverty. And occasionally, musicians canbe seen with fewer than four strings ontheir instruments. They simply do not havethe money to replace broken ones. Andbecause the ones remaining are the onlymeans of production, they tune them as

low as possible for fearthat they, too, mightbreak – with inevitablyhorrible results. Musicalprostitution, which formany might turn into thereal thing if the silence infact occurs when the laststring breaks – Kibô, sim-ply. The subtext of thepiece is not to be discov-ered alone. One musthave looked around inthe everyday life of thesounds in order to find it.In concert life, Kibô is apiece of New Music, astudy of an instrumentcomposed emphaticallyin a non-virtuoso mannerwith numerous un-known sounds.

But Alan Hilario looksaround, he observes ex-actly how (musical) soci-eties work. Whether inthe Philippines, in Eu-rope or anywhere else. Indoing so, he is occupiedprimarily with the proc-

ess of cultural assimilation, besides theeconomic conditions and their effect. Forexample in the ensemble work katalogos,which had its premiere at the Witten Daysof New Chamber Music in 1999, or inphonautograph, a composition for four fe-male voices, counter-tenor, trombone, fourrecord-players and live electronics, firstperformed at the Donaueschingen MusicDays in 2002. katalogos raises questions ofcultural exchange by means of a giganticarsenal of percussion instruments from allover the world, as is usual in the New Mu-sic. Continually fluctuating sound constel-lations scintillate in the elaborate piece be-tween increase of colour and their decline.

Alan Hilario, Kibô (© Alan Hilario)


The adoption of instruments of other cul-tures doubtless enriches our music, but al-so the purses of those who have profitedfrom the extermination of the indigenouspeoples.

A different question of cultural assimila-tion occupies Hilario, a great fan of an-tique LowTech apparatus, in phonauto-graph. (The title is the name of the soundrecording apparatus invented by LéonScott in 1857). Here he is concerned withhow European music, spread all over theworld by gramophone records, is heard byother cultures, and what could be the re-sult of this. Heard by open ears, these de-ficiencies could, of course, have led tonew things, but in fact the constant ap-pearance of our Major-Minor harmony inthe simplest form has caused more culturalhavoc than imaginative novelty, not tomention the demise of authentic musiccultures. And because in pre-compact-disctimes, the world-wide export of music bycolonial powers past and present wasdone by means of gramophone records,which become dusty and scratched, Hi-lario also uses LPs (of military music, hitsand opera choruses), specially scratchedfor performance. When the pick-up needlemoves over the grooves newly-created inthis way, they constantly create impulsesof their own, from which various rhythmsarise, which, synchronized with each oth-er, produce complex random rhythmichums. The scratch signals themselves can-not be heard. They are first run together ina computer, where they are processed by asoftware especially developed to do thisalone. Their reproduction by loudspeakeris left to a random programme. Only to-wards the end of the piece do single frag-ments of the quoted recorded music be-come recognizable. But the foil of events ismainly determined by indecipherable ma-terials, which, now processed, result inmoments of glissandi and music of thespheres. And these rhythmical sound col-our processes also determine the micro-tonally-coloured instrumental and vocal

part (consisting of meaningless soundsfrom Tagalog).

In spite of all political implications, Hi-lario’s compositions as music functioncompletely autonomously, also his ensem-ble piece Überentwicklung – Unterent-wicklung (“Overdevelopment – Underde-velopment”) (1998), the title of whichcould soonest be interpreted as a pro-gramme. In fact, it is the directly-adoptedtitle of a book published on the subject ofthe economical development of poverty bythe Swiss economist Rudolf Strahm in1975. Reading the publication in the 1990s,Alan Hilario is shocked by the relation de-scribed between stock exchange rates andthe development of global poverty, dem-onstrated analytically by Strahm in numer-ous diagrams. The subject, the results dem-onstrated and the diagrams inspire Hilarioin his composition. “The diagrams fascinat-ed me, this one going downwards, thatone upwards etc. I had the idea of how Ican use these stock exchange diagrams asmusic, deciding whether people shouldstarve or not. Although they look so neu-tral – on television, too –, they are morethan tragic.” Überentwicklung – Unterent-wicklung is a graphic score. It functionslike a “street plan, the contents of whichdo not prescribe the possibilities of move-ment.”3

The piece Überentwicklung – Unterent-wicklung is moreover based on a concep-tion making all imaginable microintervalspossible. In the transposition of the micro-notes it is, in addition, not a matter of fix-ing exactly the pitch frequencies but oftheir approximate equivalent of what isthus noted. More important in this piece isthe development of the complete struc-tures, the distinctness of the glissandi occa-sionally to be played in unison upwards,downwards and crossing. The constantflow of the musical currents thus set hasmuch in common with the diagrams ofstock movements. But of course the trans-fer of mathematical graphs with their real-ist political effects to music is purely an


aesthetic one. “There isno one-to-one corre-spondence between thelines going upwards ordownwards, which heremeans poverty or wealth.You cannot work thatway in music. It is merelya source of inspiration.”4

The Austrian authoressIngeborg Bachmann oncewrote: “The New Musicages when one becomesused to it.” Indeed, wehave become used tomany things. But whatwe have not becomeused to is questioningconstantly the acceptancethat makes us grow oldand indolent, and break-ing through it – politicallyas well as aesthetically. Acritical and independentview can be a really nec-essary help here. ThePhilippine composer AlanHilario has such a view.His music aimed againstindolence furthers theideas of the musicalavant-garde and formu-lates new solutions. Atthe same time it takes astubborn stand againstpersistent refusals to findan answer to what arelong since no questionsany more but the mostbrutal reality.Translation: John A. Hannah

Notes

1 This quotation and the rest are taken from aconversation which the author had with AlanHilario in Stuttgart in the summer of 2002.2 In: Edgard Varèse, ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzgerand Rainer Riehn, Munich: text + kritik 1983 (=Musik-Konzepte 6), p. 15.

3 Alan Hilario, Commentary on Überentwick-lung – Unterentwicklung (1998).4 Cf. Alan Hilario, Der Nachhall der Peitsche, in:Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 2006, No. 3, p. 32–33.

Alan Hilario, Überentwicklung – Unterentwicklung (1998) © Alan Hilario


Sounds Typically German – “Klangkunst”by Christoph Metzger

I.

Tokyo, Kyoto, New York, San Francisco,San Diego, Vancouver, Barcelona, London,Paris, Wien, Graz, Bregenz, Eindhoven,Stockholm, Roskilde, Ystad: all of these arelarger or smaller metropolises where thehistory of sound art has been written. Thelabel “Klangkunst” – the German term ofthis interdisciplinary genre – prevailed de-spite all discussions of alternatives. Al-though sound art is now well establishedin the field of contemporary music, veryfew artists have established themselves infine arts institutions. Sound art is a catego-ry of installation art, and involves workingwith spaces both acoustically and sculptur-ally. The primary medium of sound art isits location, and Berlin, for many years, hasbeen the capital. Since the end of the1970s, the western part of the formerly di-vided city has emerged as an artistic andinstitutional network of festivals, periodicevents, large presentations. As well, manyartists have taken up residence in the city.The presence of artists working in thisfield as well as presenters, curators andtheorists have lead to development of themost active sound art scene anywhere inthe world.

Also, the academic perception of soundart and an historic evaluation of the genrefrom the perspective of Berlin has beenuntaken by the musicologist Helga de laMotte-Haber, who between 1978 and 2005has taught at the Technische UniversitätBerlin and has formed a respectable bandof young sound art theorists. Besides herauthorship on numerous articles on thissubject, she is co-editor of the two cata-logues of the exhibitions “sonambiente –Festival für Hören und Sehen” (festival forlistening and watching) in 1996 and 2006.Moreover, she is editor of the musicologi-

cal publication series Handbuch der Musikdes 20. Jahrhunderts and of the 12th vol-ume Klangkunst. Tönende Objekte undklingende Räume (1999), an extensive en-cyclopedia of more than 140 artists. De laMotte-Haber has given sound art a strongvisibility within German musicology, de-spite the fact that German musicology’s re-lationship to contemporary music produc-tion has degraded to an academic desert.

II.

Innovation of artistic productions and ac-tivities at academic institutions, especiallyin Berlin, have created an artistic base insound art which is both remarkable andunique. Through cultural policy and insti-tutional support it became possible to cre-ate a large body of new works in Berlin.The primary institutions and programs re-sponsible for the majority of the creativeactivity are: the Artists-in-Berlin pro-gramme by the DAAD (German AcademicExchange Service), the Technische Univer-sität Berlin (though its musicology depart-ment is soon to close and its studio forelectronic music resides in the Departmentof Communication Science), the senateDepartment of Sciences, Research and Cul-ture with its scholarship for sound art, theUniversität der Künste (University of Arts),the gallery Giannozzo, the associations“Material und Wirkung” (Material and Ef-fect) and “Freunde Guter Musik” (Friendsof Good Music), the Künstlerhaus Betha-nien, the “Klanggalerie” (Sound Gallery) ofthe Radio Berlin-Brandenburg, the Akade-mie der Künste (Academy of the Arts), theInitiative Neue Musik (INM), Podewil andtesla, singuhr-Hörgalerie im Parochial, themusic gallery “Gelbe Musik”, the BerlinerGesellschaft für Neue Musik (BGNM; Ber-


lin Association for New Music), the Klang-kunstforum (Sound Art Forum) PotsdamerPlatz, the galleries Anselm Dreher and Ra-fael Vostell, the Berliner Festspiele, theDeutsche Gesellschaft für elektroakus-tische Musik (Degem; German Associationof Electroacoustic Music), the Haus Flora,and the Stadtgalerie Hellersdorf.

For many years these institutions havebuilt up a cultural environment which oth-er cities on the map of sound art simply donot have. Compared to other centres, thepredominance of artistic production andthe prevalence of theoretic discussion bythe Berlin institutions and artists far ex-ceeds the activities of other cities such asSaarbrücken, Karlsruhe, Köln, Marl andBremen which also have regular sound artexhibitions.

Sound art in Germany is mainly present-ed in festivals in Donaueschingen, Darm-stadt, Witten, Kassel and Frankfurt/Main assubdiscipline of New Music, and is nearlyalways received in this context. As well,the influence of the radio stations is not tobe ignored (for example the Westdeut-scher Rundfunk Cologne or the Südwest-rundfunk Baden-Baden), whose depart-ments of ars acustica initiate produce radi-ophonic sound art with artists such asAlvin Curran, Bill Fontana, Pierre Henry,Gerhard Rühm, Rolf Julius, Thomas Schulz,and Johannes S. Sistermanns.

Journals such as Neue Zeitschrift fürMusik, MusikTexte and Positionen fre-quently report on new developments,sometimes in issues dedicated to this field,while the German fine arts magazines suchas Kunstforum or Texte zur Kunst havebeen silent with respect to sound art. Forexample, the issue “sounds”, published forthe 15th anniversary of Texte zur Kunst,the description of sculptural and installa-tion works with acoustic componentsfailed completely. Dedicated indifference?Perhaps. If sound art was only presentedin music festivals, this might be under-standable. But since sound art is frequentlypresented as exhibitions in art galleries –the institution that plays a key role in theartistic criticism of cultural activities, as Bri-an O’Doherty elaborates in his often quot-ed compendium Inside the White Cube –the apparent ignorance of art criticism atleast reflects its narrow horizon.

III.

In the field of art education in Germanythe Hochschule für Bildende Künste Saar(Saar College of the Fine Arts, Saarbrü-cken), the Hochschule der BildendenKunst Braunschweig and the Universitätder Künste Berlin apply themselves to thedevelopment of sound art. While in Berlinthe discipline is just being established,Christina Kubisch in Saarbrücken and Ul-

Ulrich Eller, Zweitonform (1999)© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006


rich Eller in Braunschweig have beenteaching for many years and already havegenerated scholars like Frauke Eckhardt,Stefanie Hoppe, Sigtryggur Berg Sigmars-son, Hlynur Hallson, Stefan Roigk, FrankBartz, Martin Schöne, and Ingo Schulz.

Ulrich Eller, born in Leverkusen in 1953shaped the first-generation developmentof sound art comprehensively and diverse-ly. His inscriptions on surfaces unfold inthe media of drawing and sculpture. Theycreate resonances inspired by the drawingœuvre, which are then acoustically reflect-ed. Reflection and resonance impact oneother both intellectually and physically.Drawings in chalk, charcoal, and colouredpencil on paper, stone walls, plaster, andglass quote musical procedures. Material isplayed upon. Acoustic sculptures arise outof processes of scanning, sanding, andbeating. Figures grow that emerge on theother side of musical forms and are eter-nalized in the material. Music is abstractedand becomes sculpture in the medium ofhard surfaces and drawing on paper. Inearly works, Eller played musical instru-ments like electric guitars, pianos, etc. withstones and other hard objects; their soundpick-ups and strings were then used in thecontext of work implements for the gardenand field, like rakes and brooms; withthese new tools, he carried out acousticexplorations of surfaces. With this set ofartistic tools, Eller explores the surfaces ofbuildings, their windows and floors, andthe resonances of exterior spaces in rela-tion to those of interior spaces. Streets be-come a symbol for drawings in motion.Everything is amplified and becomessound in space. His materials search outhidden acoustic qualities that are givenrhythmic structure through motions. Theprocesses of such inscribings sometimesleave optical traces on the material as well.Eller’s work centres on the perspectives ofmovement and materials.

Rolf Julius is another of the first generationsound artists. Since the mid-1970s, he has

worked with the interactions between mu-sic and visual art. This interest first led himto photo-body actions in 1976. Like someof his artist colleagues in Berlin, Julius alsopresented his first sound art pieces in theGalerie Giannozzo. He developed his artis-tic language in minimalistic photo seriesand in his first tape compositions. Actionswith musical elements outdoors were giv-en poetic titles. His material includes inkdrawings on his projects, musical actionswith interval buzzers, and installationswith pigments, tea bowls, stones, andloudspeakers. The loudspeakers are con-trolled with finely-veined wires and oftenlook like drawings. Fascinating contrastsarise from these elements, and connec-tions to nature are an essential componentof his work.

As early as 1975, Peter Vogel (born 1937 inFreiburg) was invited to exhibit at theDonaueschingen Music Days. At this re-nowned festival, he showed cybernetic ob-jects which appeared like small machines

Rolf Julius, Music for the Bronx 3© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006


with electrical circuits. Against the back-ground of kinetic sculptures, Vogel quotesand develops the fluctuations of light,sound, and wind. The sculptures createmovements that are triggered by the view-ers. Vogel’s objects are characterized bycomplex technical constructions. The cir-cuits are intelligent, i.e. learning systemsdeveloped from cognition research, thefield in which the Vogel worked between1965 and 1975 for Hoffman-La Roche inBasel, Switzerland, before he became anartist. Sequences like stimulus – response –learning are taken as a model in order toquote excerpts of complex processes. Butthe cognitive achievement of the circuits inthese pieces reaches the level of one-celled organisms, at best. If movements ofthe sculptures result in sequences that re-call natural movements, then, in the kinetictradition, this alludes to relationships be-tween human and machine in the sense of“ironic allegories”. In this way, Vogel’s in-teractive sculptures represent movementsthat run their course without recognizablegoals. The movement is sufficient unto it-self as a play of form; it abstracts previous-ly planned sequences and engages in ac-tions that the sculpture then reflects. Thesculpture’s movements reward the visitorfor his curiosity, a concept that creates anambivalence: Who is playing with whomhere? The stimulation determines the shap-ing of time; it the stimulus is lacking, theresult is a standstill.

Christina Kubisch, born in Bremen in 1948,is a Professor for Plastic and AudiovisualArt at the Hochschule der Bildenden Kün-ste Saar (Saar College of the Fine Arts).Along with Ulrich Eller, she belongs to thefirst generation of the internationally lead-ing sound artists. Since the end of the1970s, Kubisch has realized works with thephenomena of electromagnetic inductionswhich are found over wherever electricalcables are laid. However, for her installa-tions she also generates electromagneticinduction fields by electric wires tightened

through the space, and draws hiddensounds from them. Visitors are given spe-cially developed headphones so that theinformation fed into the cable network canbe experienced like compositions. Thisprinciple is the starting point for numerousinstallations she has realized around theworld since 1980. At first she filtered thequiet humming of the electric wires out ofthe headphones, but since 2003, preciselythese sounds led to a series of new works.Now superficial or underground currentsare not longer suppressed, but made audi-ble. Her Electrical Walks are conducted asstrolls through public space with head-phones and city maps marked to show in-teresting electromagnetic sites. Timbresand rhythms are caused by transformers,broadcasting towers, surveillance cameras,cell phones, computers, wireless internetconnections, GPS systems, automatic tellermachines, and advertising signs.

IV.

The generation of German sound artistsborn in the late 1950s until the mid-1960sis formed by Tilman Küntzel, RobertJacobsen, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag, JensBrand, and Thomas Köner. By the incorpo-ration of extensive pictorial material fromthe recent media world (Sonntag, Brand,Köner) as well as explicit references tosubjects of historic design (Küntzel, Jacob-sen) the sound art tradition was taken up

Christina Kubisch, Oasis (2000)© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006


again and advanced. The installations byThomas Köner, such as Banlieue du Vide(2003), Suburbs of the Void (2004) and NU-UK (2004), in an imposing yet simplisticmanner, pick up acoustical and visual per-spectives that deal with the traces in land-scapes and urban spaces. While the titlesof the works allude to outskirts of largercities and film sequences provide a senseof melancholy, passages of polyphonichissing and smatterings of playing childrenbreak up the scenes. Köner creates breath-ing images. Acoustic and visual atmos-pheres crossfade, comment and interpretthe film images which are almost unmov-ing. The black and white format creates anhistoric appearance.

V.

Without question, new ways of an integrat-ing aesthetic education in the field ofsound art must be found: for schools, andfor museum pedagogy and adult educa-tion. Incidentally, the combination andchallenge of senses that sound art providesis an excellent way to attract a new publicto contemporary art. Some such activitieshave already started – though there are notyet enough. For example, the projectMusik fällt aus (“Music Lesson is Can-celled”), has been underway since 2000 bythe Leipzig composer and instrument mak-er Erwin Stache, who tests his futuristic in-struments with pupils and proves that mu-

sic lessons would not have to be cancelledat German schools if only teachers hadenough musical or sound artistic imagina-tion and creativity. Other projects of basicpedagogical work have been undertakenat the Baltic Sea Biennial of Sound Art2006 – with classes from Rostock and Stral-sund as well as with the Mecklenburg-WestPomerania chapter of the Federation ofBlind and Visually Impaired People. To-gether with Stefan Fricke, Tilman Küntzel,Georg Grabowski, Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntagand Christoph Metzger the pupils weretaken on diverse tours and given questionsabout the acoustical environment theywere experiencing. The students notatedtheir experience using a variety of nota-tions and models of mapping. The resultsthen formed part of the exhibition BalticSea Biennial of Sound Art 2006 at Rostock.In the area of sound art pedagogy thereare many possibilities of sharpening thesenses and generating orientation guidesfor everyday life. Of course such a peda-gogy, which is not only for children, has tobe developed in close contact with lessonsin art and music. It is not about pitting oneart form against the other, but rather, of en-suring that there are fewer missed artisticopportunities.

Frauke Eckhardt, KlangMobil (1999)photo: © Frauke Eckhardt

Tilman Küntzel, Roseboard (2001)photo: Hans-Jürgen Wege


The Sound of TomorrowThe Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe Reinvents Itself with Each New Activityby Achim Heidenreich

It was a truly pioneering act when in 1989,in the year of the political transition andstill long before the Internet, the city fa-thers of Karlsruhe together with the Stateof Baden-Württemberg, decided to found a“culture factory for the digital age.” At first,the ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karls-ruhe, with its research centers, was distrib-uted throughout the entire city. Then camethe grand opening in 1997 in a former am-munition factory, a state-protected histori-cal building. Since 1999, Peter Weibel hasbeen the chairman of the ZKM.

ZKM’s function has been visible and au-dible far beyond museum operations. Inaddition to its exhibition department, be-low the historic gable roof, which extendsalong a side wall of 300 meters, the ZKMunites four research institutes. The insti-tutes aim to steadily implement new con-cepts and develop innovative, creative, an-alytical, and artistic ideas about future –not exclusively digitally determined – envi-ronments and art productions. In this way,at the Institute for Visual Media, Film Insti-tute, Institute for Media and Economics,Institute for Music and Acoustics (IMA),and in the highly efficient Media Library,new works are created, links made be-

tween activities, and novelties of represen-tation and storage are explored. The en-deavors here are sought, and are oftenfound, in numerous artistic collaborations,high-quality individual events, and often inEU projects, as top-level cooperation part-ners work to create new possibilities forcommunication and its reflection in media.The activities of ZKM are currently on par– although having to make do with lesspersonnel and space – with Centre Pompi-dou and IRCAM in Paris.

The heart and center of the ZKM is theMedia Museum. Here, the past 50 years ofmedia development can be directly experi-enced. In many of the exhibited works, thevisitor becomes an interactive partner,which makes it possible to critically ques-tion media-technological developments.Which among them are merely shadytricks, which of them truly make living to-gether easier, and which still seem vision-ary today? What kind of visions do we ac-tually have, anyway?

The ZKM also curates permanent andtemporary exhibitions in four of the tenatriums found in the monumental, post-modern building. The State Academy ofDesign, the Städtische Galerie, and theZKM’s Museum for Contemporary Art,which are also all located here, superblyexpand, supplement, and correspond withthe ZKM’s competencies. The Cube, thenewly built recording studio in front of theZKM equipped with the latest in digitaltechnology, is also a site with a steadyflow of concerts, it forms a meeting pointfor progressive electroacoustic and acous-matic music, as well as experimental radioplays and instrumental music. The SWR’s(Southwestern Broadcasting) Karl Sczukaaward for experimental radio plays houses

The “cube”, the ZKM at Karlsruhe, photo: ZKM


its archives here. All of the prize-winningworks are part of the mediathek’s collec-tion and can be played by museum visitorssitting in the “online cradle seats.” The50th anniversary of this prize was celebrat-ed at the ZKM at the end of last year withpresentations and a symposium.

Perhaps music, as the most fleeting of theZKM’s art forms, is predestined to also leadthe way conceptually. The prior head ofthe institute, Johannes Goebel, providedthe concept for setting up the IMA. He ispresently involved in the creation of a ma-jor art center in the U.S., from the planningstages to actual realization, in dimensionswhich would not have been possible with-out his experience in Karlsruhe. He andhis successor, internationally renownedcomposer in the acousmatic music anddance theatre scenes, Ludger Brümmer,have left their distinctive mark on the IMA:Art comes first! Brümmer’s internationalpresence in the globally networked acous-matic music scene carries the name and ar-tistic competence of the IMA far beyondthe country’s borders.

The ZKM’s IMA quickly matured for notonly southwestern Germany, but also forimmediate neighbour France and nearbySwitzerland to become a central site formusical-artistic encounters and innovationin central Europe. The proximity to Francehas also had positive influence on theZKM, and not only in terms of numbers ofvisitors. Many French school classes maketheir way to ZKM. Strolling through thelarge foyer – one of the atriums – in themorning, one often has the feeling that it isfield trip day with destination ZKM.

France’s proximity has a double meaningfor the IMA. France is where Musique con-crète was invented by Pierre Schaeffer,where the very first experiments with tapemusic as a genre were made, and is hometo IRCAM and the GRM, institutes that aredifficult to surpass in terms of personnel,technical faculty, and political backing.The IMA, equipped with the state-of-the-

art hardware and software and a morecompact staff, is certainly no competitor asthe respective areas of responsibility aretoo different. That acousmatic music per-haps is naturally francophone genre be-came obvious in the festival “trans_-canada” at the IMA, featuring acousmaticpioneers and stars. In francophone Cana-da, electronic music enjoys much greatersocial respect than it does on the continen-tal motherland. The festival offered a de-tailed view of the world of Canadianacousmatics, which is artistically first rate.Other festivals hosted at the IMA are“Quantensprünge” for ensemble music andelectronics together with the InternationalEnsemble Modern Akademie, which takesplace twice a year and the festivals “piano+” and “stimme +”, both aiming at reflec-tion of the possibilities about the combina-tion of instruments, voice and electronics.

The IMA, an institute without university af-filiation, is aware of its responsibility, as atechnically and artistically innovative facili-ty, to the university scene in particular andto contemporary music in general. It ac-tively fulfils this responsibility as evidentby the recent, grand-style, first meeting ofnearly all producing university electronicstudios from Germany, the Netherlands,and Switzerland. These electronic musicinstitutions are in a period of radicalchange due to software development. Me-dial Klangkunst (sound art) has long exitedthe realm of the music university and yetthrough the concept of composing (lat.componere – compilation), its origins inmusic history can not quite be wiped away– and probably shouldn’t be. Perhaps themétier of composing is just “hibernating”in the multi-medial element. As is wellknown, the genre of opera also receivednothing better than its socio-political anti-reflex 30 years ago. Operas with and with-out scenes and with or without librettohave allowed to emerge from opera, thevery same opus that arose in electronicmusic, which is also open to all directions,


along with “intelligent light” (Brümmer’sdescription of the visual part of his work).

The IMA has had as yet about 120 guestartists and is constantly approached byother major festivals for contemporary mu-sic and media art to act as a partner. Ger-hard E. Winkler’s interactive opera Hep-tameron, for example, would not havebeen possible without the competence ofthe IMA. Not only did the ZKM modify thestage suitability of the sensors to give theimpulse for the online scores and the over-all progression of the work, but also pro-grammed all of the software controllingthis highly complex process. Looking backat what was available in 2002, the interac-tive possibilities for combining scene andmusic were completely exhausted. It wasan amazing team effort. No less spectacu-lar was the composition commission toKarlheinz Stockhausen, granted by theZKM, together with Studio CCMIX Parisand the art foundation NRW. Stock-hausen’s piece, Licht-Bilder (Light Pic-tures), for ensemble, ring modulation, syn-

thesizer, sound director, and light images,was commissioned for the Donaueschin-gen Music Days in 2004. Licht-Bilderpresents the final piece in Stockhausen’sopera cycle Licht – die sieben Tage der Wo-che (Light – the seven days of the week).This monumental cycle found its end inthe work and the possibilities of the IMA,once again emphasizing the central signifi-cance of this institution, unique in Germa-ny.

Another innovative project, currently avail-able at the “Cube” recording studio/con-cert hall is the “Klangdom” initiated andsupervised by Ludger Brümmer. “Klang-dom” is a loudspeaker orchestra, which, asthe name implies, plays the loudspeaker asa variable spatial instrument. The loud-speakers are already there, the software,specially developed by Chandrasekhar Ra-makrishnan (U.S.), will make the “Klang-dom” one of Karlsruhe’s true “listening” at-tractions: Brümmer sets out: “We havewritten a software called ‘Zirkonium’ touse in the dome controls. The software en-

The “Klangdom”, photo: Marcus Kaufhold


europäische meridianeneue musik territorienreportagen aus ländern im umbruch

european meridiansnew music territoriesreports from changing countries

ed. Susanna Niedermayr and Christian Scheibline_in:line_out, ORF musikprotokollbilingual edition, German and English2 volumes in slipcase, with 2 CDsISBN 3-89727-248-2, EUR 35

vol. 1

im osten – in the eastreports from Hungary, Slovenia, Poland, Bulgaria and Croatia

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europäische meridiane – european meridiansreports from Lithuania, Romania, Estonia, Seriba and Montenegro, Latvia and Czechia

P.O. Box 10231466023 Saarbrü[email protected]

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»The publication may be understood as an appeal to all artistsand persons engaged in the cultural sector to create structuresthat force a lively interchange.« (Ursula M. Probst)

ables the use of space as a musical param-eter. With the software, arbitrary move-ments can be determined for varioussound sources. The dome can also beplayed by the software online. The posi-tions of the loudspeakers can also be con-figured in the software. When necessary,the software automatically mixes composi-tions from loudspeaker configurations(e.g., dome with 39 loudspeakers) to otherconfigurations (e.g., 5.1 DVD format).”

The head of the department, Brümmer,considers the “Klangdom”, also known as“acousmonium,” as an instrument in itsown right: “As with an orchestra, I can givethe music various tonal qualities, masses,and structures. A melody, for example, canbe played solo with the flute, but can alsobe set for forty strings. Instead of the indi-vidual instruments of the orchestra, thesound is orchestrated or interpreted by anacousmonium with individual loudspeakergroups during the concert. The concert isthe result of a musical interpretation withthe instrument acousmonium. On the oth-er hand, the aforementioned “Klangdom”,

should distribute the sound throughout theroom. The individual sound particles canmove in the room, but also sound solo, in-dividually, from one loudspeaker or as alla whole from a number of loudspeakers.These spatial melodies are possible be-cause a great number of loudspeakers aredistributed regularly in the shape of ahemisphere around the listeners. Today, itis technically the most impressive way topresent sound in space. The concert thusbecomes a unique experience, eclipsingthe cinema with its complex loudspeakersystems.”

The idea originated in Bourges, wherethis type of sound space was first createdin 1976. Prior to that was, of course, Stock-hausen’s pavilion at the 1970 World Fair inOsaka. Paris and Birmingham have acous-moniums, and one has also been erectedin Berlin. And now in Karlsruhe; the veryfirst acousmonium equipped with movingloudspeakers.

www.zkm.de


Broken, Conjured-Up MagicNotes on a Conversation, for the Greater Part Unpublished, between Helmut Lachenmann,Stefan Fricke and Thomas Schäfer

“How can speechlessness be overcome, a speechlessness complicated by that false fluency of theaesthetic apparatus we are led to believe exists in the jumble of the unleashed media and cultural ac-tivity.” Helmut Lachenmann, who formulated these words more than twenty years ago in his shortbut central essay Musik als Abbild vom Menschen (“Music as a Portrayal of Man”)1, meant here ofcourse the language of music, but doubtless the rampant “speechlessness” may be associated withspeaking about music. As hardly another, Helmut Lachenmann has grounded his musical work in amultitude of essays, lectures, conversations, working notes and commentaries, as hardly any otherpresent-day composer has stimulated debates and has joined in them again and again in this trench-ant form. In this way, Helmut Lachenmann has shown himself to be an intensively thinking, reflectiveand thoughtful composer, also in his writings, whose complete work is dedicated to the conjured-upand also often broken charm of music. “Composing,” Lachenmann once formulated, “means fol-lowing one’s visions and in so doing exposing oneself without protection to the public.” This “lack ofprotection” in the happy condition of a music that at best is free, liberated and set loose, is whatLachenmann focused on in the following conversation, which took place in Schwaz (Tirol) on Sep-tember 7th, 2005. It seems to have become an ever more central subject of his thinking in the courseof last year.

In the English music magazine The Wire,an article dedicated to Helmut Lachen-mann closes with a quotation from himending in the open question “What is mu-sic today?”2

This question should be asked with everynew work, as far as possible. Composing –another quotation – means thinking aboutmusic, about what music can be, thinkingabout what music was, about our horizon,about our moral concepts. I assume thatany music which moves us questions theidea in some form in quite a ‘happy’ wayagainst the background of the fact that so-ciety has already delimited the concept ofmusic quite exactly for itself within theconsonant-dissonant sound practice.

For this reason it is not only concert sea-son-ticket holders but also musicians whorepeatedly say about my compositions,“That’s not music.” But basically they thinkthe same about Schoenberg. My reaction isalways, “Fantastic. At last, no music.” Whata liberation in a time in which we are no-where safe from music, that quite often

unwished-for pushbutton service betweenRock and Baroque, between Folk Musicand World Music, of standardized magic inall price ranges.

I am not making a value judgement. Eve-ry society needs its magic conditions, ex-periences of security in the collective, evenif it is only to avoid an eerie reality with itsthreats and intolerabilities. Today, magic –not only in the form of music – is the ob-ject of a gigantic service industry in thesense of repression. So-called classical mu-sic, too, and not least, has its share in this.Today, it serves in the form of classic radioprogrammes as a diet prepared to be easilydigestible, but on top of that definitely inthe season-ticket concert programme aswell – sometimes daringly going as far asSchönberg’s ponderous-idyllic Gurre-Lie-der as a cinemascope variant – serving toattack in the rear its own claim to be inno-vative and to awaken the spirit. Art: that isfor many in the most sophisticated caseVerklärte Nacht and not just since Tristanan unconscious refuge from the hatefulday… But let us take the honestly menda-


cious offer of happiness in the techno ar-ea. That is perfectly-styled cheap magic.The vitality thus offered is due to rapidly-manufactured patterns of repetition and anequally standardized science fiction aura.You experience yourself being transferredwith relish to a different, so to speak,problem-free planet. The idea of magic in-cludes switching off critical or in any wayinvestigatory trains of thought. It meansbeing in thrall instead of being keen ofhearing. Anyway, there is music, definitelyat various price levels, from the Bach Cho-ral via Tristan to Zappa’s Mothers of Inven-tion which, heard, so to speak, at thewrong moment, occasionally plays a trickon me, the killjoy, and simply overpowersand carries even me away – which againthen fills me all the more with enthusiasm.

In the sense of a magic vortex?

Certainly – why not. There is this sentenceabout Tristan in Thomas Mann where hecomments, I think it is, on the long-as-cending violin figure in Isolde’s final songwith the words “higher than any reason.”And in Doktor Faustus, he has a memberof Munich society listening to music say to-wards the end of the novel, “idioticallybeautiful.” So, you can now give up theghost – vulgo: death-wish – and surrenderyourself to a matter as enchantment, becarried away or relieved of all momentaryquestions, and admit this ashamedly be-fore, at the time or afterwards. Today, be-ing ashamed is passé and people find itcool to be stupid. And politicians andthose responsible for the arts, hurrying onahead in co-stupidity, go along with it,dumb-cleverly. In other, dying cultures –and in a degenerate form also still with us– music as something magical has an au-thentic religious and/or at the same timecollectively and archaically uniting func-tion; people dance together around themaypole, here, if need be, in front of thetelevision, together, courage is conjured upbefore wars in the form of marching mu-

sic; love, death, the seasons as collectively-felt powers dominating existence, in theform of songs, dances, games, rituals. Iknow European culture and European mu-sic only in their artistic form, where themoment of magic is at the same time con-jured up and – as the object of reflectionand creative intervention – broken, sub-verted or made the object of structurally-perceptive observation. The Europeansenses think, and, as the captain says toWozzeck, “that weakens”. For me, that isan explanation, of course not complete, ofwhy “our” music since early unanimity –this, too, surely a rationally-shaped spiritu-al product – has defined itself stylisticallyand has changed violently up to thepresent day.

This concept of music, diagnosing the dia-lectics of confirmation and breaking ineach work and also demanding this ofthem, can probably not be used to defineall compositions of European music histo-ry. That is, looking back, rather a definiteline of works. There are of course the so-called occasional pieces, even by the mostfamous and significant composers.

There is no such thing as an occasionalpiece. Except by occasional composers, ordo you want to talk of Beethoven’s Wel-lington Symphony or Mozart’s MusicalJoke? Is there anything crazier thanBeethoven’s late Bagatells? Of course, mu-sic was once for the ruling classes a prod-uct of a service industry which had not toreflect on itself. But to these belong themadrigals of Monteverdi and Gesualdo,the motets of Schütz, the operas and orato-rios of Handel, Bach’s cantatas, the Gold-berg Variations, the Brandenburg Concer-tos, also Haydn’s symphonies, and theMasses and operas, but also the piano so-natas and other chamber music, not leastMozart’s Requiem; all “occasional pieces”.The pride of the genius Bach, suspectingand discovering his autonomy, Haydn,Mozart – regardless of whether they would


have evaluated it this way themselves –precisely with them has made works oftimeless significance and messages fromthe spirit, regardless of the occasion, evenif this was to ease the insomnia of somewell-paying aristocratic customer, see theGoldberg Variations. The reflection I de-mand happened, if you like, unreflectedlyin each creative act.

Every creative artist should examine inother fields the development of the historyof ideas which he has to thank for his situ-ation today, the path of the individual, thebeing as yet not calling himself ‘I’, to him-self and on through himself. He should ob-serve how the ego, once protected and ad-ministered in the bosom of the Church,has discovered through the centuries hisconscience, his understanding, his subjec-tivity, his creativity, his imagination, his au-tonomy, his freedom and his bondage, hisphysical urges, his precipitousness, per-haps his fata morgana – dangerous, full ofrelish, fear, responsibility and spirit.

That is aimed towards an emphatic con-cept…

The artistic concept was not always em-phatic in equal measure. There was mas-

terly art in many pro-fessions. But as a me-dium of the highestdiscipline in the crea-tive spirit it has be-come an autonomousinstance in Europeanthinking, from whichthe European-formedindividual draws hisinviolable dignity andidentity as a beingdriven by the spirit. Isee no reason to fallvoluntarily behindthis claim.

Luigi Nono oncesaid to me, “Do notwrite as if for Louis

XIV, where they listened to music insteadof going hunting.” And yet the music ofFrançois Couperin, a composer in thesense of Nono’s remark, is for us art of themost intellectual kind. Still, it belonged tothe entertainment of the day. But the waythe artist sees himself has changed inexo-rably. Via the increasingly self-confidentlyoperating secret structuralists Haydn andMozart to Beethoven, so thoughtlessly fullof himself.

In Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, it says,“Sometimes you’ve got like, a character,like, a structure.” The fact that the idea ofstructure crops up in the early 19th Centu-ry is no less exciting than the sentencespoken in the same drama, “Man is anabyss.” And not, “…is free and if he wereborn in chains”, as it still says in Schiller.

But this process of emancipation is aphenomenon bound up with the Europeanhistory of ideas. It does not exist in othercultures. Instead, these are inexorablypushed off into the museums. Westernthinking has always helped itself parasiti-cally to their magic and repressed themthoughtlessly themselves. It seems to havea world-wide effect like an all-consumingcancerous growth. What does the modernJapanese still know about the traditional

Helmut Lachenmann (r) with Peter Eötvös at the 29th International Summer Course for New Music, Darmstadt 1978, photo: Manfred Melzer© Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD)


music of the Nô Theatre? He experiencesthis in much the same way as we do theGregorian chant in Beuron monastery – soto speak, not as geographically but as his-torically distant, certainly an exotic idylldemanding respect.

In the great works of the old masters wecan study the way composers have againand again extended anew the dominantview of music in the name of the autono-my of the creative artist. Of course, thereare enough composers with whom suchprocesses of opening happened in a play-ful way. There did not have to be a publicscandal every time. But someone ought towrite the history of this confusion sometime.

The way of composing, at any rate, ledconstantly further into the unknown, alsointo the unusual, and at some time, so itseems to me, this principle which I havetried to describe came to itself in the Hege-lian sense.

But the question of the musical meanswhich are constantly to be differentiatedseems not to be infinitely extendable.

I am not going to write a piece for threebulldozers, I use the means at our, at my,disposal. I write a string quartet, I write forthe orchestra, namely for institutions of thebourgeois aesthetic apparatus, where peo-ple come together to celebrate now thispart of their reality. And now it happensthere that I use these conjured-up means,to a certain extent observing, at a distance,then – observation means distancing – andplayfully, in such a way that I discover

something, that I look at it closely, that Ifocus precisely on the anatomy of whatappears to me to be self-evident, and alsoanalyse precisely the structural reverse.And from the perspective I see for exam-ple the music of Schoenberg as he writes aminuet after developing the twelve-tonetechnique and asks, “What will now hap-pen to this gallant genre?” If it is braced bytwelve tones, something self-contradictorybut actually very precise is the result.

Does it surprise you when your own musicunfolds to the audience the magic effect wehave spoken of?

That can indeed happen, not only in mycase, by the way, as it is a matter not ofavoiding magic but on the contrary, ofconjuring it up consciously and repeatedly.

An example which I have just recentlyexperienced: Gran Torso (1971/72). In itthere is a tremolo at first pressed, which isradically slowed and at the same time giv-en an irregular rhythm and finally leads toan ever-broadening back and forth bowingmovement without a tone on the stringholder. In listening, the blood pressure soto speak is lowered, and a silence ensuesin which the friction of the bow, which oc-casionally remains completely still, is nowand again more sensed than heard. I callsomething like that structurally-conveyedand to that extent broken magic. It is per-ceived and experienced as the result of alogical process of transformation, meaningthat one feels, to use Nono’s words “howthe spirit dominates everything”.


Notes

1 Helmut Lachenmann, Musik als Abbild vomMenschen (1984), in: ibid., Musik als existentielleErfahrung. Schriften 1966–1995, ed. Josef Häus-ler, Wiesbaden, Breitkopf & Härtel 1996, p. 111–115.

2 Helmut Lachenmann, quoted after PhilipClark, The Human Touch, in: The Wire, Issue 228,February 2003, p. 27.


A View from a Neighbour III: SwitzerlandA Conversation on Relationships between Sigrid Konrad and Michael Kunkel

Are people in Switzerland envious of Ger-many because there are uncommonlymany institutions of New Music there?

No. Quite generally speaking, it seems tome that the relationship of the Swiss to theGermans is not primarily marked by envy.Sheer quantity rather elicits scepticismfrom the people of the Confederation, andnot without reason. It can be said that ger-manophilia is not a decidedly widespreadphenomenon in Switzerland. A goodmeasure of the degree of the intellectualrelationship of Switzerland to Germany isthe Magazin which appears as a weeklysupplement to a great daily paper; recent-ly, acknowledgements of the “Great Can-ton” (as the Swiss call their northern neigh-bour) have appeared there more and moreoften, the emphatic uninhibitedness ofwhich bears satirical, even subversive fea-tures. Roger de Weck – the “Willemsen” ofSwitzerland – recently articulated his loveof Germany almost in the form of a com-ing out of the closet. So the situation is notcompletely tension-free.

In the area of contemporary music thereare hardly grounds for envy. Switzerlandhas an almost exorbitantly high density ofcomposers and lively scenes; in addition,numerous institutions and ensembles fromSwitzerland and from Germany workclosely together to cultivate contemporarymusic. In this microcosm, the question ofnationality is rather superfluous. Compos-ers, interpreters, musicologists and manag-ers from both countries are very closelyconnected. It is mostly immaterial who haswhich passport. The times in which in-trigues were plotted against people suchas Hermann Scherchen on account of “Un-swiss characteristics” are surely past.

You think, then, that Switzerland and Ger-many form a kind of great harmonious bi-otope?

This conclusion is somewhat presumptu-ous. Naturally there are differences. I re-member an accidental meeting of Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rudolf Kelterborn. Thishad something of a Clash of Cultures. As-tonishingly, it is sometimes possible inSwitzerland to experience something likethe “littleness” of Germany. In the FederalRepublic, a whole specific discourse hasdeveloped on the New Music which is nolonger understandable only a few kilome-tres beyond the frontier because of its her-metics. Despite the common language, theepistemological premises are not the same.Federal German certainties about New Mu-sic are not necessarily such in Switzerland.When they are delivered with insistentgestures, this can seem rather provincial.

Nevertheless, you speak of close connec-tions. Have you the impression that Swissmusic is taken notice of in German musi-cal life?

Music, particularly New Music, is certainlynot Switzerland’s greatest export hit. I canunderstand that you find the thought dis-tasteful that demanding and uncompro-mised art should arise in a country ofcheese, clocks and money-washing. It can-not be completely denied that the Swiss atsome time came to terms with the role of amusically-underdeveloped country andadopted an identity as a second-class cul-ture not able to compete in the interna-tional context. Jürg Wyttenbach’s bonmotis well-known, according to which thecontribution of Switzerland to musical his-tory is the echo thrown back from themountain face. For a country which re-


veres a terrorist as its national hero, thiscannot really be everything! There are nu-merous Swiss musicians today – think ofHeinz Holliger, Jacques Wildberger, UrsPeter Schneider or Mischa Käser – who donot act in a manner particularly oriented toapproval. When they compose, the Alps liedown flat. By the way, there are somesigns that today’s music from Switzerlandis not merely an insipid echo thrown backby Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. Why other-wise should even the Grand Moguls ofFederal German New Music follow devel-opments in the Swiss scene with ever-growing interest? Armin Köhler not onlyenjoyed the attractive tourist offers of ourlittle country last summer, but also attend-ed the festivals in Rümlingen and Lucerne,where he found powerful inspiration forhis Donaueschingen Music Days. Please al-low me the effrontery to point out that thegreat festivals in Witten and Saarbrückenthis year were by all means able to profitfrom the inclusion of “Swiss” contribu-tions.

It is amazing how much you as a Germanseem to identify yourself with your hostcountry. On a purely financial level, Swit-zerland is well known to be better off thanGermany. Is life in the Confederation easi-er because of this?

Well, the material wealth of a country isone thing. How it is administered is quiteanother. In spite of the extraordinary Hel-vetian multiplicity of New Music initiativesand promotion possibilities, it must be saidthat there is the fatal tendency in the poli-tics of the arts to imitate the thumbscrewbehaviour of the great neighbour to thenorth (or indeed of all neighbours). Insome things, the Swiss are even ahead ofthe Germans; radio choirs, for example,have long been abolished. In Basel, the in-dications are quite clear that the questionof wealth is not only a financial one; sincePaul Sacher’s death in 1999, a central areaof music has been going to the dogs, not

least because of a stubborn abstinence ofvision in the politics of the arts. In Germa-ny, it is often thought, rather inconsider-ately and naively, that conditions in Swit-zerland are like Paradise, on account ofthe immense amount of money alone. Ifthere are conditions as in Paradise hereand there in Switzerland, it is because ofgood ideas and the people who developthem. It is hardly different in Germany –whereby it is perhaps slightly easier inSwitzerland to realize good ideas. Andpoor ones, too.

Do the Germans complain too much?

No idea. I am aware of a kind of second-level complaining in Germany, a com-plaining about there being too much com-plaining. That is admittedly funny, but it isnot seen particularly plainly by people inSwitzerland. Sympathy would hardly beexpected anyway, after the occurrences ofrecent history. The fact is that contempo-rary music in Germany as in Switzerland isthreatened massively in similar ways. Yousee, I’m already beginning to complain.Naturally there is the disastrous tendencyto identify permanently with the role ofvictim. The lamentation develops a some-what embarrassing momentum if it be-comes the mark of collective identity. Weforget that an important part of the histori-cal New Music – for example, post-warmusic in Germany – drew gigantic energyprecisely from negative circumstanceswithout in this way having a particularlylachrymose effect. More spirit of resistancewould not be amiss in the life of music to-day – without there straightway having tobe lamentation.



Acoustic (Media) Art: Ars Acustica and the Idea of a Unique Art Form for Radio – an Examination of the Historical Conditions in Germanyby Andreas Hagelüken

The term Ars Acustica, which refers to aspecific treatment of sound material in themedium of radio, originated in the WDR1

Studio für Akustische Kunst (Studio forAcoustic Art), and was coined by theformer producer Klaus Schöning in the1970s.2 The appearance of a new term didnot, however, indicate the birth of some-thing truly new. The creation of a nameonly made it possible to distinguish a par-ticular method, material aesthetic, or formfrom other types of radio and audio art. Itwill become clear that attempts to createacoustic art, and later radio art, date backto the beginnings of the medium and evenearlier. It is insufficient, however, merelyto extract the history of Ars Acustica fromthe development of the development ofthe medium of public radio. The CulturalRevolution in Europe between 1910 and1925, which was marked by a search fornew forms of expression and the rejectionof traditional bourgeois concepts of truthand culture, also played a significant role.

The text below will concentrate primari-ly on the conditions leading to the birth ofArs Acustica within the broader frameworkof radiophonic art.

Radio was originally (and is, in fact, onceagain today) primarily a source of news,entertainment and education. As a result,acoustic art within the medium is largelyseen as “embellishment”. It is treated as a“luxury” and subject to the mood of theday, considered at times to be relevant, attimes meaningless and even bad for busi-ness. The latter view is particularly appar-ent in the present state-owned radio inGermany3 and makes clear that culturaland artistic use of the medium is still not tobe taken for granted.

The historical role played by artistic andradiophonically based Hörspiel and Fea-tures in advancing the formal developmentof the medium is often neglected. Radiogenres such as Schallspiel, Hörspiel, radioart and Ars Acustica, (to name the mostcommon ones) indicate a fundamentallyartistic treatment of the means and possi-bilities of the explicitly aural medium. TheSchallspiel is here considered as a precur-sor to Ars Acustica in the Weimar Repub-lic.4

There were numerous experiments withacoustic, electro-acoustic and acousmatictypes of play in the arts in general, but alsowith radio in particular, which proved,over the course of its history, to be thebest suited platform for audio art distinctfrom music.

In Germany, unlike other Europeancountries, the terms “Ars Acustica” and Ra-diokunst (radio art) are closely linked tothe history of the Hörspiel (and not con-temporary music). A look at the develop-ment of the treatment of the working ma-terials (voice/word, sound, and music) inboth Hörspiel and Ars Acustica will revealthis connection.

From a historical standpoint, the responsi-bility for Ars Acustica in Germany (and inGerman-speaking countries), as opposedto its European neighbours, still lies prima-rily in the hands of the Hörspiel depart-ments, although the stations and depart-ments ever more rarely lay claim to theHörspiel and, among other reasons, hopeto appear more popular through the use ofsuch terms as radio art, sound art,Medienkunst or Klangkunst.


Hörspiel – a collective term

A definition has yet to be found whichdoes justice to the diverse form still calledHörspiel.

Even in the earliest phase of German ra-dio (beginning in 1923), which focused onthe search for forms of presentation appro-priate to the medium, there were threefundamentally different views of what aHörspiel was and what it should accom-plish:

The Sendespiel was intended to create a“theatre for the blind”, and it could be de-scribed as “in short, the continuation oftheatre using other means.”5 The Sende-spiel, which in its use of existing literarymaterial was the most obvious form, domi-nated the Hörspiel genre until 1926/27. Itwas apolitical and was seen as a chance toconfront a broad and culturally “under-nourished” population with classic Germandramatic literature, thus establishing radioas an educational institution. In this case,the act of listening entailed the reconstruc-tion of externally determined events.

Early on, the Sprach- or Wortkunstwerk6

found its position alongside the Sendespiel.Both forms involved literary adaptation,but the Wort-Hörspiel endeavoured to en-rich the new medium by creating distinc-tive literary radio art. The Wort-Hörspiel isthe epitome of the poetically conceivedand dramaturgically spoken word. It creat-ed conceptual worlds, and its lyricism de-manded the individual seclusion of com-pletely introspective listening.

The third form of early Hörspiel was theMusikHörspiel,7 which probed the poten-tial of radiophonic sound art. It was devel-oped and explored primarily within “musicdepartments” in experiments which com-bined text, music, and sound, giving equalweight to each. Here, the elements of theHörspiel were treated principally as soundmaterial.

This approach in particular addressedthe novelty of radio, to which it attemptedto give artistic form. The search for the

qualities of radio art suggests the primacyof acoustic properties: Hör-spiel (literally“listen-play”), the double imperative, refersto both the invitation to play (spiel), and tothe perception of the medium using thesense of hearing (Gehör). The Hörspiel isthus no longer limited to playing with thesignifying properties of the word. It be-comes a sound phenomenon, in which thevarious forms of expression can be organ-ized according to their sonority.

Because radio plays today can be catego-rized according to subject matter or targetaudience, divisions by genre are called for.These include Kurz-Hörspiel (short radioplay), science-fiction radio play, Original-ton-Hörspiel (radio play using originalsound material), Mundart-Hörspiel (dialectradio play), Kinder-Hörspiel (children’s ra-dio play), Kriminal-Hörspiel (mystery),Wortkunstwerk (word artwork) or Schall-spiel (soundplay), Sendespiel (broadcastplay), feature, etc. It is striking that thesecategories are not determined by specificformal characteristics, as is the case (atleast traditionally) in music and literature.Rather, there is a constant exchange of sty-listic means, but also of forms, amongthese so-called genres of Hörspiel. Thisleads to a broad and (at times) uncertainformal concept of each type.

If, nonetheless, one accepts the validityof these genres, a phenomenon best de-scribed as genre correspondence presentsitself within the radio play spectrum. Thiscorrespondence is both a considerableforce behind the development of each in-dividual type of radio play, and also deci-sive in the progress of the field as a whole.The aforementioned exchange is particu-larly evident in the development of Sci-ence fiction or Children’s radio play (butalso Features) after the innovation of theNeue Hörspiel,8 inasmuch as the tech-niques, concepts, and ways of playingwith acoustic materials enter directly intothe organization of traditional Handlungs-Hörspiel or reportages.


The legitimacy of the claimed differentia-tion of the subgenres of the radio play isimportant, despite the somewhat blurredboundaries between them. The resultingorder within the spectrum was certainlynot yet present in the consciousness of theWeimar republic, but from a contemporarystandpoint, it provides orientation which isessential for a historical and typologicalconsideration of the radio play and its laterforms.

Schallspiel – an early form of Ars Acustica?

As previously mentioned, the developmentof the radio play in the Weimar Republictook place at the earliest stages of artisticactivity within the medium. The novelty ofradio, and the search for appropriate formsof expression, inasmuch as this search wasseriously pursued, called for experimenta-

tion (see above), since common forms andmethods had not yet been established. It isplausible that, after the initial adoption ofexisting forms of expression, interest arosein developing forms which were more“suitable” and made better use of the me-dium. One approach suggested a new re-gard for the elements of the radio play.They were no longer treated as “mere”bearers of the plot, nor as supportersthereof, but were reconsidered for theirmateriality and (sound) value within thecomplex event of the radio play, therebyexpanding their significance for the firsttime. This reinterpretation of the elementsinto their auditory and self-reflexive quali-ties will be briefly outlined below.

Language as materialThere are various possibilities for trans-forming written language, the startingpoint of literary radio productions, into aradio play. To name just a few:


Narrative speech delivers a plotline tothe listener directly, using purely verbalmeans. It can be shaped on several levels(vocal intensity according to distance ofthe microphone, manner and tone of nar-ration, etc.). This is the classic form of ra-dio play.

Scenic speech functions similarly: theplot is distributed among several real orpresumed characters or perspectives. Astory unfolds along a dramatic construct.The tone of the voices follows both con-temporary custom and the artistic intentionof the director.

Text shaping speech is a rhythmic, dance-like and abstract approach, which beginsto treat language according to its soundand structure.

All of these approaches to text material(here only briefly indicated), are further in-fluenced by technical and (since the birthof stereophony) production-specific aes-thetic decisions (microphone placement,definition of the setting, location of the ac-tors, etc.).

The essential factor of all three ap-proaches is that they are based on a plot-line which is determined by the semanticquality of the language.

Further parameters for interpreting thecontent of written language are emphasis,sound, rhythm of speech, speed and melo-dy of speech, and even vocal character. Ina radio composition, these qualities canfree the verbal material from its “merely”literal quality. The structure of language intime can also be altered. Earlier depend-ence on the purely linear treatment of liter-ature (reading as a sequence) is aban-doned in favour of more musically inclinedsolutions, such as simultaneous speech.

As the density of the spoken material in-creases (ending in simultaneity), the literalmeaning of the words recedes ever furtherto reveal the resulting sound and noisestructure. A new realm is created betweenabstraction and fickle literalism. Radiocomposition and Ars Acustica can act onboth levels, and the levels can be com-

bined. The form of presentation thus gainsa diverse and decisive influence on thecommunication of all manner of content.

In this context, it is appropriate to intro-duce the genre known as Lautpoesie(sound poetry), which is characterized byexperimentation with language, or even itsdissolution into pure sound (as practiced,for example, by the Russian futurists andDadaists). Language appears here in unu-sual contexts and develops new artisticqualities, which will become particularlyapparent in Ars Acustica.

Musical materialA similar expansion can be traced in theformal approach to Hörspielmusik (radioplay music) and in the musical structure ofthe Hörspiel. Generally speaking, the pro-gression began with simple signals at thebeginning and end of a play (a gong, forexample) and pause signals or transitionalinterludes between scenes. Work with leit-motifs identifying specific spaces or char-acters followed. Finally, music graduatedto a position of independence (which thenmatured and solidified with the Neue Hör-spiel), no longer illustrating, but now“speaking for itself”. Quite early on, themusical form contributed to the structureof the plot. Thus, it becomes necessary todifferentiate between a music in the lan-guage and plot-oriented Handlungs-Hör-spiel, and the concrete composition whichbecomes a radio play in itself. The latter isclosely tied to the search for specificallyappropriate radio music which is alsotransmittable despite the technical limita-tions of the medium. This endeavour, en-couraged by the music departments of theradio stations, led to the birth of newforms.

Music in the radio playFor radio plays which present a given plot(Wort-Hörspiel), “eight possibilities of ra-dio play music”9 can be distinguished:

1. Scenic music, a complete piece of mu-sic which is necessary to the plot.


2. Music as acoustic scenery.3. Music as a replacement for visual oc-

currences through musical and/or rhyth-mic events.

4. Music as characteristic illustration ofdramaturgically elevated dialogue.

5. Music as spoken song or as a songwith instrumental accompaniment (melo-drama).

6. Music as accentuation (musical ac-cent), usually using just one instrument,often percussion.

7. Music as a replacement for a drama-turgically meaningful gesture.

8. Music to represent natural occurrenc-es.10

In these radio plays, the music assumes asubordinate function and is only intro-duced in service of the spoken communi-cation of the plot.

In contrast, the Musik-Hörspiel (music ra-dio play) seeks to implement independ-ence of music and sound in the Hörspiel.Here, the definition of the Hörspiel com-prehends the listening process in a broad-er sense as was common in the Wort-Hör-spiel. The primacy of the spoken wordmade way for the combination of speech,music, and sound, which were all treatedwith equal importance. Such pieces werecommonly performed as Funkkantaten orFunkoratorien (radio cantatas or radio ora-torios) in music festivals – a traditionwhich is, in other forms, still present today,for example, in electro-acoustic perform-ance practice, which is well known to bequite close to Ars Acustica.

Worlds of noiseThe use of noise in the Hörspiel followed asimilar development as that of languageand music. Experimentation with noiseand its inherent potential for articulationand composition was pursued before theonset of radio by the Italian Futurists. Aletter dated March 11th, 1913 from LuigiRussolo to the musician Balilla Pratella,who was a member of the futuristic groupincluding Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, de-

scribed Russolo’s concept of contemporarymusic: “Today, it becomes ever more com-plicated. It seeks such combinations ofpitches which sound very dissonant,strange and raw to the ear. Thus we comecloser and closer to the music of noise […].We Futurists all loved the music of thegreat masters. Beethoven and Wagnergripped our hearts for many years. Butnow we have had enough of them. Wetake much more pleasure in the ideal com-bination of sounds from streetcars, com-bustion motors, automobiles, and bustlingmasses, than from the Eroica or Pastorale[…]. We will entertain ourselves by mental-ly orchestrating the sounds of metal blindson store windows, of slamming doors, theslurping and shoving of the masses, theagitation of crowds in train stations, steel-works, factories, printing presses, powerplants, and underground trains.”11

It should be noted that Russolo and theFuturists were not concerned with a trea-tise on the technical world as a musical orsounding sphere. Rather, the intention wasto incorporate the noises of every day(modern) life into musical events, to en-gage them in the apparatus of the orches-tra. The Futurists’ “Emancipation of noise”paves the way for artistic use of noise andit’s application as a structural and dynamicbuilding block of acoustic art.

Hörspiel in its beginnings: division and organization of play

In retrospect, allowing for some reductionand idealization, the development of theHörspiel in the Weimar Republic untilabout 1930 can be divided into three phas-es:

(I) The first phase, marked by a familiar-ization with the new medium and its crea-tive potential, served “essentially to test themedial power of suggestion” or to “dem-onstrate possibilities for acoustic illu-sion.”12


(II) The second phase demonstrated thedependence of the Hörspiel on the techni-cal organization of the medium. At least inthe Hörspiel as art form, acoustic sensationmoved to the forefront of this organization– or, as Helmut Heißenbüttel put it later inthe context of the Neue Hörspiel, the Hör-spiel becomes a Hör-Sensation. This termincludes reference to the changing con-ception of material. In this context, Rein-hard Döhl emphasizes the Hörspiel’s de-pendence on the medium, implying thatthe sensation only exists in the moment ofbeing broadcast.

(III) The next phase, begun at the end ofthe 1920s, attempted to find expressivemeans for current events (or true sensa-tion). Radical occurrences such as Lind-bergh’s transatlantic flight (Der Lindbergh-flug by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill), aswell as catastrophes caught the interest ofHörspiel authors. Examination (parallel tothe literary analysis) of the First World Waralso occurred (in Johannsen’s Brigadever-mittlung, for example). Direct reference tothe politics of the Weimar Republic wasgenerally impossible, due to the censure-like control of Hörspiels. This was motivat-ed, at least in part, by the director-gener-als’ desire to avoid statements on partypolitics.

All of these roughly outlined develop-mental phases of the Hörspiel in the Wei-mar Republic witnessed experimentationwhich treated the elements (music, lan-guage, sound) primarily as sound material.The “open” politics of radio, championedby the director-generals of the individualradio institutions, contributed to this spiritof enthusiastic experimentation. But thepolitical pressure on the individual direc-tors with regard to their programming hadalready begun at the beginning of the1930s. The first purge of radio actors tookplace in 1932. In the years 1932–33, themajority of leaders of the development ofradio (and Hörspiel) in all its diversity weredismissed. After the “Machtergreifung”13,many were sent to the concentration camp

in Oranienburg. Their positions were filledby loyal National Socialists, whose goalwas to transform radio into a highly effi-cient mass medium of the party. Brieflyput, practically everything which wasbroadcast on the radio from this point onserved the propaganda campaign.14

Postwar radio – the long way to radio art

Historical ContextSeveral circumstances of the reorganiza-tion of radio in general were decisive forthe idea of radiophonic art in the periodafter the World War II.

The radio institutions were under super-vision by the occupying forces, whose ra-dio policy can be summarized with theterm “re-education”. Thus, the task of ra-dio was seen mainly as that of teachingand advising the listening public, and pro-gramming was planned accordingly. Hör-spiel as well as music programs were to beconceived in the spirit of the Allies’ educa-tional goals. Since current, primarily hu-man problems (homecoming, reconstruc-tion, homelessness, establishing a liveli-hood, reorientation, etc.) were to be treat-ed, the presence of a plot was vital. Theprimacy of the plot caused the predisposi-tion toward radio drama owing to their“tendency to internalize and reduce realityto the human-private sphere”.15 For themoment, there was no latitude from the ra-dio organizers for technical experiments(for example acoustic film, collage andmontage). From the listeners’ point of viewas well, the central demand on radio wasfor entertainment. So, the tendency towardWort- or Handlungs-Hörspiel satisfied theneeds of the audience.

An assessment of the programming ofthe period should also take into accountthat, due to the destruction of theatres,concert halls and cinemas, radio was theonly remaining source of information be-sides newspapers, and it was also the only


generally accessible institution for enter-tainment. In addition, the loss of most ra-dio archives and the lack of sufficient re-cording methods made a direct continua-tion of the Hörspiel work and experimen-tation of the Weimar Republic impossible.All of these factors resulted in the increas-ing establishment of the Wort- or Hand-lungs-Hörspiel, which, in the interest of thelistener, aimed as much as possible at a de-politicised and intimate receptive attitude.The narrowing of the concept of the Hör-spiel was supported by the division of theHörspiel and feature departments at NWDRin 1950. This robbed the Hörspiel of thepotential which it had possessed until thispoint to relate directly to current affairs.

The plot, whether composed in literaryor poetic form, stood in the foreground ofHörspiel work after World War II. Soundand music were relegated to a supportingillustrative role. The ‘pure’ Wort-Hörspielbecame the “actual Hörspiel”. Schallspieleor the current tendencies developing inthe field of music (see below) made no im-pact on Hörspiel work.

Breaking the ties to functionalismBeginning in the mid-1960s, the Hörspielonce again moved closer to other forms ofartistic expression. Some essential reasonsfor this will be discussed below. Culturaltendencies of the 1950s and 1960s will beconsidered as influential factors in the de-velopment of the Hörspiel (to the NeueHörspiel and later Ars Acustica), to the ex-tent that they explored and developedtechniques or manners of thinking which,beginning in the mid-1960s, led to innova-tion in the field of the Hörspiel.

The dissolution of language within the HörspielThe character of the language used inHandlungs-Hörspielen (plot-based radioplays) gradually evolved, approaching thetrend toward Konkrete Poesie (concretepoetry).

This process is already recognizable inthe constant change in Günter Eich’s16

pieces. His Hörspiele were remarkable inthat they demanded participatory thinkingand judgment from the audience, challeng-ing the security of the listeners’ receptiveattitude. Eich also altered the technicalstyle and with it the entire character of thepiece, particularly by choosing the(abrupt) method of cutting instead of (soft-er) fading.

The view of all facets of speech (sound,letter, word, sentence, phrase, in additionto manner of articulation, etc.) as phoneticor rhythmic compositional material be-came common from 1968/69 on, particu-larly in the milieu of the Neue Hörspiel.The work of the poet Gerhard Rühm pro-vided preliminary work in this direction.The materiality of language was the basisof Rühm’s Lautpoesie (sound poetry) asearly as the 1950s and 1960s. As a memberof the Wiener Gruppe (Vienna Group), heconceived sound-poems such as gebet(“prayer”, 1954) in which the vowels a a ue e o i sound in a sing-song in constantplay with consonants, until all possiblecombinations have been exhausted.

Rühm’s work also found phonetic mate-rial in linguistic dialect, which was particu-larly appropriate for sound-poetry, sincedialect is typically oral language and notfixed in written literature.

In 1969, Rühm brought the experienceof this work into the recording studio,where his Hörspiel Zensurierte Rede (“cen-sured speech”) was produced. In thispiece, Rühm reduced a speech given inCzech to the initial and end sounds of theproclamation itself. The final effect is thatone recognizes that there is a speech, butcannot make out the content – a symbolicimage of the infringement on free speechby the censure. Precisely this shift in theuse of language is characteristic for theconcept of language-play in Hörspiel, par-ticularly in the field of the Neue Hörspieland later Ars Acustica.


Technical innovations

The entire concept of radio as an educa-tional and entertainment institution under-went a profound transformation in the1960s effected by, among other factors, therise of television. The Hörspiel that hadbeen broadcast until this point, primarilyHandlungs-Hörspiel, were gradually driv-en out of the “market” by television andfilm productions. There were ever fewerlisteners in general, and not only in thefield of Hörspiel. Many authors transferredto the more lucrative medium of television.A reorientation on the part of the radiowas necessary – if only in order to retain ashare of the market. In this context, “theHörspiel branch was liberated from its ear-lier responsibility for literary education andforced, in light of the competition from thevisual medium, [to focus on] its specificqualities.”17 Pushed on by an external im-petus, radio was moved to innovate, andRadiokunst and Ars Acustica were artforms which played with just the “specificqualities” mentioned above. Although thefoundation was new, a central theme ranparallel to the beginnings of radio, that be-ing the diversity of the generic term Hör-spiel. The terrain of radiophonic art stoodto be redefined.

At the same time, technical advances likethe development of stereophony createdvitally new perspectives, redefining thespatial dimensions of listening. A projec-tion space came into being, which the lis-tener suddenly (co)occupied. Furthermore,through the distribution of several sound-sources in space, stereophony made possi-ble the conception of a highly complexsound image. Due to this spatial organiza-tion, an intricate composition could be dif-ferentiated and therefore grasped in itsmany dimensions by the listener. Im-proved studio techniques18 also offerednew perspectives for the mixing of thebuilding blocks music, sound, and lan-guage, enhancing their material character.

Correspondences of genre

Seen in retrospect, the late 1950s and early1960s were a time of crisis in the field ofNeue Musik (New Music), as serial tech-niques had led to an intellectualization andmathematisation of musical parameters.What had until that point been a more orless “unified front” of Neue Musik, as em-bodied in the International SummerCourse for New Music in Darmstadt, beganto divide into various methods of composi-tion and views of material.

The relevant directions for our purposesare:

1. Serialism and Aleatoric2. Electronic music3. Traditional composition, based on

purely musical parameters and techniquessuch as were also employed in serial music

4. The inclusion of the sensory aspect ofmusic, depending upon multimedial meth-ods with a broadened material understand-ing.

The key to an understanding of the con-cept of border-crossing can be found in anexamination of the treatment of materials.This refers to the use of signifiers, such as(concrete) sound and verbal structures, inthe composition process of Neue Musik onthe one hand, and the imitation of sound-technical and musical practices from con-temporary composition in the Neue Hör-spiel on the other hand. Changes in the vi-sion of what music and Hörspiel should ac-complish indeed ran parallel to one anoth-er, leading to a merging of the develop-ments characterized by the phrases, “com-poser as Hörspiel-maker” or “music as Hör-spiel – Hörspiel as music”. This joining to-gether of art forms was made possible byvarious efforts on the part of both compos-ers and Hörspiel-makers. Their work willbe briefly described below, as it was es-sential in laying the groundwork for the in-dependent form of Ars Acustica.

As a reaction to the strict regulations andprocedure within serial music, whoseguiding rule was the technical organization


and predetermination of every detail, theopposing principle of Aleatoric was devel-oped: Here the law of chance was regard-ed as the controlling and organizing forcebehind both the particulars of the compo-sition and its overall character.

The dissolution of compositional prede-termination took place on several levels:

1. Assuming the composition of a musi-cal complex out of several formal sections,the once ordered sequence became varia-ble. The individual segments were nolonger notated in the strict continuum of atraditional score, but rather lay, for exam-ple, simultaneously on individual sheets ofpaper. This relatively unstructured condi-tion resulted in

2. a coincidental character of composi-tion: the interpreter became active as com-poser as well, and the design of a piecewas only complete in the collective actionof its performance.19

This principle of participation by thecomplete production team in the creationof the work found expression in the exper-imental Hörspiel of the 1970s and 1980s.The concept of open guidelines, or activeinterpreters (speakers, technicians, direc-tors) became the only binding impera-tive,20 and the final form of the materialwas extracted or shaped through the spon-taneity or chance of technical experiments.

The Aleatoric concept found anotheroutlet in the treatment of spoken languagewithin Hörspiel. The milieu of the Hörspielstudios in Cologne is particularly remarka-ble for productions which experimentedwith the sounding aspect of language. Thechoice and preparation of Hörspiel materi-al was determined according to conceptsof language as phonetic material, as se-mantically oriented literary criticism, or inits variability according to the manner ofspeech.

The importance of electronic (electro-acoustic) music for the Neue Hörspiel, theSchallspiel, or the experimental Hörspieland Ars Acustica is obvious:

On the one hand, it was synthetic meth-ods, such as modulation and mutation ofan initial impulse, which provided materialfor the composition. On the other hand,the tape recorder established itself as averitable instrument of composition, facili-tating the assembly of extremely complexstructures which were barely performableby musicians. As a result, the process ofcomposition moved away from “notation”,favouring an experimental approach to thematerials in the creation of the work.

Beginning around 1948, the work in themilieu of Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henryin the field known as Musique concrète at-tempted anew to develop a form of noisemusic or poetry. Experimentation tookplace with predominantly electronicallymutated natural sounds. Stimulation of re-alistic imagery was adamantly avoided.Rather, Schaeffer sought the aesthetic inde-pendence of sound-worlds, which he setin opposition to a purely illustrative ap-proach. His work, which followed andcontinued the emancipation of noise be-gun by the Bruitists at the beginning of the20th Century, set the stage for Hörspiel orSchallspiel free of imagery, devoted to theself-contained world of the sound event.This fulfilled the heavy demands for a to-tales Schallspiel set forth by Knilli in hisbook from 1961 (see below). Thus, Mu-sique concrète prepared the way for theexpanded notion of play in the Hörspiel ofthe 1960s and 1970s. The concept of theauditory came to include language, sound,articulation, and also music. The discus-sion of the organization and duties of me-dium-specific art for the radio moved awayfrom representational portrayal of reality,and toward a technical concept of reality,focused on that which is specifically audi-ble. The fundamental creative principle ofMusique concrète was “that the musicalvalue of the elements and the thus gained,newly arranged sounds become fully inde-pendent, bound only by the criteria of au-ral perception itself.”21 An example can beseen in Schaeffer’s Objets liés (1959). Al-


though this collage used noises and vibra-tions of concrete objects, it allowed noconclusions about the objects themselves.

In contrast, Luc Ferrari’s concept ofAnekdotische Musik (anecdotal music)sought to “speak to the listener’s experi-ence and imagination”22 through the useof concrete sounds. Examples includePresque Rien No. 1 (Lever du jour au bordde la mer) (1970), in which the break of amorning becomes an acoustic experience,and his Karl-Sczuka prizewinning Portrait-spiel (SWF, 1971). Here, Ferrari used a dis-cussion with a woman to convey a senseof himself in his relationship to music. Thereflections are bound into an acoustic con-text of electronic sounds, musical excerpts,screams, and noises. Through the authen-ticity of the materials and their inclusion inmusical-acoustic processes, this composi-tion becomes a form of speech about mu-sic, using semantic and musical means.

The concepts named above share the in-tention to reject an art form judged to beobsolete. The experiments and their resultsaimed to broaden the expressive potentialof acoustical means, and to set an alterna-tive model to the “bourgeois culture busi-ness”, which believed art to be removedfrom and above the events of daily life. Aparallel can be seen in the dawn of “Hap-pening Culture” in the 1960s, which soughtemancipation by closing the gap betweenaestheticism and reality. Just as Happeningaestheticised reality, music which includednoises and the inherently mundane associ-ations that came with them contradictedthe view of art as strictly detached fromeveryday life.

New listening

In music as in Hörspiel there was the hopeto reach a listening public increasingly un-touched by the normal concert industry.To awaken “new listening” through theconception of unprecedented audio com-

position must also have been in the inter-est of the institution of radio, since the fos-tering of uniquely radiophonic qualitiescould have combated the loss of listeners(begun in the 1970s at the latest, and inpart due to the provision of television en-tertainment in every household, seeabove). Radio institutions were neverthe-less slow to introduce the rising trends inNeue Musik and electronic music into Hör-spiel productions. The initiative for radioart across traditional genre boundaries waslargely limited to the artists themselvesand, from this point on, included a con-ceptual backing in music theory.

Knilli’s concept of the “totales Schallspiel”Without actually mentioning the term ArsAcustica, Friedrich Knilli made an impor-tant contribution to the establishment ofthe genre as an independent form of radioart in 1961, with his paper, Das Hörspiel –Mittel und Möglichkeiten eines totalenSchallspiels23 (“The radio play – meansand possibilities of a total sound play”). Inhis theory, the acoustic layout was the sin-gular measure of the Hörspiel as sound-event and was thus differentiated from theconventional Hörspiel using the term to-tales Schallspiel.

According to Knilli’s guidelines, the ele-ments of the Hörspiel should no longer re-late to the outside world, but only to oneanother in their materiality. Here he saw asimilarity to music. His Schallspiel was alsoclosely tied to the aforementioned changesin the cultural landscape in Germany inthe 1960s (television, electro-acoustic com-position, rejection of purely internalizedlistening in favour of multimedia agitationand synaesthetic experiments).

Karl Sczuka PrizeThe Karl Sczuka Prize,24 awarded in thecontext of the Donaueschingen MusicDays, honours Hörspiel work for musicalor radiophonic excellence. It is remarkablenot for its influence on the field of Hör-spiel, but rather as it represents a reaction


to existing trends. The quest to create a fo-rum uniting New Music and experimentalHörspiel productions reflected the growingdesire to remove barriers between the twogenres.

From the perspective of radio as a massmedium, it is notable that thus honouredworks – as is seemingly the case withmuch contemporary artwork – never reachthe masses and even require a certain de-gree of mediation. Nonetheless, the KarlSczuka prize holds an outstanding positionin the world of Radio Art, Ars Acustica,and even Audio Art in general. The eleva-tion and distinction of at least two per yearhas created and continues to create a cata-logue, documenting the gamut of specifi-cally radiophonic composition. The scopeof the field is thus defined but also poten-tially expanded with each year’s addition.Regretfully, the prizewinning pieces arenot individually retrievable. The results ap-pear in publications,25 but the piecesthemselves remain practically unheard,barring the occasional rare broadcast byregional stations.

The theoretical importance of the prizeis increased by the international nature ofthe pool from which the winners aredrawn. Of course, there are other prizeswhich contribute to a complete image ofaudio art,26 but the Karl Sczuka Prize isone of Europe’s oldest and displays themost continuity.

An investigation of the theoretical basis ofthe Karl Sczuka Prize recipients since 1968reveals a delay with respect to develop-ments in literature and music. As shownabove, the strictly mathematical, technical-ly based or politically motivated composi-tion methods in Neue Musik were alreadypresent in the first twenty years after theend of the war. A return was already un-derway in the 1970s – away from pure in-tellectualism and back to an emphasis onemotion and depth of expressivity. In theexperimental phase of Neue Musik, recep-tiveness to foreign methods such as col-

lage and use of noise had established theties to Hörspiel production. Thus, the re-newed consciousness of traditional melod-ically and harmonically based approachesrepresented a “remusicalisation”, and withit a distancing from the Hörspiel. And yet,techniques and especially results of reflec-tion on the field of Neue Musik were vitalto the innovation of the Hörspiel at the endof the 1960s. Now it was the creators of ra-dio and Hörspiel whose experimentationapproached the acoustic domain.

Admittedly, the radical “materialisation”(“Vermaterialisierung”) of Lettrists, Bruit-ists, and the compositions by KarlheinzStockhausen, Dieter Schnebel, John Cage,etc. had been conceived and, to some ex-tent applied already. Yet now, with thetrend returning to musical parameters inNeue Musik, radio artists opened a new ar-ea, which was specifically bound to radio,but also tied in literature and music tosome extent. What was previously foundin the expansion of boundaries or on theedge of literature or music, now created aroom of its own in the genre of experi-mental Hörspiel known as Ars Acustica.The acoustical expression whose diversityhad unfolded (with some interruption)throughout the course of the Hörspiel’s his-tory, appears finally to have established it-self, with its building blocks (pitch/sound/music, language/speech, and noise), and itseeks forms of compositional implementa-tion.

New media and digitalisation

With the spread of the personal computerat the end of the 20th Century, the numberof experimenters in the realm of electro-acoustical composition grew exponential-ly. A large portion of the resulting produc-tions aimed at the entertainment sectorand served, or even revolutionized clubculture (among other areas). Audio-loung-es arose in many locations, in which a mixof common beats, sound-scapes, musical


structures and concrete sounds wereplayed. An example can be found in Ambi-ent Music, which functions both on a pure-ly atmospheric level as acoustic wallpaper,and on the level of fine detail with a ma-ture and explicitly aural material aesthetic.These developments in popular spherescomprised the second emancipation ofconcrete sounds in music. In this context,people were sensitized to a soundingworld which had yet to receive attention –neither from so-called classical music(“ernste Musik”), electro-acoustical compo-sition and musique concrete, nor any otherform of sound art (Hörkunst). They there-by attained, at least potentially, the basisfor a form of aesthetic listening and aes-theticising of everyday life, as well as theartistic use of the audible world, for exam-ple, in the form of Ars Acustica. Parallel tothese developments, some Hörspiel depart-ments also revised their self-images. Theybecame Medienkunststätten, (venues formedia art) discovering live events beyondthe radio stations and, in the case of SFB,27

launching sound installations not connect-ed to radio itself. In many cases, they evenopened up to club culture.

The tremendous spread of the PC was fi-nally the cause of numerous new careerchoices. Once divided areas of productioncould now – at least from a technicalstandpoint – be brought back together.What had been common in electro-acous-tical composition now found its way intothe field of the Hörspiel.

The composer or author does not createa product to be interpreted by others, butrather he executes his work himself at eve-ry stage. In this sense, he unites the rolesof author, dramaturge, director, and pro-ducer in one person. As previously men-tioned, music had already encounteredthis type of combination of musician orcomposer and producer in the 1950s. Thelast decades of the 20th Century saw theaddition of the author-producer. Certainly,the “simplified” technical conditions didnot necessarily guarantee aesthetic value.

First and foremost, they made the meansof production accessible on a broad scale.It remains to hope that there are someamid the author-producers who recall thehistory of music, Radiokunst and Ars Acus-tica, and thus avoid reinventing the wheelon a daily basis.

Radio institutions, contemporary sound art and Ars Acustica

Radio is currently withdrawing from its re-sponsibility the aforementioned sensitizingof the “masses” to audible phenomena andtheir aesthetic use. Whether in Canada,Australia, Holland, or recently in Germanyat Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg, ArsAcustica programs are disappearing rapid-ly, or, as in other institutions, they are be-ing “starved” by budget cuts. Contempo-rary, non-musical, non-literary sound art,which has long since become a genre in it-self, is ignored or overlooked.

It can thus be concluded today that theidea of radio-specific art has bypassed thevery medium which once brought it to life:Radiokunst and Ars Acustica have ripenedinto a self-contained art form which claimsits place beside visual art, literature, andmusic in the business of culture, in festi-vals, in series and clubs, on-site and on-line.

The fact that the institutions have ridthemselves of explicitly radiophonic art atjust the moment when a new audience forthe field has emerged, will work againstthem in the not-too-distant future, whenthey are faced with the loss of a discrimi-nating audience.

Translation: Allegra Silbiger


Notes

1 WDR stands for Westdeutscher Rundfunk, orWest German Broadcasting, and is based inCologne.2 WDR-Studio Akustische Kunst, 155 works,1968–1997, Cologne 1997.3 A few established programs, others were cutfrom the budget.4 The term Schallspiel is understood as a delibe-rate treatment of the sounding qualities of thematerials pitch, text, and sound. It stands in cont-rast with the (literature-bound and spoken word-based) Handlungs-Hörspiel, divisible itself intoSendespiel and Wort-Hörspiel.5 Reinhard Döhl, Das neue Hörspiel, Darmstadt-Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1988 (=Geschichte und Typologie des Hörspiels 5), p. 122.6 Referred to below as WortHörspiel.7 Below also Schallspiel, although this term pri-marily describes the position of the technical-acoustical play.8 Produced in the milieu of the WDR since the1970s and celebrated by publications as a para-digm change in Hörspiel production.9 Cf. Carl Hagemann, Hörspielmusik, in: Funk,1928, no. 22.10 Ibid., p. 169; quoted according to ChristianeTimper, Hörspielmusik in der deutschen Rund-funkgeschichte, Berlin: Spiess 1990, p. 29.11 Quoted according to Fred K. Prieberg, MusicaEx Machina – über das Verhältnis von Musik undTechnik, Frankfurt/Main, Berlin: Ullstein 1960,p. 32.12 Reinhard Döhl, Das Hörspiel zur NS-Zeit,Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft1992 (= Geschichte und Typologie des Hörspiels),p. 6; Examples included the previously namedDanger (1924) by Richard Hughes, Hans Flesch’sZauberei auf dem Sender (1924), Rolf Gunold’sBellinzona (1924, not broadcast), and Erich Eber-mayer’s Der Minister ist ermordet (1926).13 The seizure of power by the National SocialistParty on January 1st, 1933.14 Nanny Drechsler speaks of the National Socia-list’s radio work as a “barrage of propaganda”, cf.:Nanny Drechsler, Die Funktion der Musik im deut-schen Rundfunk 1933–1945, Pfaffenweiler: Cen-taurus 1988, p. 35.15 Stefan Bodo Würffel, Das deutsche Hörspiel,Stuttgart: Metzler 1978, p. 120.16 Günter Eich is one of the most importantradio authors in postwar Germany.17 Hermann Keckeis, Das deutsche Hörspiel1923–1973, Frankfurt/Main: Athenäum 1973,p. 108.

18 Cf. on this point: Herbert Eimert; Hans UlrichHumpert, Das Lexikon der elektronischen Musik,Regensburg: Bosse 1973 (regarding terminology)and Hans Ulrich Humpert, Elektronische Musik –Geschichte – Technik – Kompositionen, Mainz,1987, particularly p. 57ff.19 Traditional musical notation positions allvoices (when there are more than one) below oneanother. In Lutoslavski’s String Quartet (1964),however, the voices are notated in “51 sections”.Cf. Günter Altmann, Musikalische Formenlehre,Munich: Saur 1984, p. 173.20 There are numerous examples for this prin-ciple. To name just a few: Ronald Steckel DasChina Projekt (SFB/SWF/WDR 1985 – analysed indetail elsewhere by the author of this text. Thecoincidental nature of materials is also a decisiveaspect of Mauricio Kagel’s (Hörspiel) – ein Auf-nahmezustand (WDR 1969). John Cage’s con-cepts of original sound materials (followingliterary motives) also fits into the category of (par-tially) randomly determined audio works.21 Pierre Schaeffer, Art. Musique concrète, in:Riemann-Musik-Kexikon, Sachteil, 12th ed.,Mainz: Schott 1967, p. 618. Cf. also sound examp-les on the record, FONO CE 31025.22 Hansjörg Pauli, in: booklet text accompanyingrecord Luc Ferrari. Avantgarde, Deutsche Gram-mophon 2561041.23 Friedrich Knilli, Das Hörspiel – Mittel undMöglichkeiten eines totalen Schallspieles, Stuttgart:Kohlhammer 1961.24 Awarded for Hörspiel music since 1955. Since1970, it honors explicitly radiophonic compositi-ons in the present-day sense of Ars Acustica.Recognized today as the highest honor in thefield.25 Hermann Naber; Heinrich Vormweg; HansBurkhard Schlichting, Akustische Spielformen. Vonder Hörspielmusik zur Radiokunst. Der Karl-Sczuka-Preis 1955–1999, Baden-Baden: Nomos2nd ed., 2005 (= SWR Schriftenreihe Grundlagen1).26 For example the “Prix Art Acustica”, awardedseveral times by the WDR, and the “phonurgianova” in France, etc.27 SFB is the former Sender Freies Berlin (todayRundfunk Berlin Brandenburg). Manfred Mixnerinitiated the SFB-Klanggalerie in 1995, and it con-tinued to commission sound installations in theradio station, building regularly in the 10 yearswhich followed. The materials of the installationswere then further developed for the program“Internationale Radiokunst” and broadcast asradio compositions. The leadership of the RBBcancelled the Klanggalerie in 2005 and the radioprogram in 2006, both without replacement.


On the Death of György Ligetiby Reinhard Oehlschlägel

The Hungarian composer and teacher ofcomposition György Ligeti, born on May21st 1923 in the province of Siebenbürgen(today in Rumania), died in Vienna onJune 12th 2006, aged eighty-three, after along, serious illness.

Growing up bilingual in his childhoodand schooldays, Ligeti began his musicstudies before and immediately after his fi-nal school examinations, also with his firstsmall attempts at composition. He rapidlytook Béla Bartók as his example, whoseSecond String Quartet was for him the keywork confirming his desire to become acomposer. Since then, he studied music atthe Budapest Academy of Music. The con-clusion was marked by a Jugendkantatefor choir and orchestra, a humanitarianpiece. After this, Ligeti worked in Bartók’sfootsteps on research into folk music andlater obtained a contract teaching harmo-ny. During this time, the first compositionswere created, but which stood no chanceof performance until censorship was easedin the period of political relaxation. Hegained his information on developments inWestern Europe from his radio, on which,however, he could only listen in secret toconcerts from Munich and Cologne.

During the Hungarian Uprising of 1956,Ligeti fled across the Hungarian-Austrianfrontier to Vienna and travelled spontane-ously to Cologne to work in the electronicstudio of the West German Radio there.Karlheinz Stockhausen helped him withthe necessary formalities. Ligeti’s studies inthe electronic studio and what resulted inthem for his music for orchestra and otherensembles took Ligeti to the top of theWestern European composers’ scene in avery short time. A comparatively strictelectronic glissando study in 1957, thesound colour study Artikulation in 1958,and finally the sound colour study Appari-

tions in two movements for a large sym-phony orchestra, first performed at the Co-logne ISCM festival in 1960, are the sta-tions. The following breakthrough piecefor the Donaueschingen Music Days, againworked rather more for effect, is then At-mosphères (1961) – a short way to Ligeti’snew world-fame.

These years are the key to Ligeti’s personand works. Little as it is remembered to-day, it was a matter of seriality. Naturally,Ligeti does not count among the initiatorsof seriality; he came across it as the com-mon form of process and language in theCologne studio. But he identified himselfenthusiastically with serialistic language,which, coming as he did from the aestheti-cally-controlled Hungary, he found less arestriction than a liberation. After thebreakthrough to world-fame in the very

György Ligeti as a small boy, photo: private


specialized field of composed music, Ligetifound no lack of commissions, of invita-tions, for example, to the Darmstadt Sum-mer Courses or to teach at colleges of mu-sic, of composition prizes and patrons, ofpossibilities of achieving better publicationconditions and also of chances of gettingthe best interpreters for the performancesand recordings of his music. The funda-mental side of his existence, however, isthe internal development of compositionalideas and their realization in scores anddrafts.

After the first electronic pieces – Ligetiwas principally enthusiastic about the di-mension of the sound colour whichseemed for the first time to be freely avail-able in serial electronic music – he wasfascinated by the translation back to theorchestra of the sound colour sequences ofthe electronic music, the outwitting of theinsuperable inexactitudes of the orchestralensemble playing by means of cloudingand “fouling” of harmonic and rhythmiccontexts, but also the incredible purity ofthe pure octave sound spread over thespectrum and the whole sound space of

the orchestral instruments, a first elementof re-employed tonal music language.From 1961 on, Ligeti took another turnwith his fluxus-like pieces. He took the op-portunity of an invitation to Alpirsbach inAustria for Die Zukunft der Musik (“TheFuture of Music”), at which he wrote the ti-tle of his lecture on a blackboard beforehis select audience and then left themalone with it. The audience reaction wasrecorded on tape and played back. It is inthis context that the Trois bagatelles for pi-ano and the Poème symphonique for ahundred metronomes are also to be seen.It is significant that Ligeti did not speak ofseriality in connection with Artikulationnor of fluxus in Die Zukunft der Musik. InVolumina, the piece for organ (1961), weare concerned with the transposition of thepresentation of sound colour movementsfrom electronics and the orchestra to theorgan by cluster technique. In Aventuresfor coloratura soprano, alto, baritone andsmall instrumental ensemble (1962), non-semantic, absurd, surrealistic gestures anddrama are tried out consistently, represent-ing an absolute opposite to all traditions oftheatre, the totally different, in which prac-tically any realization on the stage had toremain unsatisfactory in comparison withthe radical idea. The idea behind the Re-quiem of 1965 was comparatively non-rad-ical, even if extraordinarily lavish in theuse of soloists, two choirs and orchestra. Itis the endeavour to compel together tradi-tional voice and instrumental treatmentwith advanced seriality and first momentsof tonality. In Lontano (1967), the mostsuccessful of Ligeti’s orchestral pieces, astudy of nearness and distance, a sublimi-nal re-use of functional harmony occurs inthe form of a clouded neo-tonality. TheVioloncello Concerto of 1966, on the otherhand, can be seen as a utopian idea piece.Ligeti spoke previously of integrating thesoloist fully into the orchestra. Afterwards,he admitted that the piece correspondedafter all to the scheme of conventional soloconcerti. Traditional aspects of the Second

21st International Summer Course for New Music in Darmstadt, 1966, György Ligeti (l) and Bruno Maderna at the rehearsal of Aventuresphoto: Pit Ludwig © Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD)


String Quartet of 1968 are the instrumenta-tion and the division of the music into sev-eral movements. But movement by move-ment, the gestures and instrumental ex-pression are increased into a new dimen-sion, partly reminiscent of Alban Berg’sLyrische Suite.

In the 1970s, there followed a series oforchestra, chamber orchestra, string or-chestra and ensemble pieces, of which themost sophisticated is the Chamber Concertof 1970 for thirteen instruments. In allthese pieces, Ligeti uses different conven-tional movement models, without thesebeing able to be termed neo-romantic orpost-modern or similar. In Monument,Selbstportät, Bewegung(“Monument, Self-Por-trait, Movement”) (1976)for two pianos, quite pe-culiar expressive studiesarise, a critical analysis ofUS-American Minimal Mu-

sic, at least of Steve Reich. Scurrility is alsothe dominating mark of the only operaLigeti ever composed. Le grand macabreof 1978 is a grotesque after Michel deGhelderode’s theatre piece of the samename, so to speak related to the Roi Ubumaterial. In this piece, too, Ligeti uses tra-ditional forms, those of opera. The over-ture is played on an out-of-tune scale ofcar horns. The soloists sing manneristic ari-as and duets in the finest parallels of thirdsand sixths with drastic courses of action.And at the end, the title figure of the GreatMacabre rides in on a nag as the GrimReaper.

Variations concertantes for chamber orchestra, 1956 (unfinished, unpublished), sketch (Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel, collection György Ligeti)This piece Ligeti started in 1956 remained unfinished – most likely because of the confusion during he Hunga-rian revolution and his emi-gration to Vienna – a fate several other projects of that time met. The presented sketch contains the first 26 bars of a fragmentary parti-celle, it gives an idea of how profoundly Ligeti changed his composition technique, for instance by the adapta-tion of dodecaphone ele-ments.


In the last phase we have purely instru-mental music and the idea of outwittingthe ear by the speed of playing and bypolyrhythmic structures overlaying eachother. The Etudes for piano created since1985 are reminiscent of models by Chopinand Debussy, more and more indicative ofBartók in sound, interval and rhythm. Ini-tially, single phenomena of piano-playingare elaborated before a piano concerto iscomposed between 1985 and 1988 withthe same starting-point. The quick first andlast movements are reminiscent of Bartók’sBulgarian and Rumanian rhythms. Severalof these rhythms run simultaneously andthe beat is constantly displaced. In thisphase, Ligeti often expressed publicly hisenthusiasm for and his inspiration by themusic of the pygmies and other tribes ofAfrica below the Sahara.

His capacity for enthusiasm changed lit-tle between his flight from Budapest andthe beginning of his illness in the mid-1990s. The most varied results of his high-ly-agile intellectual lecturing and writingactivity are no less impressive. The analy-sis of Structures Ia by Boulez, the investi-gations into the atonality, harmony andmelody of the music of Webern, his inter-est in the music for player piano by, andhis action on behalf of Nancarrow, hisspeaking up for the constructive Rumaniancomposer Stefan Niculescu, his interest inthe magically-possessed music of the Ca-nadian Claude Vivier and finally the medi-ation for the music of equatorial zone ofAfrica and for the work of the ethnologistswho have researched into this music, haveall characterized fundamentally Ligeti’spublic image.


A Life Dedicated to Contemporary MusicMemories of the Cellist Siegfried Palmby Stefan Drees

Asked once by the Neue Musikzeitungwhat music made him turn off the radio atonce, Siegfried Palm named Sergei Rach-maninov, while the question as to whichmusic he could not resist he answeredwith the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mo-zart. These brief replies seem definitelycharacteristic of a musician who all his lifedetested any form of mediocrity, and, re-gardless of in what function, was neversatisfied with half-heartedness, always de-voting himself to the highest possiblestandards.

Palm was born in Barmen (today a partof Wuppertal) on April 25th 1927 and hadfirst cello lessons from his father. Afterstudying under Enrico Mainardi, he firstplayed as a solo cellist with the Municipal

Orchestra of Lübeck (1945–47) and withthe symphony orchestras of the North Ger-man Radio in Hamburg (1947–1962) andthe West German Radio in Cologne (1962–1968). Over and above this, he was, as apassionate chamber orchestra player, amember of the Hamann Quartet between1950 and 1962, played in the Cologne Pi-ano Trio together with Max Rostal andHeinz Schröter from 1967 to 1974, and alsomade music for over twenty years (1962–1983) in a duo with the pianist Aloys Kon-tarsky.

He found his real vocation, however, inhis activity as a virtuoso of New Music,which he founded in 1958 with the firstspectacular performance of Bern AloisZimmermann’s Canto di speranza for vio-


loncello and small orchestra (1957). Theperformance of this composition, whichother cellists before had rejected as un-playable, served as the initial momentumin a career in the course of which Palm es-tablished himself in the 1960s and 1970s asthe most significant cellist in the area ofcontemporary music and in this functioncarried out to great public acclaim the firstperformance of technically difficult com-positions such as Krzysztof Penderecki’sSonate for violoncello and orchestra (1964)or Iannis Xenakis’s Nomos Alpha for solovioloncello (1966). The mastery of Palm’splaying and his uncompromising render-ing of demands of the highest complexitycounts as legendary, for he had the raregift of grasping the essence of the compo-sition, even in really unplayable parts, andof presenting them musically, of beingable to make it possible for the public toexperience the sound of the cello formallyas a crossing of boundaries.

Palm’s musical sensitivity, his ability topenetrate analytically the difficulties ofplaying technique as well as in the differ-entiation of a sound and noise productionassociated with excessive virtuosity pre-destined him not only for the interpreta-tion of appropriate works; with his abilityhe also set unanalysable standards of inter-pretation, inspired the genesis of numer-ous compositions – among them such var-ied works as Mauricio Kagel’s Match fortwo cellists and a percussionist (1964),Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Concerto pourVioloncelle et orchestre en forme des “pasde trois” (1965/66), György Ligeti’s Violon-cello Concerto (1966), Krzysztof Pend-erecki’s Capriccio per Siegfried Palm forVioloncello solo (1968), Isang Yun’s Vio-loncello Concerto (1975/76) or WolfgangRihm’s Monodram for violoncello and or-chestra (1982/83) – and also often aidedthese in achieving a long-lasting establish-ment in the concert repertoire or highly-praised recordings. Palm’s significance forthe rise of the violoncello to one of thepreferred instruments of contemporary

composition, but also his active role in theconstant further development of playingtechniques can thus not be estimated high-ly enough.

Nevertheless, he never withdrew into theworld of cloistered specialization, butcounted among that circle of composerswho endeavoured to pass on their specialknowledge and experience to composersand other interpreters. From 1962 to 1976,Palm taught as a lecturer at the Darmstadtsummer courses, at the same time runninga master class for the violoncello at the Co-logne music academy, as director of whichfrom 1972 to 1976 he was responsible forthe reorganization of the largest institute ofits kind in Europe, which had just movedinto a new building, for the musical de-mands of the present day.

He not only pursued in this function thecommitment here necessary for a high-quality organization of musical training,but also on European territory beyond thefrontiers of the Federal Republic of Germa-ny as the president of the German sectionof the European String Teachers’ Associa-tion (ESTA, 1972–1977). As if this were notenough, Palm also held the office of thegeneral director of the German Opera inBerlin – a post which he held until 1981and which brought him little approval on

Siegfried Palm at the 39th International Summer Course for New Music, Darmstadt 1998photo: Siegfried Meckle, © Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD)


the part of the conservative-minded WestBerlin opera public. Apart from his untir-ing activities as interpreter, teacher of in-ternational master courses and as a jurymember at competitions, this experiencewas followed by many years of activity onvarious committees. He was, for example,president of the Deutscher Tonkünstlerver-band (German Composers Association,DTKV, 1978–1993), as well as the Interna-tional Society for Contemporary Music(ISCM, 1982–1988) and its German section(GNM, 1988–1991 – later becoming honor-ary president), he was a member of thecommittee of the German Music Council(1984–1992) and also made a name forhimself as president and honorary presi-dent of the German-French Arts Council.

On account of this many-sided commit-ment, Palm was considered an unchal-

lenged person of respect in matters of mu-sic and cultural politics until his death inFrechen, near Cologne, on June 6th 2005at the age of 78. With all his activities, heachieved decisive progress for the NewMusic, for as a member of its foundinggeneration after the World War II, he wasas no other an unceasing supporter of itsstable place in society and in musical life –a work which will be painfully missed inthe future.


A solo CD – Siegfried Palm plays works by György

Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, Anton Webern, Paul Hin-

demith, Bernd Alois Zimmermann – has appeared at

Wergo (WER 6036-2). See www.wergo.de

A portrait in conversation has been issued by Michael

Schmidt: Capriccio für Siegfried Palm, Regensburg:

ConBrio 2005. See www.conbrio.de

Jenö Takács (1902–2005)by Wolfgang Liebhart

The doyen of the Austrian composers hasput his pencil out of his hand for evershortly after his 103rd birthday. He wasdecorated with numerous national and in-ternational awards and leavesbehind a large number of worksin many different genres.

Takács was born on Septem-ber, 25th 1902 in Cinfalva (to-day Siegendorf), then part ofHungary, now in Austria.

Already before and during hisstudies at the music academy inVienna with Joseph Marx (com-position) and Paul Weingarten(piano) in the years 1921–26, heattended numerous concerttours. In addition he tookcourses in music theory (withHans Gál) and musicology (with

Guido Adler) at the University of Vienna.By 1926 he had already established a verylively contact with Béla Bartók that lasteduntil his emigration into the USA (1940).

His first position led theyoung musician to Egypt,where he taught piano until1932 at the conservatory inCairo, and also researchedArabic music. Takács inter-rupted this teaching to takean extended trip to Asia, on-ly returning to Egypt in1934. In 1939 he avoidedthe national socialist regimeby moving to Hungary; in1948 the communist take-over there spurred a moveback to Austria. Concerttrips in Europe and the USA

Jenö Takácsphoto: archive Jenö Takács


led him finally to Cincinnati (Ohio/USA),where he taught composition and pianobetween 1952 and 1970 at the university.

Till his old age Jenö Takács continuedcomposing. He wrote numerous works fororchestra, choir and various chamber mu-sic combinations, but also pieces for theyoung generation as well as musical lay-men. Stylistically the composer describeshis work as follows: “My aesthetic is notrestricted to one determined direction.However, it does not deny its Austrian-Hungarian descent. But certainly musicalimpressions that I gathered during my tripsand my activity as a folk music researchermould not only my folkloric suites. Newsound imaginations and composition tech-niques I test basically for their usability; if

useful, I assimilate it into my personalstyle.”

Takács’ extensive activity was honouredand celebrated with numerous prizes.Among other things he achieved the Aus-trian state award (1963), the Bartók-medal(1981), the gold medal of honour of thecity of Vienna and the remuneration crossof the Hungarian Republic (1993) as wellas the golden appraisal medal of the Uni-versity of Music and Visual Arts Vienna(2002). He was also a long-time memberof the Austrian section of the ISCM, whichconferred honorary membership on himwith a solemn ceremony in 2004.

On November 14th 2005, Jenö Takácsdied in Eisenstadt/Burgenland.

Nam June Paik †by Stefan Fricke

John Cage once termed him a “convertedcriminal”; Heinz-Klaus Metzger analysedhis sound conceptions as “music that doesinjury to the term ‘music’”. Although afluxist from the beginning, he betrayed the“Flux” idea in the eyes of others becauseof his participation in the New York per-formance of Stockhausen’s Originale in1964. But most people know him as a vid-eo artist, whom Frank Gilette called the“George Washington” of this medium-play-form: Nam June Paik. At the beginning ofthe 1990s, this significant (sound) artthinker noted himself. “Now that I am al-most sixty, it is time for me to practice dy-ing a little.” In fact, Paik did die in Miamion January 29th 2006, at the age of 73.

Point of departure of the many-sided art/music of Nam June Paik, which in conse-quence did not shrink from wild attacks, isthe discipline of which the philosopherTheodor W. Adorno once said it seemed to

him “of all the so-called artistic sciencesthe most reactionary and disoriented”: mu-sical science.1 Paik, born in Seoul on July20th 1932 – see illustration – and whomoved with his family to Japan in thespring of 1950 because of the impendingKorean War, studied musical sciences inaddition to the history of art and philoso-phy in Tokyo. After submitting his thesisUntersuchungen zu Arnold Schönberg(“Investigations on Arnold Schoenberg”) in1956, he matriculated at the University ofMunich in the autumn of that year. Hewanted, after all, to live in that countrywhich, in his opinion, was home to themost radical New Music, the Federal Re-public of Germany. In Munich, he consid-ered for some time writing a dissertationon the music of Anton Webern. But henever got around to this. Meanwhile, he at-tended the International Summer Coursefor New Music in Darmstadt in 1957, met


Wolfgang Fortner and followed him to theCollege of Music in Freiburg. But Paik,who had made his first attempts at compo-sition in his young years, did not last par-ticularly long here either. The next stage ofthe “cultural nomad”, as Paik once termedhimself, was Cologne – until 1963. Histeacher Fortner, who did not know what todo with his pupil’s sound conceptions, re-ferred him to the studio for electronic mu-sic at West German Radio, he would bebetter off there. And indeed, in and aroundCologne, Paik developed his very special-ized musical ideas properly. In the Rhine-land, where there was a lot going on any-way intermedially, he was able to presenthis first pieces of action music to the pub-lic. He said “Schönberg wrote ‘atonal’ mu-sic. John Cage has composed ‘acomposi-tions’. I write ‘amusic’”. A pitiless ‘amusic’which practised the demolition of instru-ments (One for Violin Solo) and the dexter-ous sound play of raw and boiled eggs

and a thousand other everyday things. Anaction music deconstructing the frame-work of the repertoire of western music asthe favourite musical furniture of the bur-geoisie – “The piano is a taboo. It must bedestroyed.” Paik’s attacks were on the phil-istines of whatever persuasion, against fos-silized conceptions of art, the mainstream,the bigoted middle-class society of beforesixty-eight. Sometimes his attacks wereaimed at is own patron saints. John Cage,for example, whom he has met at theDarmstadt Summer Course and whoseAesthetics of Indetermination fascinatedand really infected Paik. It was no accidentthat he called his earliest “amusic” Hom-mage à John Cage, but then went on to cutoff Cage’s necktie suddenly during the pre-miere of his second work, the Etude for Pi-anoforte at the Cologne studio of thepainter Mary Bauermeister in 1960, saying“I don’t like that.” Holy John was, howev-er, thunderstruck, and was unwilling to at-tend no further Paik performance in thefuture, but did not keep to this. The Zenteaching says: “If you have found yourBuddha nature, destroy it.”

Destruction, deformation, change inform in order to find new forms (of behav-iour) by puzzling, provoking and radicallyreversing what is usual and unquestioned,these are the trade marks of Paik’s art. Thisis also valid for that artistic sector which fi-nally brought world fame to Paik, in thosedays often branded a ‘culture terrorist’: vid-eo art. In 1965, Paik, who had moved toNew York the year before, was one of thefirst to buy mobile video equipment. Tele-vision, the home flicks, a new piece of cul-tural furniture, and the blunt and dull mov-ing picture landscape had already chal-lenged him to some albeit technically quitesimple projects; now, liberated from theTV stations which had remained closed tohim for a long time, he was able to realizeeven more elaborate films and to integratethem into his installation works. Space ob-jects, sometimes of immense dimensions.For example the tower The More The Bet-

Nam June Paik, July 20 (1985). Postcard edition by Klaus Staeck, Heidelberg. Copy signed by Paik, collection Stefan Fricke


ter, consisting of a stack of 1003 monitors,which he exhibited in his home city ofSeoul on the occasion of the 1988 OlympicGames. In those years, Paik was already afigure, perhaps even the greatest, in thestill-young media art market. Between1979 and 1995, although often speaking ofhis bad habit of losing money, he was pro-fessor of video art at the Düsseldorf Acad-emy of Art, surrounded by prizes and dis-tinctions.

Nam June Paik: music thinker, music in-jurer, culture terrorist, Fluxist, enlightener,researcher into the everyday, medium crit-ic, medium artist … He has left behind aweighty artistic heritage, marked at thesame time by lightness, playfulness andirony. Without Paik, without his untiringcuriosity towards the technical world,without his removal of taboos, today’s artwould well have taken much longer toreach its present status quo. And withoutthe man who cooperated in Stockhausenperformances, made Cage films, gavesome (piano) concerts together withJoseph Beuys, fought together with the

cellist Charlotte Moorman against every-thing which was prudish, the ideologicalgap between the art forms would have re-mained unbridged. In the person of Paikand in his work, many strands of recent(sound) art history are woven together.And all that from the departure point ofthat honourable philological disciplinewhich has hitherto hardly taken notice ofhim: music science. But it does not need toany more. As early as 1965, the qualifiedmusicologist Nam June Paik BA demandedfrom his readers that they “Kill Pop Art! /Kill Op Art! / Kill Pot Art! / Kill Paik’s Art!”2


Notes

1 Theodor W. Adorno, Was ist Musik?, in: ibid.,Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, Frank-furt/Main: Suhrkamp 1997, vol. 19, p. 615.

2 Nam June Paik, Pensée 1965, in: ibid., Nieder-schriften eines Kulturnomaden, ed. Edith Decker,Cologne: DuMont 1992, p. 110.

At the 13th International Summer Course for New Music, Darmstadt 1958: Nam June Paik, Isang Yun, Francesco Yosio Nomura, John Cage (from left to right)photo: Hella Steinecke, © Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD)


Over Eight Decades of New Music – Does the ISCM WORLD MUSIC DAYS Festival Need a Revival? by Richard Tsang

The ISCM (International Society for Con-temporary Music) prides itself on its longhistory and heritage by its annual WorldMusic Days Festival, one of the longest es-tablished festivals of New Music in theworld. Undoubtedly Central European inorigin, it has grown from an exchangeplatform among composer groups in ahandful of central European countries to atrue global organization with over 50member sections from most parts of theworld today. All these years, the WMDFestival has remained the focus of the soci-ety as it has been held every year largelyuninterrupted since its inception (exceptduring the War).

In the beginning, such a festival wasmuch valued as it provided a prominentplatform for many premieres of (subse-quent) historically important works; whilesimilar opportunities for international at-tention were not so common. Its successwas further enhanced by the unparalleled‘popularity’ of the European avant-gardemovement among intellectuals during thepost-war decades. Although the ISCM didnot mean to represent only a certain musi-cal style, it and the WMD were inevitablyassociated with such a strong movement.(This misconception somehow continues,even today…).

Programming in the WMD Festivals dur-ing those years was not a controversial is-sue. ISCM WMD programmes were select-ed (judged) by international juries whichusually comprised of established centralEuropean avant-garde composers (or indi-viduals who shared similar values), whowere then considered the ‘authority’. Manycomposers from the so-called ‘peripheral’countries even prided themselves by beingselected and programmed in the ISCMWMD.

While this contributed to the goldenyears of the ISCM in the 1960–70s, it alsocontributed to its later ‘downfall’.

As the 20th Century drew to an end,such ‘central European musical imperial-ism’ was gradually replaced by a better un-derstanding and more openness towardsdifferent cultures. The peripherals no long-er considered themselves outsiders, whilethe ‘mainstream’ no longer enjoyed the on-ly spotlight. With this paradigm shift, new-er platforms and activities of a variety ofmusical aesthetics gradually diluted thesignificance of the ISCM WMD Festivals. Atthe same time, the ISCM seemed in thoseyears oblivious to the change and stub-bornly continued with the same formulafor its WMD. The results: gradual disillu-sionment (or even resentment) by manycomposers towards the artistic validity ofmany WMD programmes, and the sharp-ening of the conflict between ‘representa-tion’ and ‘artistic assertion’. Simply put, theconflict is between demands by membersections of different cultures and aestheticsfor ‘equal representation’ in the WMD pro-grammes, and the selective artistic controlby the organizers of the festivals who inev-itably have their own specific aestheticpreferences.

The ISCM began to address this issue inthe late 1990s when new Rules of Proce-dures for organizing WMD were put inplace to try to cut a balance between thesetwo conflicting aims. It kind of did notwork. Festival organizers continued to en-joy autonomy and independence despiteefforts by the ISCM to enforce the Rules;while many fear equal representationmight dilute any ‘artistic focus’ essential forthe success of any music festival. Mean-while, the format and structure of the


WMD festivals continues more or less un-changed.

Perhaps it is now time to look at broaderissues about the ISCM and the WMD festi-vals, not merely in the context of its con-flicting demands between members andorganizers; nor on how members’ workscould be represented in the WMD festivals.Perhaps we should re-examine the role ofthe ISCM in the 21st Century and in thatcontext, how the WMD festivals can betterhelp our society fulfil this role.

First of all, what should the role of theISCM be in the 21st Century? To put thequestion in another way: what can theISCM promote in the 21st Century if thereis not one consensus (unlike in the earlypart of the last century) on what contem-porary (new) music should be? It is ahugely complicated question but I shallventure to make a few small remarks.

Geo-culturally, the 20th Century saw rev-olutions still within a basically Western-dominating world-view; while the 21stCentury sees integrations and emergencesof which the European world-view consti-tutes only one of many. In music, this callsfor a complete overhaul of what we con-sider artistically valid. The ISCM, if trulyliving up to its name-sake, must respectthis paradigm shift and give equal atten-tion to different aesthetics andworld-views. Our concern now may notbe on the ‘what type of music’ we shouldbe promoting, but on aiming at the ‘facili-tation of an inducing environment’ inwhich further understanding and mutualrespect of different musical aesthetics andworld-views could take place.

On a practical level, museum-type con-cert music could be joined by a wider vari-ety of musical practices in which cross-cul-ture, cross-discipline and cross-genreshould be treated as a norm, not a rarity.The activities of the ISCM might need toinclude a much wider gamut of musicalpractices not previously deemed withinthe concern of the art music world-view.The WMD Festival, to remain significant,

should look into reflecting these changingneeds to include activities other than con-cert performances. Interactive events, dis-cussions, presentations and other forms ofmusical platforms could replace the com-mon concerts; while different forms of mu-sical performances in different environ-ments could be encouraged. The ISCMshould also look at ways to expand its ac-tivities beyond the annual WMD festivals,which it is currently trying to do so. Thesecould include liaison with performers andother artists, educational efforts, reach-ing-out to the public for better understand-ing and support of creativity in sounds,etc.

However, the organism is but the sum-mation of its parts. In order to achievegenuine metamorphosis, the change muststart from within its component constitu-ents. Discussion and communicationamong existing members and individualson this issue would facilitate better under-standing and formation of an eventualconsensus on which any future changemust be based. An overhaul of ISCM’smembership structure and internal organi-zation could bring in new blood to the So-ciety sympathetic to this new paradigmshift; while filtering dissidents who couldnot share the new consensus; thus ensur-ing a common goal shared by all membersof the society.

The ISCM could not and should not bethe ‘Guardian Angel’ of contemporary(new) music, trying to do everything thereis to be done. The Society could only func-tion within and through the combinedwillpower and determination of its mem-bers. While living up to the fine heritageestablished by its forefathers, we must alsobe vigilant of the changing environmentaround us. If necessary, we must be braveenough to redefine our goals, missionsand visions, without which we will only betrotting towards a dead end.


ISCM World Music Days & Music Biennial ZagrebZagreb 15–24 April 2005by Andreas Engström (Sweden)

When it was Croatia’s turn to organize theannual ISCM festival, entitled World MusicDays, the customary tradition of stagingthis festival in the autumn was abandonedin favour of a spring festival. This wasdone so that the World Music Days (WMD)could be staged together with what mightbe Croatia’s largest cultural event, the Mu-sic Biennial Zagreb. The first World MusicDays was presented in 1923 and, exceptfor an interruption during the SecondWorld War, has ever since played a majorrole in the dissemination of contemporarymusic, with several festivals staged outsideEurope in recent years. The Music BiennialZagreb began in 1961 and has long beenthe most important venue for contempo-rary music in the Balkan region. In short,contemporary music world witnessed thesimultaneous presentation of two impor-tant festivals in 2005, the WMD and theMusic Biennial Zagreb, which attractedlarge audiences during ten sunny days inApril.

On the whole the program was intensivewithout being overloaded. Starting with alunch concert at noon, at least four dailyconcerts were staged, affording ample op-portunity to listen to lots of good musicand excellent performances. That mostconcerts were held at venues within walk-ing distance of each other made it easy forenthusiastic listeners to attend everything.

A word of welcome in the program bookby the president of Croatia and the minis-ter of culture indicates that this manifesta-tion was important to the city of Zagreband to the whole of Croatia, a young statestriving for membership in the EuropeanUnion. It seemed important to Croatians toorganize the WMD. The fact that the Music

Biennial served as a kind of host was fur-ther proof of the high standards ofCroatian culture and organization. Judgingby the sizeable audiences attending theconcerts, it was apparent that those attend-ing got the message. In public and evenpolitical terms these two festivals appearedto be of major significance in Croatia.

Audiences probably did not give muchthought to which composition belonged towhich festival. Although most concertswere co-produced, the program bookclearly indicated to which festival eachpiece belonged. This unusual arrangement– the unification of two ‘classical’ festivals,each with its own history and ideology –poses several questions concerning pro-gramming and aesthetic attitudes.

If one takes a closer look at the program, itbecomes obvious that the two organiza-tions differ quite extensively. The Biennialprogram may be characterized as wide-ranging, while at the same time this pro-gram was rather ‘safe’ and did not takemany risks. Many composers and perform-ers were already well known to the con-temporary music connoisseur, especially ifhe or she had attended previous festivals.If one did not have much knowledgeabout contemporary art music, attendingthe Biennial concerts afforded an opportu-nity to become acquainted with most gen-res and styles. In this respect the programwas excellent.

Several concerts indicated that the Bien-nial certainly is a significant cultural eventin Zagreb, almost popular, one might say.The organizers should be given credit fortheir ability to put together a program that– although not at the cutting edge – corre-sponds rather well to the state of contem-


porary music today. On the other hand, aclear vision about concepts concerning theprogram as a whole seemed to be lacking. As said above, most ensembles were en-gaged by both organizations. This fa-voured the ISCM, who, if on its own,would not have attained such a high per-formance level. In a festival as extensive asthis one, lots of excellent music certainlywas performed, which one would expect.I don’t think this is the place to criticize in-dividual pieces or performances. The mainproblem is basically at the organizationallevel. The creative and artistic problem theISCM faces is more a question of program-ming and festival concepts. While the Bi-ennial presented a wide variety of genresin their programs, the WMD programsmainly consisted of chamber music con-certs in which pieces were simply present-ed one after the other without any struc-ture or encompassing artistic idea. It alsomade me wonder if this is the highestquality, the most contemporary or mostimportant music that a total of about fiftycountries can produce. I do not believethis to be true, and I do not think anyoneelse believes this either. The problem theISCM has to face concerns ideas about rep-resentation at its festivals. This festival wastoo much of a smorgasbord, consisting ofmany dishes with a very neutral and simi-lar taste.

We all know that the works are selected inpart by an international jury and in part bythe national juries of the respective mem-ber countries. Although the ISCM has nev-er taken an outspoken aesthetic stance, itis more obvious than ever before that thisorganization represents a kind of centralEuropean modernism, in part grounded inthe past. In today’s aesthetic climate,which is more open and broader than everbefore, this is not a problem in itself. Aslong as a standpoint is presented, this canbe subject to discussion, which in turnmay provoke interesting polarities and ar-tistic questions at a festival like this. An

aesthetic standpoint benefits the pluralityof music.

There was indeed considerable variationin both musical styles and genres in theWMD program, which may seem to con-tradict what I just have stated above. How-ever, I think this variety is the result ofgreat uncertainty as to the aesthetic view-points within the various juries. Some ofthe contributed works point to extremelydifferent approaches, both with regards toideas about contemporaneity and to artmusic. However, if the festival’s generalapproach is simply a standard definition ofcontemporary music, these deviationsfrom the norm do not necessarily renderinteresting aspects of contemporaneity.Rather they may be regarded as anomalieswhich display a lack of focus. There seemsto be confusion about what contemporarymusic is today and what role it might play,for instance at a festival such as this one. A major issue that needs to be analysed isto what extent the selected works are rep-resentative of musical life in the membercountries. The selection procedure withinthe different national juries varies. The factthat people speak about these proceduresand that some composers prefer to sendtheir works only to the international be-cause they lack confidence in their ownnational jury, is an indication that there is agap between the aims of the organizationand the realization of these aims. The sta-tus of the World Music Days is different ineach member country and it is a fact thatmany established composers do not evencare whether their works are performed atthe World Music Days or not. In what re-spect is this type of festival representative,and if so, representative of what? And whatrole could this kind of festival play today,when contemporary music is to be foundalmost everywhere in the world, and witha spectrum that is broader than the spec-trum of the ISCM? The ISCM may latentlyhave a broad spectrum, but this kind ofrepresentational festival is not the right fo-rum to demonstrate this.


Another point of criticism concerns theperformance level of the selected pieces.Sometimes this can be blamed on the latearrival of the scores, but this time the rea-son was probably more often the lack ofsufficient rehearsal time.

In contemporary music, a piece is verymuch a result of the musicians performingit. We are all aware of this. This is perhapsalso true at a kind of constitutional level:when performing a work it changes from ascheme or a map of orientation into a liv-ing organism. The ensembles and musi-cians, each with their own preferences,knowledge and profiles, are indispensablein the process of shaping a work. Thisprocess might start with a commission andend with a performance. For interpreters itis not always easy – and not always enjoy-able – to be assigned a piece that for somereason was selected by someone some-where. This is a general problem in NewMusic, especially at festivals where a trickyequation has to be solved, that of jugglingdifferent variables such as the festival con-cept, the represented composers, and theensembles, each with their own specifictalents. Although the ISCM does take thiscomplex situation into account, I imaginethat the gap between musicians’ preferenc-es and possible influence and those thatare in charge of the selection procedure, iswider than in other situations, where thereis usually either one person or one associ-ation that sets up and organizes the pro-gram.

The World Music Days is a huge festivalthat at every step engages many people inmany countries. One result is that theworks are not always well executed andsometimes lack the engagement and focusone often experiences at concerts andsmaller contemporary music festivals. Withthis kind of representative system, with na-tional juries who work on their own andwithout a general concept serving as a ba-sis for their selections, it does not matter ifthe ISCM is open to current approaches tocontemporary music.

The ISCM has about fifty member coun-tries, in addition to a few associated mem-bers. One of the founding principles, alsorelevant today, is that the festival shouldrepresent its member countries. But oneought to remember that today’s objectiveas well as the criteria for representationmust be different than those in the past.Given today’s postmodern discourse andthe subsequent loss of the concept ofprogress, there is always something in mu-sical, structural terms that is contemporary,and something that is not. This has madetoday’s music more multi-faceted than everbefore. What were once considered as out-dated musical styles can from today’s per-spective be considered as contemporary asany other style. The question of contempo-raneity is a tricky one that needs reflectionat a festival such as the WMD. But as men-tioned above, sidesteps from the generalmodernist ideology seem more the resultof a lack of focus rather than a presenta-tion of the plural status of contemporanei-ty.

Moreover, the source of heterogeneity intoday’s music is to be found in the generalprocess of democratization in the languag-es and techniques of composing andworking with music. The current wide va-riety in the electronic avant-garde subcul-ture shares venues and compositionaltools with the academic tradition, while atthe same time only partly inheriting its aes-thetics from its electro-acoustical predeces-sors. This example must suffice. Thesecontact points with subcultures – perhapsnot always considered as contemporary artmusic from a generically or aestheticallyand purely musical perspective –, is some-thing that is also missing in the general ap-proach of the WMD.

With over fifty years of western contem-porary music in the third world, in formercolonies and in Asia, one might ask whatdirection the various indigenous contem-porary musics are taking today. In theseglobal times, contemporary art music is nolonger a Western art form that exists


worldwide. It is a once-upon-a-time West-ern art form that is evolving by discoveringnew traditions derived from different timesand contexts, depending on the specificcultural situation. It is time to shift focusfrom the goal of spreading a culture to therest of the world. Instead, we should aimat integrating cultures by extending thedefinition of the heritage of contemporaryart music. This is a truly postcolonial per-spective and may give rise to interestingprograms, programs that may also positioncontemporary music at the zenith of ourworld culture, a position it hardly has to-day.

Let us return to the actual festival in Za-greb. As stated above, there certainly weremany great works performed, sometimesby excellent executors. But a festival withthe pretension of representing a globalmusical culture needs to have a focus anda clear idea or vision about the nature ofcontemporary music and about what ittakes to create a relevant festival from aglobal and even political perspective. Thisis certainly not an easy task as many situa-tions are involved at various levels in nu-

merous countries that differ considerablyfrom each other.

The discussion concerning representa-tion versus artistic concept has been goingon for quite a while within the ISCM, andthe 2006 festival in Stuttgart has as itstheme: ‘Grenzenlos’/‘Without Borders’. Wemust wait to see what this actually means.There are many good reasons to base fu-ture World Music Days on an artistic ideainstead of primarily on representation anda vague idea about artistic quality. TheWMD could play an important role in to-day’s cultural and artistic discourse. Asmentioned above, I feel that the WMD in-deed fulfilled this role in Croatia to a cer-tain extent. More generally, I also believethat this is true for those countries whereWestern art music is a recent phenome-non, relatively speaking. However, this isnot always the case. And no wonder. Thefact that one piece is from Venezuela, an-other from Japan, and yet another fromSouth Africa, is not a point in itself. Sowhat! And it is not every year that theWMD is helped by the Music Biennale Za-greb.

Scelsi’s one Note Saves the Day in ZagrebMichael Blake (South Africa)

My interest in this event lay less with theannual ISCM festival, which more or lessrepresented the entire ISCM membershipthough still plagued by a lot of second-ratemusic, but more with the Zagreb Biennale,one of the great contemporary music festi-vals of the post-war era, which started inthe then Yugoslavia during the communistyears and continued unabated through allthe unrest and wars of the 1990s. And isnow, as a distinguished British music criticcommented, “run by the men in suits”. Not

necessarily a good omen for the more in-teresting paths of New Music, but therewere enough such paths to attract an en-thusiastic audience and to add lustre to theparallel ISCM programme. And the festivalwent off very smoothly.

Although I never got to this particularfestival before 2005, I had always beenaware of its existence and its programmingand had heard broadcasts at various timeson BBC Radio 3 during my years in Lon-don. And what drew me to this particular


festival was the presence of Sofia Gubai-dulina and a concert of her works, plusseveral concerts devoted to or includingworks of the Italian recluse Giacinto Scelsi,which marked his otherwise un-noticedcentenary.

I was disappointed by the former andelated by the latter. Gubaidulina has anenormous reputation and is widely per-formed in many parts of the world. I hadpreviously always heard a single work ofhers in the context of a concert of NewMusic, but an entire concert of her works(sadly) revealed the flaws in her concep-tion and technique. As one of my ISCMcolleagues noted, you could hear all tooeasily when she had taken her lunch-breaks.

Most of the works featured musiciansvery close to her including the GermanThat Ensemble, and all of them includedthe bayan (a kind of folk accordion) intheir instrumentation, which did at leastgive the concert a particular flavour. In DeProfundis there simply seemed to be toomany ideas, while In Croce worked betterbut seemed too inevitable in its outcome.Having movements in Silenzio felt like acopout and another excuse for constantlyintroducing new ideas. John Cage admiredher, and perhaps she could have learned athing or two from him about economy.

By contrast her “press conference”,which was basically a series of detailed an-swers to 3 or 4 questions, gave us insightsinto the thinking that never found expres-sion in the compositions. Hosted by theCroatian Composers Society with camerasrolling throughout, Gubaidulina started bytelling us that between 1975–81 she hadbeen a member of an improvisation groupcalled Astrea, a direct response to the intel-lectualism and structural organisation of20th Century music. These performancesthat she had noticed in other countries too,were basically “home concerts, which aremore like conversations, judged by themusicians themselves”. Freedom from no-tation was an important factor, and it was

more of “a spiritual music experience that Icouldn’t reach by writing at a table”.

A concert by the Quartetto d’archi diTorini gave us a rare treat in the form of allfive string quartets of Scelsi, played with-out the usual tough and business-like styleof the Arditti Quartet (who usually appearat ISCM festivals, though not this one), butwith far greater warmth and passion thanthe English ensemble can normally muster.The early First Quartet is the only one thatis almost a conventional string quartet,whereas by the Fourth Quartet one is intofamiliar Scelsi territory: the exploration ofsingle pitches through colour and articula-tion, here intensely accompanied by theheavy breathing of the players. This pieceis one of the best in terms of Scelsi’s re-finement and concentration of his tech-nique and language. A “Hommage à Gia-cinto Scelsi” featured all his exquisite shortpieces for flute, percussion and doublebass, performed by a trio of distinguishedItalian players including the flautist Rober-to Fabricciani as the highlight of the finalorchestral concert, given by the legendaryZagreb Philharmonic Orchestra, was onceagain a work of Scelsi, Hurqualia, inwhich each of the four movements brilliantexplores just a single pitch. Even in his firstorchestral work, dating from the early1960s the composer is already emerging asa true original.

Aside from the featured composers, itwas refreshing to hear some of the classicsof the 20th Century. Steve Reich’s Drum-ming outshone everything around it in thelight of its freshness and originality,though this concert by Studio PercussionGraz also included a piece by Lukas Ligeti,Stroboscope, which wisely explored oneidea.

And then there were some very excitinglate night improvised concerts: the FranzHautzinger Regenorchester XI from Aus-tria, led by quartertone trumpeter Haut-zinger in very minimal music – remindingone almost of the music of Scelsi – andfine jazz singer Maja Ratkje with fellow


Norwegian electronic musicians John He-gre and HC Gilje and accompanied by abeautiful video. Also late one evening weheard Miguel Azguime’s O ar do texto op-era a forma do som interior (The air in thetext operates the form of the inner sound),45 minutes of electroacoustic theatre andsound poetry for a performer (Azguime)and live electronics. This is an intriguingmarriage of words (Azguime’s own po-ems), electronic sounds and physical ges-tures that articulates beautifully the com-poser’s concept.

A striking feature of the festival program-ming was the conservatism of the orches-tral works. I asked myself two questions:Do (even radical) composers write con-servatively for orchestra, maybe becauseorchestral musicians are conservative? Ordo ISCM juries choose conservative or-chestral works for ISCM festivals, maybefor safety reasons? Scelsi’s Hurqualia men-tioned earlier was by far the most (only?)radical orchestral piece on the festival pro-gramme. All the other pieces rather re-minded me of something else, especiallyFrench music.

Zygmunt Krauze’s orchestral Adieu, inwhich the soloist (Krauze) played a veryout of tune piano (pianino), seemed to in-habit old soundworlds which were reimag-ined in a typically Krauzian off the wallmanner. But it all seemed a little too easyfor the listener and it was over before youknew it. This rather French evening includ-ed Australian Richard Meale’s Three MiróPieces and left one wondering if this wasperhaps a French composer living downunder in Australia. Like so many compos-ers of that generation worldwide, Mealehas retreated into a kind of easy listening,while another Pacific composer, Joji Yuasamerely recycled old clichés from the mid-20th Century in his never-ending Chrono-plastic III – between stasis and kinesis – inmemory of Xenakis.

One of the better orchestral works wasThoma Simaku’s Hyllus. The opening wasnot very striking (not the best way to start

a piece) and led me to wonder if compos-ers are so over-awed by the sound of theorchestra and the ‘animal’ itself that theyoften produce quite benign music for it. Si-maku has become something of an ISCMcomposer, and on the strength of previousshowings his chamber music is far strongerthan this. On the whole though I foundHyllus quite an imaginative and captivatingpiece, despite an overlong coda.

Also on a large scale was the opera pro-duction, a Hungarian socialist realist piecefrom the early 1960s. It seemed an odd de-cision not only to revive Emil Petrovics’C’est la guerre, but to bring it over to thisfestival along with János Vajda’s more pal-atable Mario and the Magician. The sing-ers were really not great, but the orchestrasounded good. I found the music simplytoo facile and dramatically poorly paced.And I felt cheated that there was no ariafor the soprano.

Among the most interesting chamberworks that were new to me was WolfgangRihm’s Chiffre VI which drew the mostoriginal sound – an orchestral quality withhorn soloist – from the Schubert octet me-dium (bass clarinet included). I looked for-ward to Czech composer Martin Marek’sString Quartet No 1, but sadly it was can-celled because of illness in the ranks of theZagreb Quartet – though the composerwas present and still acknowledged theaudience. I last heard the Zagreb Quartetin a marvellous concert back home inSouth Africa, but on this occasion theywere not on form, though their pro-gramme yielded exquisitely beautiful ex-ploration of harmonics and glissandi in thefragile soundworld of Lithuanian RamintaSerksnyte’s The Oriental Elegy, and a rath-er conventional pre-Bartók language in the25-year old Venezuelan Oswaldo Torres’String Quartet (2003).

I had hoped to be introduced to andthrilled by music from all the former Yugo-slav states, music which one does not of-ten hear outside the region. But on thewhole there was little memorable among


the Croatian or other former Yugoslaviancomposers that we heard. Worst amongthese was the programme of Serbian com-posers – late romantic sounding pieces –given by the Belgrade Trio. A Serbian mu-sicologist with whom I had lunch assuredme that this was the worst of her country’sNew Music and even of the composersthemselves. Why present it? The solo flutepiece by conservative South African Hen-drik Hofmeyr sounded positively outra-geous in this regressive company.

In between all this, the ISCM General As-sembly discussed a host of matters – someinteresting new topics, some revivals. Hap-pily, ISCM president Richard Tsang was re-elected unopposed for a second term ofoffice. Hong Kong was chosen to host the2007 ISCM World Music Days, and at leastthree countries are currently fighting overwho gets 2008. Sweden is the only con-tender for 2009, and three countries areagain squabbling over 2010. While Austral-ia would like 2011, and the ISCM General

Assembly would probably enjoy a rare tripto the Southern Hemisphere, it appearsthat Croatia would like an encore of 2005.

I would agree up to a point with generaldirector Ivo Josipovic’s feeling that this fes-tival was about representing all music andnot just what he likes, but the amount ofNew Music that was past its sell-by date faroutweighed the quantity of cutting-edgemusic which I feel should be the focus ofcontemporary music festivals. Neverthelessthe presenters should be congratulated inhaving a strong enough element of musicthat challenges the listener. I for onewould have come just for the Scelsi.

Perhaps we should all remember Wing-Wah Chan’s (Hong Kong ISCM) adage inclosing:

“Only music can transcend the barrier oflanguage with love and peace”. And per-haps this is the real reason why we all gettogether year after year at the ISCM WorldMusic Days.


Authors

Michael Blake, born 1951 in Cape Town(South Africa), composer, Artistic Director ofthe festival “New Music Indaba” and presidentof the South African Section of the ISCM.Stefan Drees, born 1966 in Kusel (Germany),musicologist and assistant lecturer at FolkwangHochschule in Essen, dissertation on Luigi No-no.Andreas Engström, musicologist and critic,university lecturer, editor-in-chief of the Swed-ish journal for contemporary music, NutidaMusik, and member of the editorial board ofWNMM, lives in Stockholm.Stefan Fricke born 1966 in Unna (Westphalia),is a publicist and a member of the committee ofthe German section of the International Societyfor Contemporary Music (ISCM), lives in Berlin.Bernhard Günther, born 1970 in Switzerland,grew up in Germany, since 2004 dramaturge ofthe Philharmonie Luxembourg.Andreas Hagelüken, born 1963 in Homberg(Germany), musicologist and cultural journalistworking for radio stations, he created the freesound archive www.hoerspielbox.de.Achim Heidenreich, born 1961, musicologist,dissertation on Paul Hindemith. Project devel-opment and event management at the Instituteof Music and Acoustic of the ZKM in Karlsruhe.Folkmar Hein, sound engineer, director of theelectroacoustic studio of the Technische Uni-versität Berlin.Lydia Jeschke, born 1967 in Berlin, musicolo-gist, dissertation on Luigi Nono, music journal-ist, lives in Freiburg (Germany).Sigrid Konrad, born 1966 in Kludenbach (Ger-many), director of the publishing house PFAUin Saarbrücken.Michael Kunkel, born 1969 in Winz-Nieder-wenigern (Ruhr), musicologist, dissertation onSamuel Beckett in contemporary music, editor-in-chief of the Swiss music magazine Dissonanz/Dissonance, has lived in Basel (Switzerland)since 1998.Helmut Lachenmann, born 1935 in Stuttgart,composer, professor for composition at the Uni-versity of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart1981–1999, lives in Leonberg.Wolfgang Liebhart, born 1958 in Klagenfurt(Austria), composer, since 2002 teaching at the

Conservatory of Wien, former president of theAustrian Section of ISCM, lives in Vienna.Christoph Metzger, born 1962 in Munich, mu-sicologist, dissertation on Gustav Mahler, cura-tor for sound art, lives in Berlin.Reinhard Oehlschlägel, born 1936, was edi-tor for New Music at Deutschlandfunk in Co-logne, founder of the journal MusikTexte, andeditor of the World New Music Magazine (until2005), honorary member of the ISCM, lives inCologne.Thomas Schäfer, born 1967, musicologist, dis-sertation on Gustav Mahler, works at Konzert-haus in Vienna and is Artistic Director of thefestival Wien Modern.Richard Tsang, born 1952, composer, presi-dent of the ISCM and chairman of the HongKong Composers Guild, organizer of the WorldMusic Days in Hong Kong 2002 and 2007.

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