Download - Studying Early Music
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
1/17
Studying Early Music
In Germany today, there are many opportunities in Higher Education to study early
music. In recent years, the understanding of the importance of "historical performance
practice" has changed significantly.
Zoom
The real value
and benefit toboth freelance
musicians
playingBaroque music the "baroque specialists" as well as to modern-minded
instrumentalists and singers are increasingly being recognized and acknowledged.
Starting at the beginning: the Bachelor's Degree in Early Music
There are some conservatoires that concern themselves mainly with the interpretation of
early music. Such departments often bear the name Institute or Academy and are
characterized by the fact that studies are anchored not only in instrumental or vocallessons, but also in music theory and musicology, all these elements playing important
and vital roles in musical training. Bachelor students emerge as fully-fledged,
professionally-qualified exponents of historical instruments (or as vocalists).
Zoom
The three main musicconservatories where a Bachelors
degree may be completed are in
Bremen, Leipzig and Trossingen.Other music schools are expanding
their programmes towards a
qualification in the subject, andthese are the Conservatoires in
Weimar and Nuremberg. Some
departments enjoy a special emphasis status and have clear advantages in that theyusually hold large stocks of music and a substantial library of microfilm with facsimiles
of the most important theoretical writings and articles. In addition, an instrumentcollection may exist too. The Early Music Institute in Trossingen holds 25 harpsichords
and four forte-pianos pianos as well as many loan instruments (oboes, clarinets, horns,violins, violas and cellos) which can be borrowed by students inexpensively.
Advantages of departments with special emphases
Zoom
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
2/17
Another advantage of larger departments is the number of lecturers: 40 staff teach in
Bremen, and in Leipzig, and around 30 in Trossingen. Thus, in these universities, the
diversity of approaches can address the broad repertoire of early music, and almost allcombinations are covered. Often works will be performed which call for large and widely
varying forces, and which in concert life would hardly be feasible. In addition to
teaching, there are also regular courses, workshops, along with other teaching activitiessuch as accompanying Baroque dance, historical tuning systems, and pastiche
composition.
Zoom
A new programme, BachelorBaroque Orchestra, will be
introduced from April 2012 at
the Institute for Early Music inTrossingen. This course is
unique in Europe: it is headedup by leading experts and examines orchestral literature from the Baroque, Classical and
early Romantic periods. International networks based on various collaborations areplanned so that theory can directly connect with practice in orchestral playing.
An additional qualification: Masters in Early Music
The majority of German conservatoires now offer a Masters degree in early music. The
task is not easy: students have exactly two years to understand an entire universe of so-
called historically informed performance practice (HIP). This requires considerableprior knowledge in this area, especially for wind and string instruments.
Zoom
Students who have already
occupied themselves with
contemporary methods ofstudying performance practice
can acquire with their Masters
degree an additional
qualification in the field. For this kind of specialised training, many universities havehired specialist lecturers. In addition to the special emphasis departments mentioned
above, a Masters degree in early music from Cologne, Freiburg, Essen/Duisburg, Berlin,Munich, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg and Wrzburg is available.
The low-key solution: Early Music as a subsidiary subject
At almost all music schools which have appropriate specialist teachers, one can studyearly music as a subsidiary subject. Along with a modern instrument (or voice), it is
possible to pursue a minor in the field, which helps at a later stage those who wish to
study for a Masters degree in early music. Recently, various modern orchestras have
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
3/17
welcomed those who audition and can show knowledge of HIP.
Why study Early Music?
Zoom
There is today no longer any
need to fight about therelevance and purpose of early
music studies. A single,
specific interpretation of a
score has, in recent years,moved to the forefront. Any attempt to interpret all the styles in the same manner is now
generally perceived as characterless and tedious. Even in modern orchestras and
ensembles, a sense of a single specific style has enriched and enlivened the music itself.Here, the contrast between current interpretations could not be greater: between the
doctrine of the affections of the 17th and 18th centuries and the new realism of twelve-
tone music there lies an interpretive tension, one which could not be more complex orrich. On top of this are the various national styles, especially those of the Baroque era.
Zoom
A wealth of information is growing
daily, not least because of constant
publication of studies and libraryholdings, some of which are also
available online and confirm the
plethora of approaches to musical
aesthetics. Moreover, so-calledearly music has long crossed the
boundaries of the 19th century. Justa few years ago, one believed that early music ceased with Bach or Mozart (the term
early music has already become a misleading one), and we must accept that we have
learned a lesson: even Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms and Bruckner sound vastly
different when played on historical instruments, especially where the aesthetics of the19th century are taken into account.
Prof. Anton Steckis an active soloist, chamber musician and conductor, and since 2000 Professor for
Baroque Violin and Director of the Baroque Orchestra of the State Conservatoire forMusic in Trossingen.
Translation: Graham Lack
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Internet-Redaktion
August 2011
Any questions about this article? Please write to us!
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trossingenhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trossingenhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trossingen -
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
4/17
Related links
Location of sources and library holdings
Where the historical performance practice of music is concerned, nothing is moreimportant than to look at the original sources and library holdings. The hardships endured
by the beginnings of the early music movement regarding sources and the development of
a repertoire no longer arise, thanks to well stocked libraries and their network.
Zoom
The Federal Republic of Germany
enjoys a densely connected net of
well-catalogued and professionally-
staffed public libraries, where muchof the music of the 18th century is
kept, without any significant losses.Most institutions already work with
online catalogues. Orders of MS
copies, microfilms and CD-ROMs
are easily made and experience has shown that they may be delivered against invoice in afew days.
Printed music can be accessed via the international lexicon of sources RISM (RepertoireInternational de Sources Musicales), hand-written sources with the encyclopaedia Musik
in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG).
Courtly music of the 18th century
Zoom
In essence, it may be said, that the
compositions written for courtly
music purposes in the late Baroqueand Classical periods remained at
their place of origin, or have been
transferred to a larger librarynearby. However, we find for
example most of the instrumentalworks of Georg Philip Telemanns in Darmstadt, but these are almost without exceptionin diplomatic copies in the hand of the local Hofkapellmeister Christoph Graupner.
Telemanns autograph MSS wandered as it were to the State Library in Berlin, where
they are held today. It also owns the worlds richest collection of Bachiana, broughtabout by the skilled collection policy that has preserved here almost the entire uvre of
Johann Sebastian Bach, his sons, and composers in their immediate musical environment.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected] -
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
5/17
One hardly needs to explain much about the case of Dresden: the way art was collected
by the Princes of Wettin meant that they were privately owned anyway and thus were
destined to remain in house. The precious collections in possession of the city wererelocated and managed to survive the allied bombing in February 1945 with virtually no
losses.
Zoom
The music of the MannheimCourt, however, can be found
in Munich. When Elector
Charles Theodore succeededon New Years Day in the year
1777 to what was now an extinct House of Wittelsbach, he took with him not only his
famous orchestra, but also the many art treasures, such as the gallery of paintings alongwith the music library itself. The remnants of these golden years for Mannheim are to
found not only in Stuttgart, but especially in the nearby town of Darmstadt. Of specialimportance was the relocation of the manuscripts from the famous chapel of Oettingen
Wallerstein to the University Library of Augsburg. Materials belonging to the Princes ofBentheim-Tecklenburg mainly printed ones in this case went to the University Library
Mnster.
Private libraries
In addition, there exist comparatively small, still private collections which also include
the music collection of the Counts of Schnborn in Wiesentheid, Bavaria and especiallythe collection of the House of Andr in Offenbach/Main. It is important to mention here
that their materials remain available today only with express permission of the family and
are by no means cheap.
Zoom
It is also worth mentioning that allBavarian libraries and their
holdings are described in the
excellent publication by Henle, and
that complete catalogues for themusic of Telemann and Bach have
been published, and that acatalogue of music held by the Berlin Sing-Akademie exists in general, music of the18th century is well documented in Germany.
Manuscripts of the 17th century
The same praise can hardly be expressed for the materials of the 17th century. On the one
hand, the majority of this repertoire is missing as a result of almost endless armed
conflicts in Central Europe (and thus the later Germany) between 1600 and 1700 (that
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
6/17
which was not a victim of war was lost in unnecessary attempts to reduce stock). On the
other hand, all known attempts have failed so far to create a full directory of original
German instrumental compositions.
However, it should be noted that, in addition to huge losses, this repertoire has been at
least partially reconstructed: thanks to the wonderful Dben Collection inUppsala/Sweden, and its French counterpart, the Collection Brossard, as well as the
Bibliothque Nationale de France and the collection in Kromeriz in what is now the
Czech State (all are accessible by excellent catalogues).
It is remarkable that courts and monasteries encouraged their music to be shared. And
there came about channels of musical communication between Kassel, Dresden and
Stockholm. Connections existed too between Dresden, the formerly Habsburg Lausitzand the Moravian Kromeriz, as well as between various locations and the Alsace,
occupied in 1681 by France.
Zoom
At least the musical materialsthemselves were not lost, not the
case in Germany, unfortunately,
and may still be found in the threeplaces just referred to. One should
always be ready for surprises
nonetheless: the Herzog AugustLibrary in Wolfenbttel/Lower Saxony has a tremendous inventory of MS collections
from the 17th century, even if the breadth of its scope is only appreciated by various
insiders.
The history of a collection
As ever, when searching for that lost masterpiece, it is always worth looking properly
through all the known catalogues. The repertoire of the Bonn Hofkapelle at the time ofthe young Ludwig van Beethoven is one would hardly believe held in the Italian town
of Modena. Thus an important but unlikely issue comes to the fore: a collection and its
provenance history. This is where questions like What came when, and in particular whyto this institution? might well be answered. This is still not really applicable to the
majority of German libraries. The wrong turns taken by many a story of provenance are
truly innumerable in this formerly so fragmented country.
He who searches, finds
In German libraries there is certainly nothing more to found that might be classed asrevolutionary. The well-trained staff has searched in vain several times in fact for at
least 150 Bach cantatas no longer extant. The missing tiles in the mosaic that is the
history of music between 1600 and 1800 may nevertheless not be that uncommon:
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
7/17
quaerendo invenietis (seek ye, ye who shall find).
Reinhard Goebelfounder and for 33 years the leader of the ensemble Musica Antiqua Kln, remains today
a sought-after conductor and speaker. His is a wide-ranging specialist knowledge on
performance practice as it relates to the modern symphony and chamber orchestra.
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Internet-Redaktion
August 2011
Related links
Cultural heritage simply bustling with activity makers of musical instruments inGermany
Zoom
A musical instrument made in
Germany has a good namearound the world. This applies
to the reconstruction of
historical instruments as well
as the construction of modern,top-of-the-range instruments. A variety of musical instrument collections has, moreover,
preserved the cultural heritage in the field.
No other country in the world has a higher density of museums with historical musicalinstruments. There are special museums in Berlin, Leipzig and Mark Neukirchen, and
there are large culturally or technically oriented institutions such as the GermanischesNationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Deutsches Museum in Munich and the Museum fr
Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. Even in smaller museums one often finds instruments,
which demonstrate part of a widespread musical practice.
Zoom
The website of the Committeefor Collections of Musical
Instruments in the InternationalMuseums Association,CIMCIM, provides
information about some 150
collections in Germany, which include a museum guide of musical instruments thatguarantees the reader easy access. Research funded by the European Union project
MIMO (Musical Instrument Museum Online) has recently found that more than a quarter
of the publicly owned European historical instruments are kept in Germany.
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
8/17
In the heart of Europe
Zoom
Is Germany the country we mostassociate with musical instruments?
Or is it only the land of the
collector? If one thinks in terms of
musical instrument brands, doesone not tend to dwell on the Far
East or the USA? Where are the
German musical instrument makersanyway? The story of German
musical instrument making is characterized by turbulent ups and downs which follow
each other rapidly according to global demand and profound depression. As with themusic itself, Germany is also influenced in the production of musical instruments by its
central location in Europe. Over the centuries it harnessed the momentum of intersecting
trade routes and reconciled itself to inventing things anew before propagating the results
to the outside world.
The genesis of the clarinet, for example, took place in Nuremberg, after instrument
makers had begun to imitate French woodwind instruments. The piano was invented inItaly in the Europe of the 18th Century, but it took the famous Saxon organ builder
Gottfried Silbermann to develop the idea before it achieved any kind of breakthrough.
From a small state to a cultural centre
Zoom
Vienna, Paris, London, New
York: in the Germany of the19th century, divided as it wasinto many smaller states, there
was no similar cultural centre
capable of using new ideas ofinstrument makers. There was no way for the musical avant-garde to bring its audience
into fruitful contact with any kind of civic education. The export of the technology used
to make better instruments along with the knowledge gained in that process remainstherefore perhaps the most important historical feature of German musical instrument
design. Mozarts Viennese piano maker, Anton Walter, came from the vicinity of
Stuttgart. The real name of Guillaume Tribert, who stands for the modern French oboe,
was really William. Henry E. Steinway, who wanted to build the best pianos in the world,was called before his emigration to the United States, Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg. And
the modern flute, which Theobald Boehm had developed in 1847 in Munich, was only
accepted in German orchestras long after it had become the standard instrument abroad.
The flagship of German instrument-making and an important export commodity right up
to the Great Depression, was the piano industry, with its hundreds of brands. From thesplendour of high quality that firms of all sizes produced right up to an industrial scale,
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
9/17
many businesses today especially mass producers in the Far East are now trying to
profit by providing the market models that have been bought in or simply have German-
sounding brand names.
A slow awakening
After the Second World War, the German music industry was never quite able to matchits earlier success. Mass producers in Asia and the United States had obtained an
unbeatable lead. This holds true today, not least in the field of electronic musical
instruments, which is fed more from a prosperous industry for consumer electronics and
computer technology than as part of instrument-making as a craft. After all, a 2007 studydemonstrated that 70 percent of German production is exported.
Zoom
The extent of the current
success is not to beunderestimated. At the heart of
this are the old and new centres
of musical instrument making,especially the Vogtland, that
nestles between Markneukirchen and Klingenthal. But mention must be made of a
centuries-old tradition of violin making in Mittenwald. Finally, after the Second WorldWar, there emerged a newcomer, from the Sudetenland, a tradition carried on by refugees
who set up shop in the busy town of Bubenreuth, near Erlangen.
Historic Musical Instruments
Outside the mainstream, one aspect of musical practice in the 19th century was todominate the first decades of the 20th century: instrument makers who dedicated their
skills to the recorder and the harpsichord revival of baroque instruments. Admittedly,these were still rather new creations, as are copies of historical instruments, but they gave
the go-ahead for todays so-called historically informed performance practice.
Zoom
As the knowledge of historical
conditions grew, the demandsof the players, along with
several manufacturers,focussed on instruments thatare constructed as closely as
possible along the lines of the original instruments in museums. Although historically
informed performance practice has influenced musical life today, the increasing numberof historical copies does not represent any kind of mass market. Apart from harpsichords
and recorders, which are produced in large quantities, the instrument maker still remains
in the workshop. This is where baroque trumpets, lutes and viols, as well as oboes,
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
10/17
clarinets and bassoons based on 18th and, increasingly, 19th century instruments see the
light of day. Oftentimes, the customer initiates the reconstruction of a particular
instrument held in one museum collection.
A new orientation
Zoom
German instrument makers
wisely did not try to enter the
game of price-dumping and
loss of quality, a competitionso easily lost. Instead, they
reflected on traditional
measures of quality, relying on public appeal and the made by branding. They placedthemselves amidst individual customers and entered certain obligations that demand the
skills of the craftsman and business acumen, along with a highly efficient sense of
industrial enterprises that suggests a combination of solidity and modernity.
This positioning in the market demonstrates the nature of the musical instrument itself,
the price of which is a kind of lifelong personal companion. Unlike items in the consumergoods industry, musical instruments are not disposable items which are easily replaced if
damaged. Over years and even decades, an instrument requires expert care and at one
time or another, expert repair. Nationwide there is a network of over 1.200 instrument
makers who are connected to a music store or, as in the case of the local violin maker,work on their own.
Zoom
The basis for the high standard of
German musical instrument makingis a highly regulated and traditional
craft apprenticeship, that takes
place at one of three schools in
Ludwigsburg, Mittenwald andOelsnitz and which are connected
to Zwickau University where a
degree in musical instrumentmaking may be obtained.
Despite the conservative market position as a land of musical instrument manufacturers,superlatives may still be applied and top positions still exist. Thus in Germany, the best
bassoons are made, and the most prestigious piano actions. Europes largest piano
manufacturer is firmly rooted here too.
Frank P. Br
Musicology and German Linguistics He is in charge of the Collection of Historic Musical
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
11/17
Instruments and the Branch Research Service of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in
Nuremberg.
Translation: Graham Lack
Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Internet-Redaktion
June 2011
Any questions about this article? Please write to us!
Related links
The Cologne School myth
The circle of composers who held sway in Cologne during the 1950s has often been
mythologised as a centre of the musical avant garde.
Under the leadership of Herbert Eimert and aided by the growing reputation of
Stockhausen, the WDR Studio for Electronic Music that had been established in 1951
developed into an international meeting place. Composers like Ernst Krenek(Austria/USA), Gyrgy Ligeti (Hungary), Franco Evangelisti (Italy), Cornelius Cardew
(England), Mauricio Kagel (Argentina) and Nam June Paik (Korea) all lived and workedin Cologne.
The key works of those years were not written by Stockhausen, but by Gottfried Michael
Koenig, who dominated the WDR Studio like no other as its technical assistant andhelped many composers create their pieces. The language and technology of early
electronic music found their culmination in his works, including Klangfiguren II (Sound
Figures II, 1955/56), Essay (1957) and Terminus I (1962), which are as radical as they
virtuosic.
Stockhausen and his impact
In retrospect, the impact of the Cologne School has been of significance at several levels.Firstly, the WDR Studio is regarded as the "mother of all studios". It became the model
for comparable institutions, among them Bruno Maderna and Luciano Berios
Phonological Studio in Milan (founded in 1955) and Jozef Patkowskis ExperimentalMusic Studio in Warsaw (1957), which also worked with sinus wave, noise and impulse
generators, tape machines, filters and reverb units. Secondly, Stockhausen, who was
regarded for a long time as the forms most important integrative figure, helped electronicmusic to gain international respect.
At the same time, there was strong criticism of his apolitical attitude and tendency
towards spiritualism, which he expressed for the first time in works such as Hymnen(Anthems, 1966-67) and Telemusik(Telemusic, 1969). Anthems, which Krautrock bands
like Can and Neuhave claimed as a decisive inspiration, was condemned by Luigi Nono
as a shoddy piece of nationalism; in 1974, Cornelius Cardew even raised the accusation,
"Stockhausen serves imperialism".Thirdly, many of the composers initiated into electroacoustic music at Cologne have
passed on and further developed the ideas they encountered there. Under the impression
of his tape studyArtikulation (Articulation), which he had composed in 1958 in Cologne,
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected] -
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
12/17
Gyrgy Ligeti intensified the orchestral texture ofAtmosphres (1960/61) into a turbulent
fog of sound based on electroacoustic models. Helmut Lachenmann also applied lessons
from his electroacoustic activities. He may only have written a single tape piece, but thenwent on to revolutionise instrumental music in the late 1960s with his concept of a noise-
fixated musique concrte instrumentale".
enlargeHerbert Brn, who taught at
the University of Illinois until
2000, interpreted theprocedures he had learned in
Cologne in the context of his
theory of socially committedelectronic music. And Gottfried Michael Koenig, who took charge of the Dutch Institute
of Sonology in 1964, reorganised this workshop as a kind of "criticism of the Cologne
Studio", above all introducing voltage control and computers.
Mauricio Kagel, who created the tape piece Transicion at the WDR Studio in 1963, hasdedicated himself increasingly to acoustic art since his radio play Ein Aufnahmezustand
(A State of Recording, 1969), applying the montage procedures of electronic music toworks with a narrative character. While the writer Ferdinand Kriwet, who cultivated close
contacts with composers in Cologne, produced a series of "audio texts in order to make
the graphic, multichannel qualities of documentary recordings fruitful in a literarycontext.
enlarge
Nor was musical life in the
GDR untouched byelectroacoustic music. After
many short-lived projects,Georg Katzer succeeded inbuilding up a studio at the
Berlin Academy of the Arts, although not until 1986 and then with machines and
materials that had to be obtained from the West, sometimes by clandestine methods.Technically, the studio was strongly oriented towards Western production conditions and
became a place of political and aesthetic subversion, creating works that countered the
normative reason of state with an individualistic, free-thinking poetics.
Bjrn Gottstein
works as a critic and moderator for the daily newspaper taz and the Westdeutscher
Rundfunk broadcasting company, among others. Has published numerous texts on thehistory of electronic music.
Translated by Martin Pearce
Copyright: Goethe Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion
http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579142.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579142.htm# -
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
13/17
Any questions about this article? Please write to us!
July 2006
Research and progress
enlarge
The most importantinnovations to which the
Cologne Studio gave major
impulses include multichannelcomposition.Stockhausen
gained acceptance for the idea
of"spatial music as an aesthetic paradigm with his four-track work Gesang der
Jnglinge (Song of the Youths, 1955/56) and the spatially conceived orchestral pieceGruppen (Groups, 1955-57). The spherical auditorium created for the 1970 World
Exhibition in Osaka gave him a concert hall specially tailored to this concept. Since then,"spatial music" has been a common compositional praxis, used for example in the 7-channel composition La lgende d'Eer (The Legend of Eer, 1977) by Iannis Xenakis and
the orchestral piece Quasi una fantasia(1988) by Gyrgy Kurtg. Fifty years on, the idea
is being popularised today as 5.1 Surround Sound, but more as a feature of the modernhome packed with media technology than as a way of listening to electronic music.
Josef-Anton Riedl found his way to a synthesis between pure electronic music and
"musique concrte" at an early stage in the sound laboratory set up in 1959 by Siemens.
The Siemens studio may have failed in its attempts to commercially exploit electronicpopular music, but a digital synthesis procedure, in which the individual parameters of a
sound could be saved on punched tape and retrieved with the help of a tape reader, was
soon developed at the generously equipped research department. Together with computerprograms supplied by the US telephone company Bell, this procedure provided the
foundations for one of the first computer-supported sound machines. The tape reader was
used extensively by Riedl most notably in his composition Nr. 2 (1963). Composerslike John Cage and David Tudor travelled to Munich to study there on account of this
apparatus.
Innovative potential of electroacoustic music
The genre of live electronic music that John Cage had called into life in 1960 with his
Cartridge Music" was imported in 1964 by Stockhausen in Mikrofonie I fr Tamtam,
Mikrofone und Mischpulte(Microphony I for Tam-Tam, Microphones and MixingConsoles). He pushed forward the live electronic transformation of sound in 1969 with
Mantra fr zwei Klaviere und einen Ringmodulator (Mantra for Two Pianos and a Ring
Modulator) at the SWR in Freiburg. This production led to the founding of theExperimental Studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of the SWR in 1971. It was in
Freiburg that the studios director Hans-Peter Haller and the engineer Peter Lawo had
built the first "fully electronic sound control device for the movement of a source of
sound within a predetermined space" in 1970. This machine went down in history as
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#mailto:[email protected]://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm# -
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
14/17
"Hallers Crazy Crate 4" and later the "halaphon.
The "halaphon" was made famous by the ethereal, filigree sound that runs through all the
later works of Luigi Nono. Nono created twelve works in Freiburg between 1980 and1990, among them his epochal "tragedy of listening" Prometeo (Prometheus, 1981-1985).
The Freiburg studio has always had a double role: as both an instrument and a laboratory.
Today, historic works by Nono, Cristbal Halffter and Pierre Boulez are maintainedtechnically there and, where necessary, updated to ensure they can still be performed.
Furthermore, many live electronic solutions for specific works have been developed
jointly with composers in Freiburg: for the electroacoustic corset with which BrianFerneyhough surrounds the instrumentalists in his Time and Motion Study II (1976/77),
the spatial counterpoint that develops into a dialogue between the ensemble and the
loudspeakers in Emmanuel Nuness Wandlungen (Changes, 1985/86) and the complex
mirroring process conceived by Isabel Mundry for her piece Gesichter (Faces, 1997).This appears to have exhausted the innovative potential of electroacoustic music in
Germany for the time being. Pioneering innovations such as voltage control, which is the
basis of the"Moog and Buchla synthesisers", were invented in the USA. The
revolutionary FM synthesis technology was also discovered in the CCRMA studio atStanford University before going on to dominate 1980s pop music from Michael
Jackson to Front 242 in the shape of Yamahas DX-7 synthesiser. While granularsynthesis, "physical modelling and standard software such as "Max/MSP",
"SuperCollider" and the programs created by IRCAM in Paris have all been developed
outside Germany as well.back to articles
Bjrn Gottstein
works as a critic and moderator for the daily newspaper taz and the WestdeutscherRundfunk broadcasting company, among others. Has published numerous texts on the
history of electronic music.
Translated by Martin Pearce
Copyright: Goethe Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion
Any questions about this article? Please write to us!
July 2006
Outside the institutionsMany byways of electronic music were ignored for a long time by the historiography of
the field, which was hegemonially oriented towards the major institutions.
The most important artistic responses of the years after 1968 included the rebellionagainst the institutionalised studios and their monopolisation of the means of production.
In 1970, the founding of the Cologne-based Feedback Studio by pupils of Stockhausen
such as Johannes Fritsch, Peter Etvs and the Calcutta-born composer and programmerKlarenz Barlow triggered a paradigm change that called the legitimacy of the institutions
http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://history.back%28%29/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://www.goethe.de/kue/mus/ned/rbk/eku/en1579164.htm#http://history.back%28%29/http://history.back%28%29/mailto:[email protected] -
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
15/17
into question and opened the way for independent electronic music, not least thanks to the
availability of cheap synthesisers.
enlarge
Since the 1970s, this tradition
has been continued by artists
like Heiner Goebbels andAlfred Harth. With their band
Cassiber, Goebbels and Harth
have used the montagetechniques of the audiotape age for agitprop tracks such as Berlin, Q-Damm 12.4.81. The
European Live Electronic Centre (EULEC) at Lneburg also deserves to be mentioned in
this context. Helmut Erdmann has been working at EULEC since 1977, achievingadvances in areas of music education such as the teaching of electroacoustic techniques
and experimenting with historic synthesisers like the EMS Synthi 100 to find new facets
of their sounds.
Research projects and multimedia works at the ZKM
Most of the electroacoustic institutions have lost their significance today. Many facilities
have closed, including the Siemens laboratory and, most recently, the WDR Studio. Oneimportant exception is the Institute for Music and Acoustics at the Center for Art and
Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, which was founded in 1990 in emulation of IRCAM in Paris
as an "institute of unheard tones". The work done there has frequently crossed the line
between academic research and art initially under the leadership of Johannes Goebeland since 2004 under that of Ludger Brmmer. Whereas Freiburg has specialised
exclusively in live electronic music for many years, a wide range of research projects are
undertaken at Karlsruhe. The subjects include problems of data management like thoseFranz Martin Olbrisch had to overcome in 1993 in his radio installation FM o99.5, which
extended over a number of days.
The composer Mesias Maiguashca, who was born in Ecuador and lives in Freiburg, wasable to musically exploit his studies of the ways metal instruments resonate at the ZKM
when he elaborated his evening-long cycle Reading Castaeda in 1993. The ZKM
provided Nicolas Collins, Kaffe Matthews, Oval, Scanner, Anne Wellmer and Zeitblom
with a complex data network for their interactive projectsFiber Jelly and Remix (2000).The Institute for Music and Acoustics cooperates with other parts of the ZKM on
multimedia pieces such as the works of Kiyoshi Furukawa, who integrates images and
sounds together: as in his "chamber music with images Small Fish (1999) for computerand musicians and the interactive environment Bubbles(2000) he created with Wolfgang
Mnch.
Integrating acoustics and aesthetics
Open source applications of the kind used in works by Orm Finnendahl and others have
been promoted under the aegis of the annual Linux Audio Conferences held at the ZKM
since 2004. Composers such as Goebel, Maiguashca, Brmmer and Finnendahl belong toa new group of still young artists who are equally inspired by an academic ethos and
artistic ambitions. The links forged between physical acoustics and musical aesthetics are
-
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
16/17
reflected in an exemplary fashion in the works and writings of Hans Tutschku, who has
held the position of Professor of Composition and Director of the Studio for
Electroacoustic Composition at Harvard University since September 2004. Tutschku hasprogrammed numerous applications that respond to the intuitive realisation of a score by
musicians and incorporate their physical gestures into the generation of sound.
Georg Hajdu, Professor of Multimedia Composition in Hamburg since 2002, has beensimilarly innovative, experimenting with microtonal scales and working on a networked,
interactive real time compositional environment. At the same time, Johannes Goebel has
been continuing the activities he began at the ZKM since 2004 at the Experimental Mediaand Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (US State of
New York), where he has primarily devoted himself to the musical potential and
consequences of new media such as the Internet. In addition to this, the tradition of an art
based on simple technology and liberated from institutional constraints has considerablyinfluenced electronic music in Germany.
enlarge
The pioneers of this current
include the Hamburg noisemusician and composer Asmus
Tietchens, who collaborateswith the Bochum sound artist
Thomas Kner in "Kontakt der
Jnglinge", using depth psychology and not a little humour to explore his own musicalsocialisation in radio transmissions of electronic music.
back to articles
Bjrn Gottstein
works as a critic and moderator for the daily newspaper taz and the Westdeutscher
Rundfunk broadcasting company, among others. Has published numerous texts on thehistory of electronic music.
Translated by Martin Pearce
Copyright: Goethe Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion
Any questions about this article? Please write to [email protected]
July 2006
Related links
http://history.back%28%29/mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]://history.back%28%29/http://history.back%28%29/mailto:[email protected] -
7/30/2019 Studying Early Music
17/17