Russischer Formalismus (Druckansicht)

Formalismus-Kampagnen (Druckansicht)

Basis-Ästhetik (Druckansicht)

Ästhetik

Günter Mayer

Internationally the German Democratic Republic is very well known for its high standard of music culture, especially in the realm of classical music. Classical music has long traditions which were followed and improved in the last decades.

Composers such as Heinrich Schütz, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, Philip Telemann, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and Richard Wagner were born in or lived within the territory which became the GDR in 1949. In 1985 Dresden, Leipzig and Halle will be celebrating the anniversaries of the 400th birthday of Schutz and the 300th birthdays of Bach and Handel respec tively. The heritage of German classical music (including Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert) is an important part of the programs of concert halls, opera houses, radio transmissions and record produc tions. VEB Deutsche Schallplatten, for instance, released the world’s first complete edition of Beethoven including more than 120 records.

There are many permanent professional orchestras in our country: 43 theatre orchestras, 25 state and municipal orchestras, eight radio orchestras, three ensemble orchestras and nine dance and light orches tras. Some of them are very well known all over the world: the State Orchestra Dresden and the Philharmony Dresden, the Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and the State Orchestra Berlin, which have toured the United States. The boys choirs from Leipzig (Thomaner Choir) and from Dresden (Kreuz Choir) are also known worldwide.

Among the amateurs in the field of classical music are about 250,000 people singing in more than 8000 choirs and playing in about 200 symphony orchestras and chamber music ensembles. And there are famous concert halls and opera houses with a full year repertory: the Neues Gewandhaus Leipzig (newly built, opened 1981); the Komische Oper Berlin; the Konzerthaus Berlin (the former Schauspielhaus, built by Schinkel, destroyed in World War II, reconstructed, reopened on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of the GDR in Oc tober 1984); and the Semper Opera Dresden (destoyed in World War II, reconstructed, will be reopened in 1985).

And there are many regular music festivals: the International Bach Festival (since 1966); the Händel Festival Plays (since 1952); the Telemann Festival (since 1962); the Berlin Festival (since 1967); the Music-Biennale Berlin (since 1967); the Music Days of the GDR (since 1974 especially for contemporary music); the Dresden Music Festival (since 1978). Many regional festivals and competitions for composers, singers, musicians and dancers take place.

It is impossible here to mention all the other activities in the field of classical music: in conservatories, music schools, by music pub lishers, journals by the Eterna-department of the State Record Company, VEB Deutsche Schallplatten, by the mass media radio and tele vision, by music societies, organizations and clubs, by museums and archives and by music libraries.

But what about popular music? Of course, this is not the usual popular music. But there should be some information on this part of music culture, not least because it is one important principle of the socialist concept of culture to bring these treasures of music to the people, to make classical music „popular“ by different social efforts: varying from economic decisions to various educational activities. Not withstanding all the advantages sketched above in bringing the treas ures of good music to the masses of workers and peasants, there are efforts to make them play music themselves, thus only some few pieces of classical music become „their“ music. Only a small part of the large classical repertory in excellent live concerts and opera performances and/or technically mediated by radio, television, and records, has be come „popular“ among the small but increasing number of music lovers. Especially the new contemporary music written, for instance, by Hanns Eisler (d, 1962) or Paul Dessau (d. 1979) or by the younger composers Friedrich Goldmann, Siegfried Matthus, Georg Katzer, Friedrich Schenker and Reiner Bredemeyer—to mention only some of the most interesting names among the more than 300 composers of the Union of Composers—has only found a small audience. The same is to say about the international contemporary „classical“ music in general, i.e., the advanced music of the 20th century. Quite the oppo site has occurred in the realm of popular music. In the everyday life of the masses of workers and peasants, especially among the younger generation, popular music from all over the world is predominant; also popular music „made in GDR“ is much more accepted by the masses than the new contemporary music from the „serious“ sector.

Regardless of the questions „What is Popular Music for whom?“ and „What are the general criteria of popularity?“, and regardless of the necessary distinction between variant sectors of popular music and between several degrees of popularity, it is obvious that people prefer „Schlager“ (easy-listening dance music), rock, chanson and song, „folklore,“ some forms of jazz or certain types of music for brassbands, accordion orchestras etc. Most popular music is technically mediated; popular music is on the air. Especially among younger people, all international trends in the development of popular music are very well known in the country because a lot of radio or TV stations from other countries, including three TV channels from the Federal Republic of Germany, can be listened to and/or seen in the GDR. One also has to take into account the activities of our own music industry regarding international and national popular music—broadcast on vari ous programme-types and available on records, produced by Amiga, another department of VEB Deutsche Schallplatten. It is impossible to mention all the international stars and groups who have given con certs in the GDR and who have been on television and whose music is played on the programmes of our radio stations or has been recorded. To fully understand the function of radio for the development of music culture as a whole it is important to know that 65 percent of all national radio programmes in GDR are taken up by music. And music is part of 80 percent of the total of radio programmes. But more important for such an understanding is that most of the music broadcast by our stations is popular music. For instance, in 1980 the total of music programmes was (in hours): „serious“ music was 5708 hours and popular music was 25.875 (music for entertainment was 4782 hours; dance music was 18.394 hours and folk music was 2699 hours).

The technical conditions in the country provide that all kinds of music can be listened to by almost everyone in almost every situation. In 97.8 percent of all households there is a radio; in many there are two or three. The technical equipment has high-fidelity standard. More than 82 percent of the people between ages 15 and 23 have their own portable radios (more and more with taping-technique). The number of „walkmen“ is increasing. The real popular use of radio is evident: more than 70 percent of the people in the GDR, older than 15, listen to the radio on workdays between four and eight o’clock AM. Most of such music is popular music. It is a fact—determined by sociologists— that—like everywhere else—people between the ages of 14 and 25 listen to music for an average of 2 or 3 hours a day, and often more.

Such a general situation in socialist musical culture, caused by the progressing development of mass media technology and with this the high degree of information on international trends, especially com ing from the centers of popular music, has an enormous impact on the development of our national popular music—not only to copy what is „in“ internationally. Such efforts are made by the musicians them selves, by the gatekeepers of the mass media and by officials of all institutions relevant for cultural and musical policies.

In popular music the singers and musicians generally are more known than the composers, the writers of the lyrics or the arrangers. Often all this is done by the same person or group. We can compare the number of professional and amateur orchestras in the field of classical music (mentioned above) with the number of groups in popu lar music. There we had 88 professional—here we have 650 profes sional orchestras and formations of dance music respectively (includ ing the professional rock groups); there we had 200 amateur symphony orchestras and chamber music ensembles—here we have 4000 brass bands and folk instrumental orchestras. So in popular music some hundred thousand people are active in music making. Some examples for the international success of some pop musicians will follow later.

Similar to the famous concert halls and opera houses there are some places where especially popular music is performed. Take for example Berlin with the Metropol Theatre (for operettas), the Fried-richstadt Palace (for gig shows, revues —newly built, opened 1984), the Palace of the Republic—or in Dresden the Kulturpalast. In big towns there are also some newly built concert halls, for example in Karl-Marx-Stadt, Cottbus or Gera.

There are many regular pop music festivals and meetings: the International Schlager Festival in Dresden (since 1971); the national festival Days of Chanson in Frankfurt/Oder (since 1973); the National Competition of Singers and Entertainers in Karl-Marx-Stadt (since 1972); the Fair of Entertainers in Leipzig (since 1973); the international festival Rock for Peace in Berlin (since 1982; 1982 with 15 groups, 1983 with 40); the festival Solibeat in Berlin (the groups do nated the money for international solidarity); the Political Song Festival in Berlin (since 1972 with participants from all over the world). Apart from political songs there is folklore, jazz-rock and advanced, political engaged music from the „serious“ sector; the national work shop Songs & Theatre in Dresden (since 1980: interdisciplinary, in cluding new forms of chamber music, rock, instrumental theatre, ballet, painting, documentary film); the International Jazz-Stage Berlin (since 1977, modern contemporary jazz); the International Dixieland Festival Dresden (since 1971); Jazz in the Chamber in Berlin (since 1965, reg ular series of concerts, contemporary jazz); Jazz in the Tip (Theatre in the Palace of the Republic, since 1977. Several days with international workshops). And there are central and many regional activities in all kinds of popular music, organized by song clubs of the Free German Youth Organization and by jazz clubs of the cultural organiza tion (Kulturbund): concert series, meetings, discussions and work­shops.

Most of these events are realized in cooperation between the KGD (Central Concert Agency) and the Committee for Entertainment (central state organization for the development not only of popular music but also of circus, magic arts, etc.). The song movement is organized by the Central Council of the Free German Youth Organization and the folklore movement by the Central House for Folkart in Leipzig.

Many of these events are broadcast by radio and televison. Some of the popular music, played there from international and national musi cians, is recorded and released by Amiga.

One of the recent events in this line was the 7th National Compet ition of Singers and Entertainers in Karl-Marx-Stadt, March 1984 . Among the winners of various prizes were singers such as Jorg Hindemith, H + N (Holger Flesch, Norbert Endlich), Ina-Marie Federowski, Maja-Katrin Fritsche, Conny Strauch, Anke Schenker; and the rock groups City, Pankow, Silly, M. Jones Band, Reggae Play, Rockhouse, Kerstin Radke and the groups Prinz, Scheselong, Zwei Wege, The Gaukler, Juckreiz, and Engerling. A special prize was given to the disc jockey Ingo Schulz. It has already been mentioned that there are many more singers of „Schlager,“ more rock groups and many more disc jockeys. The dimensions of popular music in GDR and its popularity, for example, among young people, can be demonstrated by the fact that already in late 1981 the disco form of dancing and entertainment was realized by 6000-8000 amateur disc jockeys and about 106 professionals. They are active all over the country from the big towns to the smallest village—most of them working with their own portable equipment. In 1981 the total of youth dance events was 380,000 with about 76 million visitors. In 1983 the total was 700.000 with about 130 million (not taking into account the thousands of dis cotheques—each of them with 70,000 – 200,000 visitors a year).

The above mentioned facts may give an impression of the dimen sions in which the various forms of popular music —international and national—are part of our socialist culture of music.

II

Some more details and observations about the tendencies and perspectives in various types of popular music may complete the gen eral outlines.

schlager

This is still the most popular part of easy-listening music, in short, mostly simple songs with tunes in quite conventional melodical and harmonical formulas. What has changed in the development of the schlager are the arrangements, where several national traditions and international trends make the sound on the basis of new technological potentials in which also the schlager fits in. There is the line from the old models of „Stimmungslied/’ „Geselliges Lied/’ of „Schunkel-Walzer“ or Polka on the one hand—and there are the influences of blues, jazz, beat, rock, reggae on the other. Most important for changes in the sound of the schlager (which existed long before beat and rock came into being) was and is the new striking experience of rock, or better, a certain standardization and the sell out of rock elements—not least in disco music. The schlager have their individual starlets—with their special forms of presentation on stage. And they have their audi ences: very young people who prefer the quite abstract emotional patterns of love and pain—and people of several age groups who like the same in retrospective or conventional forms of „Gemütlichkeit.“

Predominant in the total production of „Schlager“ is the so called „Tagesschlager.“ These are the very standardized little things of short popularity in most cases, written by a relatively small number of people (lyrics, music, arrangement). In this field innovations are but few. The general standard of composition, arrangement and representation can be characterized as mediocre. The standards of expression, the musical patterns are as interchangeable as the singers. It is not necessary to mention titles and names. However, these little things are necessary for many people who like the international and national stars and starlets of this type

To find one’s own position, a kind of socialist identity in the field of „Schlager“ has been and is still the most complicated, initiated by the officials in culture and the institutions responsible for this. Throughout the years the official institutions set up the demand of „Schlager“ to be both innovative in content and form: close to the real everyday life, to the needs of the masses, and new authentical in music. Though out the years there is a continuity in criticism against the predominant mediocrity and routine, the platitudes and the bore­dom. And on the other hand there have been some outstanding titles as regards lyrics and music every year. Some titles—being very conven tional—became hits: for instance, the fun-schlager „Sing, mei Sachse Sing“11 (Sing, My Saxonian, Sing), written by Jürgen Hart, sold 500,000 records. Or, the orchestra Jo Kurzweg (a James Last of the GDR) was able to sell two million copies with his Party Sound. More interesting titles were created especially when poets, composers, arrangers and singers left the old patterns and picked up new musical idioms from other genres. And they have been found by certain forms of cooperation with the singers, as, for instance, with Reinhard Lakomy and Angelika Mann. Lakomy’s second album „Lacky and His Stories“ sold 200,000 copies. There are also the allround singers Jurgen Walter, Monika Hauff and Klaus-Dieter Henkler. These last two won the „Golden Pigeon“ of Montreux some years ago. And there is Frank Schöbel, whose first seven albums and some singles sold two million copies.

rock

As we know, it is typical for rock to be determined essentially by new technical means and conditions of production and reproduction. It is the electrification of sound and the innate potential of recording and the big equipment and sound on stage. It was and is a new quality of collectivity in production: the group finds a maximum of resources at its disposal in the recording studios—a medium which encourages collective work. Particularly, improvisation can be and is transformed by subsequent decision-making into collective composition, mainly without notation. Predominant is the sound. The electro-accoustical innovations are not so relevant in the melody and harmony as in rhythm and timbre. And this is essentially based on the Afro-American folk tradition. In this line, rock has been and is a new quality in content and form, in the messages and in its multimedial representations as authentic expression of collective experience under conditions of urban life. Realized by young people in a new intensity, full of power and despair, of hopes and fear and, of course, of vitality and fun. Characteristic is the deep criticism of all forms of establishment in society and in music—what in turn always has been criticised by the establishment as aggressive and destructive.

These general properties of rock appear in various styles. They can also be found in the forms of rock „made in GDR.“ The social criticism here is not a principal criticism of the aims of socialism or the society ruled by these principles. It is, on this general agreement, a critical position referring to the universal contradictions in the de velopment of the socialist society itself. And from this difference in the general affirmative social attitudes (which includes criticism) some characteristic aspects of rock „made in GDR“ derive.

In general one can find elements of blues in GDR rock. There is ska and rap, hard and folk rock, jazz rock and pop music for dancing. There are phenomena of „New Wave“ and reggae, also rhythm and blues and synthesizer sounds. In other forms one can also find ap proaches to classical music—adaptations of Mozart and Bach and, of course, influences of punk. There are also forms of „Schlager“ rock.

The first includes a second general characteristic: in the lyrics ot many titles we can find the individual, engaged expression of collec tive social experiences, especially of critical young people, close to various areas of every day life (job, school, spare time, nature, environ ment, the menace of an atomic war—all kinds of human interrelations, of individual conflicts felt as general problems of social development).

A third specific point of rock in the GDR, therefore, and this is true for various styles, is a predominance of „Lied“ characters, com bined with the sound of modern rock. Because of this it is often more difficult than elsewhere to define the differences between rock and chanson or between rock and new forms of „Schlager“. This is the case with the already mentioned Reinhard Lakomy. We have several tendencies regarding these stylistic characteristics of rock: typical is a powerful rock, melodical in the traditon of the German folk song and the „Kunstlied“—not so fast in tempo. Examples of this line are titles of the Puhdys, Prinzip, Karussel and Silly.

Another stylistic tendency is a kind of hard rock—fast in tempo, fresh and vehement. Examples for this can be found in titles of City II, Berluc, Formel I, Prinzip, Rockhaus and Pankow (one of the most interesting groups in the eighties, with some elements of „New Wave“ and punk). More in the line of „New Wave“ is the music of Setzei, Herzschlag, Brechreiz, Restbestand, Ausfluss, Maulsperre and the Himbeer-Band.

Another stylistic tendency is the interrelation between rock and folk elements. City I played Bulgarian rock. Folk characters can also be found in titles of Karussel, No 55, Bayon or Bromm Oss. And there is folk rock and country rock in the music of Express, Winni II, Simple Song or Peter Tschernig and Heinz-Jürgen Gottschalk.

It is often difficult to define the difference between rock and chanson and rock and „Schlager“. One finds the stylistic sound-scape of the „Schlager“ rock, for instance, in the music of Gabi Rückert, Eva-Maria Pieckert, Petra Zieger or the groups Karat and Wir. The interrelations between rock and blues and rock and jazz will be men tioned later.

In general, many groups are not fixed in their style of music mak ing. The styles change in the development of the group or the groups realize several styles in their concerts. Many bands have a Beatle, a rock’n'roll medley (like Chuck Berry) or a solo for percussion in their programme.

Another characteristic point of rock in the GDR is that many groups have complex programmes such as rock suites, cantatas, spectacles: as for instance Lift („Che Guevara Suite“) or the Stern Combo Meissen („Weisses Gold“). Pankow realized the rock spectable „Paul Panke“, (a story about a day in the life of an apprentice) and the play „Hans im Glück“ (a trial-and-error play of how to become happy). And there are kinds of mini-operas as „Die Sixtinische Madonna“ by Electra or „Rosa Laub“ by Horst Krueger. Adaptations of classical music have been made by Stern Combo Meissen (Mussorgski) and Bayon (Bach).

In the GDR one also finds women rock bands in popular music. There is above all Mona Lise, and some women are also the leaders of their ensembles: for instance Angelika Mann with Obelisk, Brigitte Stefan with Meridian, Petra Zieger with the Smokings, Katrin Lindner with the Schubert-Band, Tamata Danz with Silly.

The sound of rock in the GDR comes from about 40-50 top groups in the country. There is a lot of live music, but only 200-300 titles (other figures say even 700 for 1983) are produced by radio and the State Record Company. About 50 become hits. More than 50 per cent of the record output of VEB Deutsche Schallplatten is popular music. Radio and its activities are very important for the popularity of rock. International rock and brand new titles of GDR groups are in several special programs for young people. There is DT 64, the Notenbude, Hallo, the Beat-Box, Mobil, Rock-Radio, Tip-Disco, Trend, Treff or the Tipp-Parade. The Station Stimme der DDR (Voice of the GDR) presents five-hour programs called Rock Around the Clock, which begin at 10:10 p.m. Since September 1981 there is a daily nine-hour program for young people of Berlin and surroundings, beginning at 2:15. There is always a lot of rock and thus, young people like listening to the radio.

All the above mentioned groups—and there are more among the amateurs—present in various styles a special kind of rock. They have built up a specific GDR tradition of rock music. An increasing trend to creating some abstract reality in the critical relationship toward the everyday reality has become a general tendency in recent years: there are many „Lied“ titles which have a touch of romanticism, a kind of abstract humanism, far away from the „prose“ of reality in the lyrics and the music. This can be felt in some soft-rock titles about war and peace, environmental problems and several other subjects. Some cri tics have called this the „domestication“ of rock (i.e., the end of rock). On the other hand there are at the same time more and more groups, especially among the young amateurs (those who are impressed by punk and the „Ingenious Dilettants“) in whose lyrics and music one can feel an opposition against such „artificialization“ of rock, against the perfectionism of idyllic soundscapes, against the patterns of disco music. Because of their provocative messages and their unusual kind of representation, the groups of this orientation sometimes have con flicts with cultural institutions. Some are accused of imitating attitudes of similar groups in capitalist countries and thus are called destructive and nihilistic.

Many rock musicians become professionals. And some of them become really „popular,“ as for example the Puhdys (since 1965/69). They have put out the highest number of records and have been the first group to tour capitalist countries, including the United States. And they received the National Prize—a public honor for outstanding artists (1982). Between 1973 and 1979 the Puhdys put out about two million records; other statistics say that the first six albums and casset tes (including exports into other countries) have sold 4.5 million copies. The album „Rock V Roll-Music“ sold 720.000 and „Ten Wild Years“ sold 300.000 copies in the first nine months. Similar figures have been sold by the soft rock group Karat. Even in capitalist countries millions of their records have been sold. The title „Over seven bridges you must go“—in the version of Peter Maffay (Federal Republic of Ger many)—has sold 7 million copies.

Some experts say: „Really new manners of playing, new musical material, new techniques didn’t come from rock ‘made in the GDR’ into the international rock-scene… The domain of GDR-rock is the development of the Lied-characters in pre-given or taken on manners of playing.“ (Peter Wicke, 1980) But this is more assimilation than imitation (Olaf Leitner, 1984).

Song movement and chanson

In the mid-sixties many „Hootenanny Clubs“ were founded by young people. One of them, called Oktober-Klub since 1966, became the center of a broad amateur song movement in the GDR. Many groups have written and sung their own lyrics and songs. These small groups expressed their actual social experiences in the development of socialist society, in relation to what happened all over the world. The young people didn’t wait for the professional poets and composers to write for them. (Some, of course, did, as for instance Gisela Steineckert.) They did this by themselves—using their voices and the instru ments which they were able to play (mostly guitars). And they did it very flexibly—as immediate reaction to political events. Most of the clubs have been politically engaged. They made and make up the political song movement. From this point of view many old and/or new international political songs of democratic, revolutionary, anti-im perialist character, also plebeian folk songs, etc. have been redisco vered or taken from all over the world, wherever such songs came out and were part of progressive political movements in our times.

So the song clubs were and are at the same time musical and political groups: i.e., clubs where young people discuss political prob lems, new songs, dance, meet a girlfriend or boyfriend. The character of these groups was and is quite different from the choirs in the trad itional folk music movement, which is also part of the organized popu lar music activities in the GDR. Those choirs and instrumental groups are mixed; made up by older and younger music lovers. Those amateurs drew and still draw the criteria of singing and playing from the standards set by professional ensembles. And they took and still take the music from the professional composers—from the famous classical and from the „serious“ contemporary ones. The aim of these ensembles is to win a prize at one of the many competitions, and thus to count in the category of first class amateur ensembles.

Contrary to that the movement of political songs was and is the affair of the young people themselves. In general it is organized by the Free German Youth Organization. There are also forms of compet itions and workshops, but they have another character. It is more important to make music together, to compare the various songs of the clubs which participate at a concert, especially at the Political Song Festival. This very interesting international festival was initiated by the Oktober-Klub. The chief organizers of the Festival (annually in February in Berlin) are former members of the Oktober-Klub. Other members now are high up in the State Record Company, in the Head­quarters of the Free German Youth Organization or in the Committee for Entertainment. Some of the first members became professional writers and/or singers: Barbara Thalheim, Reinhold Andert, Jürgen Walter. A part of the Oktober-Klub became the first professional group in this field—Jahrgang 49 (no longer existing). And in general some of the best poets writing for rock groups started in the political song movement, as for instance Kurt Demmler and Werner Karmer.

Song clubs exist everywhere: in factories, in administrations, in schools, at universities, in the army. Some are very active, and some already existed a long time and are well known in the country, as for instance, Brigade Feuerstein (amateurs who are musically close to rock. They include elements of circus and variety in their programs). Very interesting are the new professional groups Wacholder (close to folklore), Gruppe Schicht and Karls Enkel (both are presenting a new kind of song theatre). Well known poets and solo-singers are Reinhold Andert, Kurt Demmler, Gerhard Gundermann, Bernd Rump, Dieter Beckert, Hans-Eckart Wenzel, Steffen Mensching and Wolfgang Protze.

There are many songs in this movement which could also be called chansons. They are in the tradition of the type of politically engaged solo songs, in which all kinds of problems are reflected—in cluding the manner of singing. Many singers of chansons are not only singers but actors and actresses as well. Some of the best known are Gisela May (well known for her Brecht/Eisler, Brecht/Weill programs; she gave a lot of concerts in the United States), Vera Oehlschlegel, Thea Elster, Sonja Kehler, Gina Pietsch or Hans Radloff—to mention only a few.

jazz

As a specific manner of creativity and expression in music, the traditional jazz and the contemporary jazz are an important part of popular music in the GDR. Many outstanding musicians are involved in jazz. There are many single concerts, series of concerts and festivals, often organized by jazz clubs existing in many towns, especially in the south of the country (for instance Peitz, Leipzig, Glauchau, Weimar, Dresden and Freiberg). One trend in jazz is traditional jazz (Dixieland-Revival). This is the domain of the amateurs—sometimes with high musical standards (for instance the Berlin Jazz Col­legium).More important are two other trends: contemporary jazz and blues.

Contemporary jazz is the result of a development evolved from an assimilation of the early American forms after World War II (bebop, cool jazz, hardbop), international trends of the sixties (Free jazz) and new forms of rock, soul and tendencies in advanced „serious“ music. Impulses for this development, in which the jazz musicians of the GDR found their own profile, came not only from outstanding jazz musicians in the United States but also from new jazz in Czechos lovakia and Poland. The styles are varied. There is one kind of rock jazz, represented by the music of Günther Fischer and the Modern Soul Band. Pop jazz is played by the orchestra Fusion. And there is contemporary, new jazz by Ernst Ludwig Petrowsky and Friedhelm Schoenfeld, Ulrich Gumpert and Konrad Bauer. The music played by Herrmann Keller and Manfred Schulze or by the Hanno-Rempel-tentett comes from the borderland between jazz and advanced „serious“ music. Interesting adaptations of compositions of Hanns Eisler have been made by the Hannes-Zerbe-Blechband.

And there is blues in the GDR, with many outstanding musicians and concerts,and many blues fans. Stefan Diestelmann (now living in the Federal Republic of Germany) has been very important in the field of popular music as has been and still is Jürgen Kerth. The most outstanding of the groups are Engerling and Monokel. And there are and have been many others: Ergo, Travellin’ Blues, Jonathan Blues Band, Albatros, Freygang, Blues Vital, Morgenrock, Modern Blues, Erdmann & Co, Handarbeit and the Hof-Blues Band (some of which do not exist any longer). In jazz and blues there are many international links. Many American musicians have been to the GDR for concerts (at the already mentioned international festivals). Sometimes they have played together with jazz musicians from the GDR. Impressed by the blues scene here, Memphis Slim said on the occasion of one of his concerts: „Only two countries can be called the homeland of blues— the United States and the GDR.“

The musical life in the sphere of popular music is varied. More and more people become involved in the different fields of rock, the song movement, the neo-folklore, jazz and blues. There are even more—such as traditional folk dance and new trends of folk dance revival (which cannot be mentioned here). All these forms of popular music have their forms of organization and institutions. Results of music making, experiences and concepts for the further development are discussed and generalized in clubs, journals(Melodie und Rhythmus, Musik und Gesellschaft, Unterhaltungskunst), in work shops and at conferences. And of course the general criteria for the political evaluation of various popular music, for decision on the pro duction and the profiles of radio programmes or records, for financing and programmatic orientation of workshops, national and international festivals are laid down in the resolutions of the Socialist Unity Party on cultural policies, i.e. the main aims and concrete tasks for the development and improvement of socialist culture as a part of socialist society as a whole. Achieving these goals is a process in which new experiences are made and of finding new programmatic generaliza tions for the next stage, a process in which many people take part, of course, with various standards of information, knowledge, scales of values and influence.

In this collective process of learning, common patterns of evalu ation change very slowly. New ideas and achievements—at first per ceived very sceptically, refused (even by administrative measures)— later have been accepted as a result of practical experiences and ideological discussions. This can be proved in the historical develop ment of popular music in the GDR. In the fifties and early sixties, beat, rock and jazz were refused. It took a long time to come to a more differentiated consciousness among all those, who have been afraid that this music, coming from capitalist countries (unconventional and much more attractive for many young people than the traditional forms of popular music) would transport only bourgeois ideas into the upcom ing socialist culture. And independent from the intentions of the musi cians some kinds of these forms of popular music, under certain cir cumstances, had political effects which encouraged such positions and made it more difficult for the people in administrations, schools and organizations to understand the general authentic, aesthetic values in the new international, and the new upcoming national forms of popular music. So some musicians sometimes had hard times. It is important to understand the contradictions between individual needs, desires, activities on the one hand and the centralized planning and leadership, which are historically necessary, on the other. Such contradictions belong to the complicated process of making a socialist society—and for that matter a popular culture which corresponds with this new type of social interrelations, a popular culture which should be and is indeed an active factor in finding new values, values from the viewpoint of the working people. As we have sketched there have been many good experiences and many good achievements in the 35 years of GDR. One of these is a rich musical life in popular music.

Ill

Several activities in popular music correspond with the various fields of popular music and their history. Thirty years ago the Arbeiter-lied-Archive at the Academy of Arts in Berlin was founded (run by Inge Lammel) to collect the musical heritage of democratic and re volutionary movements in German history, especially the musical heritage of the German Workers Movement, and of course, of anti-fas cist activities. For musicology this brought new impulses and results especially in musical-ethnology: research of democratic forms of mass culture in history (Wolfgang Steinitz, Erich and Doris Stockmann, Lukas Richter, Jürgen Elsner, Axel Hesse).

Parallel to the organized folklore revival (amateur choirs, instru mental groups, dancers, theatres, etc.) the Zentralhaus Fur Volkskunst (Central House for Folkarts), an institution not only for the organization of this movement but also for theoretical research and programmatic generalizations has been founded.

The Song Center (for documentation, organization of workshops, theoretical seminars—Heinz Tosch, Karin Wolf) was founded when the political song movement became more and more important (located at the Academy of Arts in Berlin). During the political Song Festival theoretical discussions about various subjects take place.

Another line of popular music research is the activities of the empirical sociology of music (and arts), and the radio, especially in the Central Institute for Youth Research. Here we have important findings regarding mass communication and the use of arts (Lothar Bisky, Jochen Hahn, Dieter Wiedemann). Sociological research and analysis have been realized also at the universities of Leipzig and Jena (Günter K. Lehmann, Dieter Sommer, Bianca Tanzer).

Theoretical research on general problems of mass culture, mass media and arts, and popular music is realized at the Academy of Humanities, the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party (Hel mut Hanke, Dieter Ulle) and at the Humboldt-University (theory of culture, history of culture, mass culture, aesthetics in modern societies, musicology: Dietrich Mühlberg, Wolfgang Heise, Arno Hochmuth, Günter Mayer, Peter Wicke).

In September 1983 a Centre for Popular Music Research was founded at the Institute for Musicology (run by Peter Wicke). Main aims are to collect and write books on the history of popular music, the physiognomy of rock, a handbook of popular music and a theory of musical mass culture.

As regards jazz there are only a few people active in research and publications: earlier on André Asriel, now Karlheinz Drechsel and Bernt Noglik. Several activities in popular music research (documen tation, publication of papers, in addition to the journal Unterhal-tungskunst, and theoretical seminars) are organized by the Committee for Entertainment. Since 1981 international theoretical seminars on popular music research in socialist countries have been organized (Peter Wicke, Günter Mayer).

It is a logical consequence that representatives of the GDR took part in the foundation and the improvement of the International Associ ation for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). In 1982 a meeting of the Temporary Executive Committee of IASPM took place in the GDR. At the General Assembly of IASPM after the Second International Conference on Popular Music Studies (1983 in Reggio Emilia, Italy), the author of this paper was elected Chairman of this new international organization—which has a very active Branch Committee in the United States (Charles Hamm, Larry Grossberg, Peter Winkler and many others).

Professor Dr. sc. Günter Mayer, Humboldt-Universität, Berlin, GDR.

In: Journal of Popular Culture, Volume 18:3, winter 1984, 145-158

FROM MUSIC IN THE MEDIA TO MUSIC FOR THE MEDIA

Towards an Aesthetics of „Radiogenic“ Music

„We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all
sounds and their genera­tion. We have harmonies, which you have not . . .
divers instruments likewise to you un­known, . . . strange and artificial
echoes reflect­ing the voice many times, and as it were toss­ing it
, . . . also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes in strange lines and distances“.

Roger Bacon, The New Atlantis

The emergence of modern audiovisual media and the power they have unfurled are part of a very real, advancing process of socialization. The media are one fea­ture of the many processes of social and political transformation which also ex­ert increasing influence on the liberation movement and its development in the former colonial and oppressed countries of the Third World. The development of the record industry (not to mention film) the development of the big, industrially organized public institutions in-

radio and television , and the influence of the various branches within the media industry (especially leisure electronics) have brought about a deep, worldwide change in the historically inherited insti­tution of music, in the functions and structures of old and new music alike.

The latest revolution in the media, the introduction of cable and satellite technology and new peripheral technologies, is changing the way in which millions of people live and work, thus causing further changes in the mode of exist­ence of music, that is, in the social processes of production and reproduction of musical occurrences, of their distribution and exchange, and of their appropri­ation by recipients.

Anyone who delves into this untraditional subject for musical theory very quickly becomes entangled in a plethora of economic, political, technical, social, cultural and artistic, aesthetic contradictions – national, indeed increasingly in­ternational, global in scope – which interrelate in the most complicated manner in the course of their development. Given the former basis on which musicology founded its experience and generalizations, and from which it derived an aesthetics of music,

this presents many new problems for that interdisciplinary re­search, for which there is an ever increasing need.

Drawing on more recent ideas which outline the general characteristics of the new situation and prospects for music and for musical culture created by mod­ern media¹, I would like to concentrate here on one specific theme.

I.  Electronic music

1. In asking what is „radiogenic“ (and „telegenic“ music), we are asking about the production of music in specific relation to media, about that field of new music which is produced for the media. Essentially, this concerns the field of  „legitimate, functional loudspeaker music (or electronic optical music suited to
television)“ – as Stockhausen phrased it² – in which the potential contained in the electronic, audiovisual media for developing the musical forces of produc­tion has for some time been the object of compositional exploration and aes­thetic formulation. We are dealing with „radio music that is no longer simply
stuffed into the radio“ (Adorno)³ and telemusic which is more than a live re­port or studio production of concerts with traditional or contemporary vocal or instrumental music. The microphone, camera, tape and loudspeaker (or screen) are no longer used here as technical means capable of reproducing music which
exists before and beyond these media, as notes on paper or in performance, and which_is merely presented in the media through, but independent„ of transmission. Instead, these means are regarded as means of musical production, and what they produce for technical reproduction via the loudspeaker (and screen)
only exists as technically mediated sound for the ear (and eye) because it is “rooted directly in the technology of its production” (Benjamin)⁴.

The time has come to think more deeply about music in the age of its tech­nological producibility.

2. Thinking along such lines started quite early: even in the first years of radio it went further than the sort of demand couched in the terms of pre-phono-graphic music which maintained that – due to the technological limitations of the medium – chamber music transparency and the „open“ forms were fitting for radio. Similar concepts were elaborated for film, drawing on experience with composition.⁵ What should be realised on reading how much intellectual investi­gation of the productive potential in the new means of musical production (radio, records) was taking place in the twenties in Germany alone, is just how surprisingly far these ideas probed into the future. They were also decisively in­fluenced by the new experience of photography and film in the imaginative treatment of documentary or fictional

videograms, seeking to work with „acous­tic photography“ by using „fade, slow-motion replay, time lapse, close-up, trick etc.“⁶ These early reflections on „radiophonic music“, „absolute radio art“, the „pure radio play“ and „radiogenic poetry“ were an intellectual anticipation of „musique concrete“ and the initially somewhat more narrowly defined „elec­tronic music“, both of which evolved in practice after World War Two under the auspices of radio, in the studios of Cologne, Milan, Paris, Stockholm, Tokyo, Warsaw etc. and in a number of US universities.

Those early thoughts and a handful of initial experiments were connected with less-known names such as Guido Bagier, Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Karel Teige, Walter Bischoff, Arno Schirokauer, Frank Warschauer, Kurt Weill (who made his his fame in other ways), right through to Velemir Khlebnikov, Bela Balasz and Dsiga Vertov.⁷ >

The more familiar „classical composers“ of the new avantgarde, who have all used electronics to a greater or lesser extent, took up and pursued this theoretic­al work, developing the practice of producing and shaping concrete and electron­ic sound: Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry, Herbert Eimert, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luigi Nono, Luciano Berio, Luc Ferrari, and later Bruno Maderna, even John Cage, to name but a few, although few of their works have enjoyed a very broad response. Electro-acoustic music has not come to dominate the field of „ad­vanced“ composition and on the whole the media as institutions only pay select­ive attention to these productions (broadcasting them after most people have gone to bed). However, their contribution to musical culture, their value —not so much within the oeuvre of each individual as overall – should not be under­estimated as regards the qualitative features of „pure tape composition“, for it is here, in the use of the most sophisticated technological procedures, that new aesthetic conceptions stand out most clearly.⁸ This can be observed in works by Charles Dodge, Sten Hanson, Jean-Claude Risset, Christian Clossier, Trevor Wishart, Elzbieta Sikora, Bengt Emil Johnson, Bengt Hambraeus and many others. Media-related „radiogenic“ tape composition is being produced in the GDR by Georg Katzer, Paulheinz Dittrich, Lothar Voigtlander, Ralph Hoyer, and more recently Friedrich Schenker. Radio DDR II is doing an excellent job in promoting these efforts. They have broadcast a series of documentary and fictional pieces for radio which are no radio plays in the traditional sense. The narrative and illustrative elements are replaced by a narrator in abstracto in which vehicle and sense combine in the rhythm, structure and form.⁹

Georg Katzer’s „Aide-memoire“ – a composition for radio — was „written“ (or created) to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nazi take-over in Germany -as a contribution to the international debate on the analysis of fascism. „Aide-memoire“ is subtitled „Seven Nightmares from the Thousand-Year Darkness“.

Katzer’s material consists exclusively of acoustic records from the Nazi period, and the commentary and interpretation are provided by a wide range of technic­al manipulations in order to expose the terrorist ideology of invasion and the hysteria of total war.

Until now, „radiogenic“ productions of this kind have been linked by and large to broadcasting studios and transmission by radio. Few have been available for individual consumption independently of programmed transmission in the form of records or cassettes. That is something which will soon be changing.

3. Various forms of „live electronics“ developed in the field of „advanced“ com­position during the sixties and seventies. These are independent of transmission, but require the involvement of musicians and specific forms of „performance“, usually under spatial conditions which have evolved with bourgeois concert prac­tice and, while they may be adequate for offerings of pre- and non-phonographic music, old and new, detract from the appropriation of „live electronics“. The provisions are particularly unsuitable for television. In fact, when concert halls are built or reconstructed, sites for the camera and lighting are often „forgot­ten“. Stockhausen’s Globe Auditorium at EXPO 70 in Osaka was the exception. (Here the visual features of new music also had a place, though less in connec­tion with the players’ movements than with the play of light: moving, changing lights, projections of film and slides.¹⁰)

4. As we know, the new methods of electro-acoustic tape composition have been used since the outset for a synthetic, technical reproduction of traditional sounds, that is, to imitate a number of less popular „classical“ works. They have permitted popular encounters with new electrophonic sounds within these fam­iliar tonal structures, to the extent that these products, determined by their technical reproduction, have been able to absorb new dimensions of tonal colour, volume and movement, even when they remained extremely faithful to the original, thereby inevitably restricting these possibilities. One recent example is Mussorgsky’s „Pictures From An Exhibition“ in the tape version by the Japan­ese composer Isao Tomita. I must say that in my opinion the technical effort that went into it¹¹ is in no way matched by the basically traditional sound of the end-result.

It seems to me that this electro-acoustic remould of traditional music, with its fondness for florid romantics and naturalistic vulgarisms, is another case of what Adorno, referring to radio, described as the immanent revenge against great music as an ideology.¹²

The „advanced“, „serious“ forms of pure or mixed tape composition men­tioned here make only a sporadic appearance within the overall context of the more up-market musical culture which exists today — in the work of composers, in the listings of concert halls and opera houses, in radio and television pro­grammes, and among the various commodities offering acoustic or visual experi­ence of one kind or another. Even popular electro-acoustic rewrites of less fam­iliar classical music are still no more than the divertissement against the more or less traditional backcloth of musical activity.

However, since the mid-sixties there has been growing mass interest, especial­ly among young people, in the new electro-acoustic production and mass repro­duction of pop sound, in that trend which evolved out of the Afro-American forms of blues and jazz, above all in rock music, and which is continuing on its heady course — also in disco, punk and „new wave“. The theory and aesthetics of music have to date underrated this aspect of „Music and modern media“. Let us therefore devote it some special attention.¹³

II.   Pop music

1. The products of pop music¹⁴ are bound up for their audio realization with technical apparatus, technologically mediated production and technological re­production. They are essentially independent of concert performance: since the Beatles’ LP Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) they have ceased to be mere technical recordings of live performances. The performance, the concert, brings a technical end-product to life. Besides, there are more people involved in the simulated, personalizing, play-back performance than just the musicians up on stage. Live concerts of this kind of pop music are being dominated more and more by technical side of their production. They need complicated studio equipment, studios on wheels.

The reasons for this are both economic and aesthetic. The concert form, the multi-media show, is essential for the economic realization of pop products, which primarily takes place in the sales act through individual purchases of a commodity (a record or cassette) in which the music has materialized by technology. The enterprise is only cost-efficient and profitable as a result of mass  turnover.

The concert is a form of advertising which stimulates the exchange of the sound-bearing commodity. At the same time, the pop star’s new aura, the fasci­nating technology in the outstanding mass experience of a live concert, is also crucial to the music’s aesthetics. Even in a live concert, the musical happening

takes place through the loudspeaker. The visualizing features have assumed a growing aesthetic relevance. More recently, motivated by a concern for maxi­mum profits, this visualization of pop music has progressed beyond the multimedia shows and film into new, handy, „telegenic“ creations of the video
clip. These, too, boost publicity. Examples might be the narrative Modes in the Visualization of Popular Music in the American series Solid Gold¹⁵, or at man­agement level, the Video Pop Music Project for Cable TV in Europe run by Videomarketing Ltd. Founded in 1971 as a TV, Film, Video Distribution and Consultancy Company, it will be integrating pop videos of different styles and techniques (produced by record companies for several years) into a daily pro­gramme service to be made available country by country in Western Europe as Cable TV expands.¹⁶

2. Pop music, as a form of „radiogenic“ (or „telegenic“ music), clearly illus­trates the generally essential characteristics of composition for tape. An aes­thetics of  medica-specific music cannot confineitself  to the technical sources of

sound and the apparatus of sound processing  in themselves. In media-specific music, the technical equipment intersects with the economics of the modern media machinery, the big, almost industrially organized institutions of radio and television, above all the record companies, and then the industries_which manufacture the audio systems. These various branches of what Enzensberger calls the „consciousness industry“¹⁷ have so_far been the only ones with the economic means to build and run studios with up-to-date technology. That is a symp­tom of continuing socialization which even extends to the production of music, which has only proved profitable in the sphere of pop music. This process is international, worldwide, and unlike avant-garde electronics it has reached the masses. In the recent past it has taken shape in many regions and countries that are not highly advanced industrially, at least in the production and distribution of pop music, and since the seventies we have witnessed „Transculturation and the rise of national Pop and Rock“ in all regions of the globe, also in small coun­tries. (See the results of the MISC project run by Krister Malm and Roger Wallis¹⁸).

The studio, as a qualitatively new technological „instrument“, cannot be seen in isolation from the institutions responsible for production and distribution, nor from the form of economic value which determines production, distribution, exchange and consumtion in each respective society. They also influence the

theoretical studies, in the new Yearbook of  Popular Music, and at international conferences and in publications under the aegis of the IASPM (International As­sociation for the Study of Popular Music) founded in 1983.

At first glance, economic factors seem to have exerted less influence on „ad­vanced“ music. Nevertheless, it has above all been radio in a handful of highly developed countries that has functioned as the decisive patron and organizer of electronic music, indeed, for new music in general since 1950. This has made its impact on both the technical aspects and on aesthetic, stylistic aspects.¹⁹ The centralization created by economic and political factors led to an ideological, aesthetic monopoly, which also entailed an influence on the content of the pro­ductions and the degree of commitment to carrying them out and making use of them. There was a tendency to reject experiments with the musical implications of the mass medium with a view to political emancipation of the masses. Stock-hausen’s political aesthetics, which foresees the coming of more elevated Man, rhymed better with the bourgeois concept of the Modern Age and the media than did Nono’s musical programme and practice for a political aesthetics which posits mass action by degraded mankind and which sets their real liberation as its goal. Meanwhile, the centrally administered institutions of the socialist coun­tries set the tone there in response to the overall political and ideological situ­ation.

3. The complex links between technical, economic, aesthetic and political fac­tors emerge very clearly in pop music, where musical developments take place without public funds on the basis of profit-seeking enterprise, outweighed in the highly developed capitalist countries only by the oil and steel industries. Of course, the sphere of distribution and exchange plays a substantial role in form­ing — and deforming — aesthetic manifestations of  the media-specific evolution of musical potential as a result of economic processes of creating and realizing value. This catalyses the evolution in a quite specific way. The aesthetic conse­quences of advertising and ephemeral fashion, etc. cannot by any means be ex­plained in solely aesthetic terms.

The remarks made by Adorno and Eisler in relation to the practice of film music in the forties are certainly still relevant to some fields of pop music, from the schlager to the technically mediated disco sound:

„… what is true of all mass cultural advantages under the prevailing system is true in this instance, too: ostentatious spending has increased, and the mode of presentation, the technique of transmission in the broadest sense, from acous­tical accuracy to the psycho-technical treatment of the audience, has been im­proved in direct proportion to the capital invested, but nothing essential has

changed in the music itself, its substance, its material, its function as a whole, or in the quality of compositions . . . there is a striking disproportion between the tremendous improvement in the technique of recording, on which all the mir­acles of this technique are spent, and the music itself, either indifferent or bor­rowed without taste or logic from the stock of clichés”²⁰

There is no need to provide acoustic examples, as most of the pop music now on offer fits the bill.

4. However, the aesthetic moulding of authentic mass experience under the in­fluence of economic profit-making is particularly marked in those expressions of pop music which have sprung from the Afro-American tradition of blues and jazz. In clear contrast to the European folk and art music traditions and their sell-out to the cultural industry, elements of black folk culture have prevailed, being able to express a collective experience of urban life and capitalist existent­ial conditions, without being ideologically incorporated into them, still speaking with the voice of a community. It is this which underlies the deep authority of these forms of popular music, especially of rock music. It is this which lies at the heart of the ambiguous but fertile relationship between popular music and the productive apparatus.²¹

In popular music of the seventies this tendency has been realized in quite sim­ilar relations between other folk traditions and improved to musical apparatus: there are the old Arabic elements in the popular music of Tunisia, there are the traditional Zairean elements in the popular music of Tanzania (Swahili Jazz), there is traditional music in the reggae of Jamaica, there are West African tradi­tions of the Yoruba Nigerians in Juju music.²² This is a process of acculturation reflecting the everyday experience of masses of people. For example, during the seventies, the most popular Juju Music composer and player in Nigeria, Sunny Adé, released about forty albums – every one of which sold about 200.000 copies.

Or: expanding cassette technique has led to a free flow of music either newly recorded or pirated. In 1981 there were eight million new recorded cassettes per month in Indonesia alone. This means 96 million cassettes per year for a popu­lation of  150 million.²³

Since the late seventies, pop music production is carried out on an inter­national basis, using sophisticated multitrack studio facilities and an ever-increas­ing number of synthesizers on the various national pop and rock scenes. For ex­ample, in  the GDR. there are hundreds of rock groups using synthesizers as nor­mal, standard equipment.

5. The difference between avantgarde and popular music in developing radio­genic electro-acoustical music is not only to be found in different traditions and different areas of social experiences and functions. In pop music of the type we are referring to, elements of folk Culture are still alive: the creative process tends generally to be a joint activity of cooperating individuals, of collectives. Here, musical developments are carried forward by the many professional and the in­numerably non-professional groups who assimilate and adapt the best results of the „individual“ groups. There are no scores any more. Technically created re­corded music, controlled by ear, is realized by musicians whose own lives re­semble clearly those of their audiences: they have experienced the same social contradictions and, in the best cases, they express these experiences authentically.

6. With the critical development of social conflicts and their increasingly critical reflection (Widerspiegelung) by young people in popular music, with the appear­ance of different forms of underground or counter culture among creative young and highly skilled musicians (especially in the seventies), a new quality of criti­cism has come into being which attacks the established bourgeois (or socialist) society. This brought about a politization in popular music, leading frequently to serious criticisms of the capitalist system. In the best cases, such criticism was simultaneously directed towards the established music industry, against the com­mercialization of popular music. Looking through the album covers produced by many of these skillful and critical artists, it is easy to see the extent and breadth of commitment and involvement in the social and political contradictions of our times as expressed by such groups as The Clash, Pere Ubu, Talking Heads, Floh de Cologne, The Pop Group, Kraldjursanstalten, This Heat and Art Bears.

Of course, the kind of musically and poetically highly articulated records made and live performances given by groups like Art Bears (e.g. „The Song of  Investment Capital Overseas“ from the LP „The World As It Is Today“ – 1981 -) or The Work (e.g. „Balance“) or This Heat (e.g. „A New Kind of Water“) are quite different from the popular sound of contemporary music market stars. However, these alternative rock musicians are neither few nor esoteric (e.g., in Western Europe, such groups as Henry Cow, Art Bears, The Work, This Heat (Great Britain), Magma, Etron Fo Le Loublan, Z.N.R., Art Zoyd (France), Univers Zero, Aksaq Maboul (Belgium), Stormy Six or Macchina Maccaronica (Ita­ly), Sammla Mammas Manna, Kraldjursanstalten (Sweden) or Cassiber (Federal Republic of Germany and Great Britain), Floh de Cologne (Ibid.)) A consider­able number of these groups have been both politically involved and explicit as well as successful with record sales (e.g. Henry Cow, Stormy Six or the ultra-maoist Norwegian group (Tramteateret). Tramteateret established itself as one

of the best-selling pop groups, almost winning the Norwegian qualifying round of the Euro vision Song Contest, being televized weekly, and putting on frequent live cabarets).²⁴

Styles may vary considerably amongst these groups but some general ten­dencies are to be found in the seventies and early eighties. Political involvement is growing. Cliches from the entertainment industryare attacked with merciless satire while the gap between electro-acoustic pop on the one hand and advanced
electro-acoustic music and live electronics on the other is progressively being bridged.

Similar tendencies can be found in the work of some new American groups such as The Residents, The Mnemonists or Pere Ubu.

7.  Essential and totally new for the seventies was — in this kind of popular mu­sic – that new organizational structures for production and distribution were established, relatively independent of big business (e.g. the cooperative „L’Orchestra“ in Italy, Recommended Records and Rough Trade in Great Britain). Finally, some of these groups joined to form the international movement „Rock in Opposition“ — with the purpose of initiating alternative forms of music cul­ture, of festivals for politically committed rock musicians, of discussions about theoretical problems drawn from their common experience.

8.  Of course, in the large area of popular music there is — as in „serious“ music – the electro-acoustical imitation and adaption of popular classical composi­tions. In early days these forms were as rare as in the „serious“ area (e.g. James Last or  Emerson, Lake & Palmer). However, since the seventies we have been able to listen to a multiplicity of rock and pop approaches to classical music, ranging from „quotation“ and „arrangement“ to „digest“ and „remake“.²⁵ Such approaches to „classical music“ can be found in recordings by such diverse ar­tists as Zappa, Collosseum, Nice, Ekseption, Genesis, Yes, Renaissance, Procol Harun, Louis Clark, Accademia, Boston Pops, W. d Los Rios, King, Krimson, Chicago, Amazing Blondel etc., etc.

9. Another important recent development in popular music is the new quality which came to be established in the relationship aesthetics of great importance.

The profit-seeking improvement of technology made highly sophisticated recording facilities cheap and consequently widely available. Now it is possible for individuals, groups or cooperatives to own their own recording equipment and set up their own recording_studios. Now there is a whole market-subsector of low-budget equipment devoted to home recording, and 16 trac machines are

also on sale. This means as Chris Cutlcr (membcr of  Henry  Cow, now Cassiber) wrote that: the technical standards of mode ‘home’ recording equipment are so high that the master quality of these recordings is effectively indistinguishable from the products of expensive „official“ studios²⁶

10. This process is very important because this „do-it-yourself“ tendency means easy access to_a range of instruments which require little skill to produce musically acceptable compositions. The ubiquity of tape-recorders now enables people who would never even have considered making music

before,  much less have studied an instrument or thought about forming a group, to make and release

records. A quite well known example is  The Residents (USA). They have never been anything but a recording group. Every thing is  composed  in their own studio.

All these factors have led to a flood of independant records and to the establishment of relatively independent distributive networks. I have already mentioned some of this. Cutler, with first hand experience of the sceene, formulated the tendency as follows:  “At least the industry has lost its power of veto; its ap­pearance of initiative has gone. All that is new and innovative no longer seems somehow to emanate from them“.²⁶

It is clear that new contradictions will arise here (1) between studio produc­tion and the lack of social context for such musical production, (2) between the quality of tapes and records so produced and the scope of their distribution. Nevertheless even though record^comganies will try and organize these new el­ements of independence into a profit-making system fundamental^changes are taking place.

11. We are witnessing the potential democratization of the technically mediated production of music and of mmusic culture in general. This means easy access to the new media and to a variety of musical content and form,  available for pro­duction and realization by masses of people. In this way. democratization should no longer be understood merely in terms of distribution – for example, as a means of instilling the values of classical music into the masses of musically il­literate people⁷. From our new understanding of musical production we are bet­ter able to discover the revolutionary social,_political, cultural and aesthetical

potential of the new media. This may encourage constructive reflection in new dimensions counteracting the cultural  pessimism  of  those  judgements  on the new media. which are inevitable  both in the elitarian aesthetics of composition as well as in statistical or educational typs of sociology or aesthetics of perception. Emphasizing the aspect of production rather than reproduction may give impulses for a new discussion about the term “mass-communication”and, of course, about the old question “what is music?”

o

III.  Aesthetics

1. The type of discussion advocated above, based on practical experience and on progressive social criticism, is not so much taking place in academic musicology, nor within the boundaries of the already traditional concepts of the „avant-garde“ (which have already lost appeal for some avantgardists themselves) as in the area of the politically and socially committed popular music. It is from here, from these processes of musical production stimulated by the results of early“ avantgarde theory and from this general adoption and adaptation of the real and general practices of technically mediated music, that far reaching conclusions can be drawn, because the process of recording. (and the electrification of sound) implies a revolution in music production quite as far reaching as that brough about by notation.

Notation was once a new form of musical storage which contained an innate potential for new modes of musical production, for new sophisticated forms of composition. The relationship is similar between recording as a new means of storage and its potential for musical production. The innate qualities of record­ing which distinguish it from notation as a new means of musical production are, refering once more to Cutler’s concepts as follows:

1. 1. Recording brings musical production back to the realm of the ear. The prime concern is once again — as with folk Music — sound.

1. 2. Recording allows for the manipulation or assembly of sound, or of actual performances in an empirical way: through listening and subsequent decision making.

The immediacy of performance is not lost but is freed from time. It can be taken apart. Assembling and shaping of music on tape includes manipulation of the tape itself and of the mediating electronic equipment. Since the develop­ment of multitrack-recording, the ease of overdubbing, selective addition and erasure, electronic alteration of sound both before and after registration, have encouraged the use of the studio as an instrument rather than merely a docu­mentary device. Music can be assembled both vertically and horizontally over time, moulded and remoulded. Tape runs forwards, backwards at many and vari­able speeds. It can be cut up and glued together.

1. 3. Recording is a medium in which improvisation can be incorporated – or transformed through subsequent work – into composition. Recording replaces firm emphasis on performance, becoming optimally a medium of composition for performers – just as musique concrète became a medium of performance

for composers. Thus, recording strongly favours the reuniting of those two roles whose mutual distinction was revolutionary when notation was introduced, centuries ago.

1.4. In recording, constructive decisions in the assembly of sound are concrete and empirical. They can be reached through discussion. A personal vision is no longer the necessary mediator between composition and realization. This can be­come a collective activity. Thus, as a creative unit, the group finds the maximum of resources at its disposal in the recording studio — a medium which encourages collective work, and practicularly collective composition .

These innate qualities of recording echo those of the folk mode. It is precisely in popular music of the described types that folk techniques and the most advanced

productive media elide. It is quite clear, that under these circumstances and in  this general „revolution“, our very understanding of what music is will have to undergo profound change. Moreover, this process will be moved, will be pushed forward by those musicians who are particularly well-versed in folk

techniques, i.e. by musicians in a better position of uncovering the innate poten-

tial of the new media. These interesting ideas of Cutler’s should lead us to con-

clude that the term „new music“ coined by the avantgarde in the twenties, should now be widened in the light (and sound!) of new experiences in the ad­vanced pop music of the seventies and eighties.

2. It is very interesting to compare Adorno’s concept of „radio music“ – based on the experience of extra-radiophonic music – with the new phenomena in po­pular music mentioned above.²⁸

Adorno had drawn — more theoretically — the new quality of „radio music“ from the new „technological-social structure“. From his point of view, the new radio music should differ from the actual process of „composing“: confronted with the ideal of „radio music“, Webern or Boulez would, for instance, have to be understood as „traditional“.

What are then the innate qualities of radio music in Adorno’s concept and how do they correspond to the new phenomena of electro-acoustical music, es­pecially to those of popular music?

Every moment of radio music should be present, unmistakable in its own meaning – not based on a continuity of musical transcendence, harmonic or contrapuntal perspectives of development, or variative procedures. This should correspond to the behavior of listeners who should be able to go in and out of the musical flow without losing anything from it; all this according to Adorno.

This is a similar experience to that contained within pop music. Adorno’s

conception of radio music includes the quality of intensity, conciseness and brevity, sensation and simultaneity of events. This means pride of place for the „characteristic detail“ (motif or complex „new“ structure), of timbre, which has acquired equal status as an element of musical interest – and a predomi­nance of contrasts. Still referring to Adorno, musical thinking is realized not so much in organic-thematic variation as in coordinated musical sections, in „fields“. All this is developing parallel with aleatoric compositions and musique concrète, i.e. with the use of acoustic documents (noise and music) on the one hand, and with the wide area of technically mediated acoustic inventions and their manipulation and synthesis with the transformed documents on the other. This is the exact experience in and with new pop music. As with advanced el­ectro-acoustic „classical“ music, this new pop music expresses new relationships between noise, organized acoustic fields, acoustically relevant soundscapes, on the one hand, and silence, single acoustic events on the other. All this is done with a new intensity and in itself constitutes a contradictory quality of aesthetic values.

3. Pop products are generally of short duration. This is due partly to the necess­ity of economic realization, partly to the aesthetic function of these products in entertainment and dance (e.g. changes between quick and slow dances or be­tween the concentrated and deconcentrated perception of music, all of which is essential in entertainment). Moreover, the pop music products have, within the limits of such dimensions, relatively simple basic structures.

However, pop music becomes increasingly complex as regards the simultan­eous layering of sophisticated musical events. This tendency includes aspects of elementarization and montage, to be regarded as general phenomena of mass ex­periences. The electro-acoustically mediated innovations are not so relevant in the realm of melody and harmony as in rhythm and timbre. This is a result of the Afro-American black folk tradition, in which all these parameters have pro­perties quite different from those of tonality.²⁹ Particularly important is the new technically mediated intensity of sound and timbre, both of which can be adjusted by listeners themselves using the controls on their radio or amplifier.³⁰ These are important points in the understanding of the new aesthetic values of organized, complex sound events, which are units – not necessarily to be listen­ed to in fine detail.³¹

4. It is clear that the musical-aesthetical quality of electro-acoustic music is de­termined to a certain extent by the subjective position of the musicians in socie­ty and music, by their involvement in social and musical developments. All new technically mediated potential allows for both realistic and idealistic tendencies

in the conception and functions of such music. New aesthetic values in this kind of music are the result of emotional and intellectual activities in both produc­tion as in perception. These invariants cannot be identified merely by referring to the „realistic“ or „progressive¹‘ attitudes of the musicians and audiences in­volved. The matter is far more complicated and cannot be dealt with in the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, while Adorno was still complaining about a lack of suitable radio music as late as the 1940′s, the situation now is quite dif­ferent. Recorded music of the types described above has become the real experi­ence of millions of people. Added to this use of electro-acoustic music is the re­fined use of modern forms of visualization which have become widespread every­day culture, not only in the form of youth-oriented video clips but also in differ­ent types of advertising for both young and old.

IV.  Conclusions

In the title of my paper I have used the „obvious“ phrase „radiogenic music” coined by Karel Teige in the twenties.

With the miniaturization of studio equipment, with more and more individ­ual, democratic access to the new productive and reproductive media of recording on the one hand and with the centralization of technical sound memories in computers and the possibility for everyone to use these through cable technology on the other it is necessary to modify the old terms „radiogenic” and “radio music“. In the early days of radio the aspect of distribution, of broad­casting was predominant The early term was a reflection of the contemporary use of the new technical medium organized under the institutional aegis of „Radio“. The main point was the dissemination of a pre-existant information. However, at present the main points are (1) to understand the new productive potential of recording and of the electrification of sound, as well as (2) to rea­lize that these are now widely available and used relatively independent of the Institution „Radio“, of the profitmaking record industry and of distribution  as „radio programs“. In the thirties Walter Benjamin emphasized the new quality of the work of art under conditions of its technical reproducibility³² , whereas now the aspect of distribution. of institutionalized dissemination from those earlier times has ceded first place to electro-acoustically produced and mediated music, a concept insufficiently covered by the term „radio“. We should there­fore really be using terms such as „electro-acoustical“ or „electrophonic“ music, possibly even the more precise but less elegant term „electrophonogenic“ music, to emphasize the genuine technical aspect of media specific production . Tendencies in this direction, can be_understood as the expression of increasing democratic access to the_constantly developing productive and reproductive media of

recording, i.e. as mass processes, involving masses of people, relatively independent of the monopolized record industry and outside centralized institutions. These tendencies will have an impact on the content and  the meaning of music as well as on the newly discovered aesthetic values. If we consider the most advanced type of experience in this field, it is possible to see how the mass media can in this way actually become the media of the masses themselves.

Or, to cite Cutler:
„… it is clear already that the battle for the immediate future of music will
be fought out through the medium of recording. The qualities of this medium
which are useful to the bourgeoisie are already well developed, and constitute
the imperatives of ‘mass-culture’ mediated through the form of the commodity.
The crucial point about this is that the value of this to the bourgeoisie is not cul-
tural; it is only commercial — and this leaves the profound and innate potential
of the medium for cultural and aesthetic expression still underdeveloped, for in-
disputably, intrinsic to the process of recording and electrification are revolu-­
tionary imperatives, imperatives which . . . can only be brought to fruit in an
egalitarian and classless society. These qualities can be identified. In fact they
are already exerting a pressure, expressing itself as a contradiction, on the whole
field of music“.³³

Of course, although it could be objected that this point of view makes insuf­-
ficient distinction between class relations and the development of music, the
basic idea seems to me indisputable fit also seems likely that the innate progress-­
ive potentialities of the itself cannot be optimally realized if musicians exclude themselves from the development of the new expressive media as well as
from the socially progressive mass-movement in which the semantic and pragmatic aspects of new aesthetic values are constituted and discernible, thereby contributing

towards the establishment of new musical language. Many progress­ive pop musicians were or are now in the same or in similar positions to those oc­cupied, both yesterday and today, by such figures as Nono or Henze. The most committed of them are now joining forces, thus making the general direction of musical change quite clear. Commitment is necessary in this process of change. The better the social and progressive change, the better realization of the new musical potentialities in the media will be; or, conversely: the better the musical­ly progressive change the better it will be for social change in general. I

Notes

1. Cf. Music and Tomorrow’s Public. A Report prepared by the International Music Coun­cil (UNESCO) and Auspices of the IFDI (International Federation of Producers of Phonograms and Videograms) by a joint IMC—IFDI Team Egon Graus, Robert Weede. Edited by Everett Helm, March 1975.

2.   Karlheinz Stockhausen, Elektronische und instrumentale Musik, in: Vol. i, Texte zur elektronischen und instrumentalen Musik, Cologne 1963, pp. 146-7.

3.   Theodor W. Adorno, Über die musikalische Verwendung des Radios, in: Der getreue

Korrepetitor, Frankfurt am Main 1963, p. 2/5.

’3

4.   Walter Benjamin, Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit, in: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 1/2, Frankfurt am Main 1974, p. 481, Note 9.

5.   Theodor W, Adorno/Hanns Eisler, Komposition für den Film, Leipzig 1977.

6.   In 1926, for example, Guido Bagier wrote an article about „talking film“ (a synonym for radio), in which he recommended using sound in the same way as photography „with cartoon, fade, slow-motion and time lapse, and the many forms of mix and superimposition. This completely releases music from the conventional concept of ‘form’ . . . People will discard the cliche“ s which limit our music to an acoustic conglo­meration of orchestra, choir and solo instrument. We shall be able to capture vagrant tones and combine them to make sound colours which, in natural production, have never been heard before. In a word we shall have to reject the concept of music in rea­lity, its imitation by machine – and this much-maligned machine will create its own acoustic content in accordance with its nature.“ Der sprechende Film, in: Anbruch, 8 (1926), pp. 380 ff.

7.   There is a detailed summary of the way German radio conceived its musical functions before 1933 in the dissertation by Stefan Amzoll, Komposition fur die Rundfunk, sub­mitted in Berlin in 1984, Back in 1922 Maholy Nagy developed some ideas about creativity independent of the large orchestra by considering the sound potential of technic­al apparatus. In 1928, referring to the bruitist Luigi Rossolo, Karel Teige used the term „radiogenic poetry“ to describe an art using musical and other sounds which is „as un­like literature, recitation, as it is unlike music“ (quoted there from Hans Scheugel/ Ernst Schmidt, Fine Subgeschichte des Films, 2 vols., Vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main 1974, pp. 918 ff.). Walter Bischoff, a prominent exponent of the early German radio play, talked of a „completely new acoustic scenario similar in tempo and rhythm to that of the cinema“ (Das literarische Problem im Rundfunk, p. 58). Hans Flesch saw radio as „moulding an art which proceeds from the audiable and just as film proceeds from the visual“. Both he and Arno Schirokauer use terms such as „sound image“, „audio-se­quence“, „artistic synthesis of pure acoustics and phonetics“, „absolute tonal art“ and „pure radio play“. In 1930 Frank Warschauer discussed the production of electronic sound by means of apparatus which would burst the confines of sound production and modification. Finally, in the late twenties, Kurt Weill also outlined the notion of „ab­solute radio art“, and interestingly enough he too was inspired by his experience with „absolute film“.

Stefan Amzoll draws the threads together thus: „However unpolished some of these

attempts may have been, they laid the basis for new expressions of contrast and unity in art. In a practical manner they brought into play novel concepts of composition and contextual relationship, concepts which assumed creatively deductive thinking outside the customary norms of composition and which set out, prompted by motives related to media technology and artistic technique, to give birth to something which had never existed before. Essentially this signified progress in material aesthetics and, simultan­eously, a challenge to the dominant musical aesthetic of autonomy, even though, in practice, the trend was massively accompanied by purely reproductive factors, tech-nicist games and many posings of productive art … Historically speaking, the first steps were being taken from mirror-like reproduction towards the technical produci-bility of new sound phenomena. From this point, creative stimulation was also derived from the possibility of producing synthetic sounds (using electrical instruments, acoustic sound projections, etc.) and from new combinations of natural tonal material with individualized auditory manifestations of art. Radio was declaring its potential ability to function as the creator of entirely new artistic forms whose reproducibility ‘is rooted directly in the technology of its production’.“

8.   This view, put forward by Hellmut Kiihn in 1976, proved in 1983 to be erroneous. At the time he wrote: „The hopes cherished by the experimenters of the twenties have not been fulfilled in the realm of „serious“ E-music. There has been no composition for radio — rather the very opposite of an art which involves action — nor have we wit­nessed new forms for the presentation of classical music. The annotated broadcast has remained the exception.“ In: Die Musik in deutschen Rundfunkprogrammen, Musik in den Massenmedien Rundfunk und Fernsehen, Perspektiven und Materialien, ed. by Hanns Christian Schmidt, Mainz 1976, p. 40.

9.   Georg Katzer, Entwicklung und Perspektiven elektroakustischer Musik, in: Musik und Gesellschaft, 33, (1983), No. 6, p. 355.

10.   Karlheinz Stockhausen, Osaka-Projekt, in: Texte zur Musik 1970, Vol. 3, Cologne 1971, p. 153 ff.

11.   This calls for the following technology: Moog 38, Moog System 55, Polymoog, Scape Programmer 950 B, Boat Ring Modulator 6401, Boat Frequent Shifter 1630, Roland Synthesizer System 700, Equalizer Mixer, 6 Tape Recorders with up to 16 Tracks, Noise Eliminator and effects equipment such as Echo, Phase Displacer and Rhythm-maker.

12.   Theodor W. Adorno, Über die musikalische Verwendung des Radios, op. cit., p. 2^5.

13.   To some extent there was a turn in the seventies. After so many basically journalistic offerings and a mere handful of dissertations (Tagg, Middleton, Wicke), we now have many ventures in this area and some serious initial fruits. One might consider the first three volumes of the yearbook Popular Music, which started appearing in 1981, and the Proceedings of the First International Conference on Popular Music Studies, Ams­terdam 1981, Popular Music Perspectives, ed. by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, Goteborg & Exeter 1982.

14.   Taken here primarily to mean rock music.

15.   Cf. Arnold S Wolfe. Pop on Video: Narrative Modes in The Visualization of Popular

Musik. On Your Hit Parade and Solid Gold. Presented to the Second Conference on Popular Music Studies of the IASPM, Reggio Emilia, Italy, September 1983.

16.   Cf. Popular Music and the Public Conscious, ed. Rauhe, Schischik & Tagg, IMZ, Vien­na, 1983.

17.   Cf. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Bewusstseinsindustrie, in: Einzelheiten I, Frankfurt am Main 1962.

18.   Krister Malm/Roger Wallis, Transculturation and the Rise of National Pop and Rock in Small Countries, IASPM Internal Publications P 8302, 1983.

19.   Cf. Leo Karl Gerhartz, Rundfunk, Musik und musikalische Produktion – Uberlegungen eines Rundfunkredakteurs, in: Musik in den Massenmedien Rundfunk und Fernsehen, op. cit., p. 21.

20.   Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films, London 1948, p. 50.

21.   These comments are based on Chris Cutler, An analytical Framework, Paper given at the Popular Music Research Symposium at Exeter in September 1982 and at the Fes­tival des Politischen Liedes in Berlin (GDR), February 1982.

22.   Cf. the study by Krister Malm/Roger Wallis, op. cit.

23.   Cf. Martin Hatch, Popular Music in Indonesia: Thinking about Definitions. Presented to the Second Conference on Popular Music Studies of the IASPM, Reggio Emilia, Italy, September 1983.

24.   Cf. Geir Johnson, Changes in Norwegian Popular Music 1976-1981. Presented to the Second Conference on Popular Music Studies of the IASPM, Reggio Emilia, Italy, Sep­tember 1983.

25.   Cf. Paolo Prato, Musical Kitsch: Close Encounters between Pops and Classics. Present­ed to the Second Conference on Popular Music Studies of the IASPM, Reggio Emilia, Italy, September 1983.

26. Cf. 21.

27.   Cf. 21.

28.   Cf. 3.

29.   Cf. John Shepherd, A theoretical model for the socio-musicological analysis of popular musics, in: Popular Music 2, Theory and Method. Cambridge University Press 1982, pp. 142 ff.

30.   Cf. Helmut Rosing, Zur Rezeption technisch-funktionsbezogene Aspekte, in: Musik in den Massenmedien Rundfunk und Fernsehen, op, cit., p. 59.

31.   Cf. Carl Dahlhaus, Asthetische Probleme der elektronischen Musik, in: Experimented Musik, ed. by F. Winckel, Berlin 1970, p. 85.

32.   Cf.4.

33.   Cf. 21.

Appendix

It would be necessary to give a discography on the above mentioned new trends in popular music – to indicate some of the territory covered. It is impossible to give the absolute mini­mum of records, released by the most important groups. Those interested in obtaining in­formation may contact the following distributors:

L’ Orchestra, Via Moscova 13, Milano, Italy

Recommended records, 387 Wandsworth Road, London SW 8

Rough Trade, 202 Kensington Pall Road, London W1 1

A very informative survey is on the Recommended Records Sampler of new music by Faust, Art Bears, The Residents, Art Zoyd, Univers Zero, Henry Cow, L. Voag, Stormy Six, The Work, R. Stevie Moore, Z.N.R., Vogel, Sogenanntes Linksradikales, BlasorChester, Picchio Dal Pozzo, The Homosexuals, The Muffins, Decibel, Aksak Maboul, Feliu Gasul, Conventum, Ron Pate, Robert Wyatt.

Advanced Composition and Critical (Political) Ambition

1. Preliminary Note

The invitation to this year’s reflection on the question „What does critical composition (still) mean today?“ states that the phrase „critical composition“ generally refers to the generation between Nono and Klaus Huber on the one hand and Mathias Spahlinger (including Helmut Lachenmann, Nicolaus A. Huber, Vinko Globokar and others) on the other hand. And it asks what – following the rapid societal changes since the late 1980s, and in the face of the problematization of critical composition through the post-modern discourse and its consequences for the middle and younger generations – can be stip­ulated regarding the fundamental problem of how a critical, socio-critical, indeed politically sensitive form of composition is at all possible: in a cosmopol­itan, universal and plural guise, in fundamental openness, „without this leading to a non-committal attitude or a shirking of responsibility.“

My immediate response was the following: the import of this sympa­thetically-sketched review of critical composition among the (now already) older generation is that there were no composers of that age-group beyond the Western European and West German experiential horizon of material-centered critical composition who were advanced, critical and also politically-ori­ented – or at least none comparable to the aforementioned ones. I indicated that I had a different view, not least through my experiences in the GDR¹ and the developments in the eastern regions after 1989/1990, and that I considered this view in urgent need of expansion, as function-centered critical composition has in fact existed and continues to exist here.

Accordingly, I was asked to fill this gap. During the planning phase it was referred to as „Eastern European tradition“ or „Eisler.“ I was forced to narrow this enormous field and decided on the subject that has now been announced in the program: „Advanced Composition and Critical (Political) Ambition in the GDR – and After?“

Here too I shall restrict myself considerably, only – and unfortunately only cursorily, with a mere few musical examples-speaking initially about Paul Dessau and then – time allowing-about the composers belonging to the circle of musical and intellectual mavericks whose teacher, friend, adviser and patron

1    Editor’s note: the GDR refers to the German Democratic republic, i.e., East Germany; in German this was the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik). The FGR refers to the Federal Republic of Germany, i.e., West Germany; in German this is the BDR (Bundesrepublik Deutschland).

he was. From this circle I have chosen-once again restricting myself for reasons of time – to the following: primarily Friedrich Schenker and Reiner Bredemeyer, but also Georg Katzer, Ralf Hoyer and Hermann Keller.

Secondly: as I and the rest of us know that neither Lachenmann, Spahlinger, nor the aforementioned composers from the GDR, in so far as they are still alive (Bredemeyer died in 1995) -i.e., also Friedrich Schenker (b. 1942) and Georg Katzer (b. 1935), meanwhile members of the older generation – have not stop­ped practicing their advanced and critical composition in the reunified Germany, the question of whether critical composition is (still) possible today is presum­ably above all a question posed from the perspective of the younger generation and directed at the same. Even if its exponents, as a result of post-modern reflection upon the far-reaching crisis affecting the concept of progress, seem to have a different, not to say a troubled relationship-or perhaps even none at all – with the older composers, history, and even the concept of critique itself, it should nonetheless be emphasized that today’s younger generation-as much as I can understand their generation-specific separation from the older ones – all too often ignores many questions that have already been formulated, and approaches these issues without historical interest or awareness, without an informed, critical engagement with the past and without theoretical reflection on the once-formulated ambitions, the goals achieved or the failures suffered; as a result, they lose experiences that could help towards a differentiated, considered orientation in the present and the exploration of future possibilities. The future will still come without it, but the question is: what kind of future?

2. Current Experiences Before and After the Symposium

2.1. Current Experiences Before the Symposium

It was only recently, upon hearing and seeing the world premiere of INTERZONE, Lieder und Bilder (music: Enno Poppe; video and space: Anne Quirumen; libretto: Marcel Beyer) during this year’s Berliner Festspiele, that I realized once more just how appropriate it is for the situation and perspectives of the younger generation to be the focus of our discussions. The basic post-modern stance is fundamental here, directed critically at the „stasis of ordered, systematically defined situations,“ against the „concept of consistency.“ The young authors of this work are fascinated by transitions, by the zones in which „monotony dissolves and what is diffuse spreads itself out,“ for example in the transit/on between day and night. The authors are concerned with „atmospheric elements, the feeling of transition, with existence in the transitory.“ The text is based on William S. Burroughs, who articulates an individual sensibility of the same kind, and the almost deserted urban video world of wide spaces, squares, streets and storefronts in the broken view of the compound eye is predominantly dark and couched in beautiful melancholy. And the music works towards systems „in order to break them up, to approach the cliché before changing course at the right moment.“

The enormous, increasingly glaring contradictions of capitalistically-formed globalization or the effects of neo-liberal regroupings in societies appear not to exist. There is no trace of the catastrophic consequences of the current wars and of international terrorism, of progressive environmental destruction, or the danger of humanity’s atomic self-extermination. Unfortunately these do not disappear if they are ignored by perception and accordingly by critique – and if critique restricts itself very vaguely to melancholy reflection on the alienated situation of the individual in a world both familiar and foreign. That reflection was new a long time ago, and is of little depth if it simply points out abstractly that everything is located in the transitory, that the world is in transition.

The result, put in simple terms: still advanced – but critically weak or even uncritical. Discussion is required so that socio-critical composition also – and especially – among younger composers is not only (or once again) possible, but is rather grasped as necessary,.

2.2. Possible Experiences After the Symposium

On 11 October 2004, in the former Palast der Republik in Berlin, which has meanwhile been torn down, the cultural events taking place in the ruin included a concert in which instrumental/theatrical, critical, politically intended composi­tions from the 1980s by Friedrich Schenker, Georg Katzer and Ralf Hoyer were performed once more; at the time of composition, they had gone to the limit of what could only just or no longer be tolerated politically, but were able to do so publicly in the Kleines Theater located in the palace. In October 2004, these phenomena of critical composition were confronted with the changed setting and the new, partly younger audience, and after the concert there were dis­cussions between the featured composers and interested listeners. I was asked by the composers to act as presenter. In the following, I shall address at least one of these works by Friedrich Schenker, and if time allows also that by Georg Katzer. I have the piece by Ralf Hoyer with me as a video production of GDR television, and can show it to any who might be interested.

If we are to speak about advanced composition and political intention, we should first of all refer to Paul Dessau – and not to Hanns Eisler (the reasons for this I cannot mention here).

3. Paul Dessau – Integrator of Advanced, Critical Composition

Paul Dessau lived from 1894-1979 and worked as a conductor and composer. As a Jew, he was forced into exile and spent time in France and Spain (the Lied Die Thälmann-Kolonne) before traveling to the USA. There he met with Brecht, with

whom he remained in contact until his death (in the GDR). In East Germany, he was initially carried along by the pathos of a new beginning (Aufbaulied der FDJ, on a text by Brecht). Unlike Eisler, however, who had already died in 1962, Dessau never sacrificed his orientation towards advanced composition, and further developed it in his mature years. Nor was he held back by the brainless criticism of his opera Das Verhör des Lukullus voiced by the central committee of the SED at the famous formalism meeting – at which Ernst H. Meyer’s classicistic Mansfelder Oratorium had been celebrated as a prime example of Socialist Realism in music.

Dessau later defended himself against these charges of formalism, for example in the film Über die aufbauende Unzufriedenheit eines Komponisten [On the Constructive Dissatisfaction of a Composer], made by Richard Cohn-Vossen and myself in 1967: „one must open one’s ears to all musical production. All composers work and labor honestly for a form of expression and struggle with it. And if this leads to results that are not immediately understood, one should not simply dismiss them as ‘modernism’ or ‘formalism’ or some other ‘ism.’ I cannot tolerate that, in so far as my field is involved. And that is my field, and I understand my field.“²

Dessau composed critically against the desired epigonal acoustic bolster­ing of heroic illusions, against the flood of ahistorical, stereotypical sound products that merely catered for a short time to the underdeveloped taste that demanded the illusion of a perfect world with the rose-tinted pathos of a new beginning and an Arcadian state of well-being. This even applies to such declaratory works as Appell der Arbeiterklasse [Appeal of the Working Class] (1959), but becomes very prominent in clear political partisanship, for example in Requiem für Lumumba (1959) or the opera Einstein (1974). Dessau’s critical composition with political intentions also manifests itself in his instrumental music – for example In Memoriam Bertolt Brecht (1957).

I should also mention Orchestermusik Nr. 2, which Dessau composed in 1967 for the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, referring to the news of the landing of the second Russian moon probe in the „Sea of Storms“ on 24 December 1966. In his choral symphony, where he uses the revolutionary song Warschawianka, the non-musical subject of Dessau’s musical thinking is ex­pressed in words. It is difficult to imagine that the sounding result was intended or understood as a hymn of celebration for the triumph of Soviet achievements in space travel, or indeed for the world-changing effects of the 1917 revolution. There is no audible trace of Warschawiankal The end of the piece is intense, but peculiarly restrained at the same time.

Dessaus’s strong partisan – yet at once critical – stance in his musical and political actions was valued highly by the politically committed composers on

2  Paul Dessau, Aus Gesprächen (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1974), published on the occasion of Paul Dessau’s 80th birthday, p. 17.

the Left in the „West.“ He was a close friend of Hans Werner Henze and Luigi Nono. We – the Dessau circle – met both from time to time at his house in Zeuthen, near Berlin. In Reggio Emilia, between 25 April and 2 May 1976, the Italian Left had organized a homage to Paul Dessau and a festival of music from the GDR (also with East German performers and the composers Siegfried Matthus, Georg Katzer and Wolfram Heicking). I also took part as a speaker and discussion partner. I was asked by Nono to hold a brief lecture on Dessau during the lunch break at an instrument engineering factory, which he translated simultaneously.

A circle of younger composers and musicians had formed around Dessau since the middle of the 1960s and 1970s: his students, his younger friends, for whom he was a teacher, an adviser, a helper and a partner in the broadest sense. In the GDR, these were the ones who composed subjectively autono­mous, subtly differentiated New Music, representing an independent modernity that was open to the world, advanced and – like Dessau – with political in­tentions. They gathered demonstratively at his grave, visible to all. He had forbidden any flowers, speeches or ceremony at his funeral, to avoid being

At the grave: Günter Neubert, Paul-Heinz Dittrich, Friedrich Schenker, Günter Mayer, the oboist Burkhart Glatzner, Jörg Herchet, Friedrich Goldmann, Georg Katzer, Luca Lombard!, Christa Müller (musicologist), Hans Werner Henze, Reiner Bredemeyer and Albrecht Betz (a German scholar who was not part of the Dessau circle and found his way into the photo by chance).

praised by those of his comrades who had once misunderstood and condemned him.

The following was typical of this younger or middle generation of compos­ers (and the musicologists who supported them), along with Dessau and under his influence: critical distance from the ruling musical ideology and the corre­sponding evaluations, in an increasingly critical commitment to music as music, always connected to an ideal reflection on fundamental social experiences and contradictions that found their way into musical production as an aesthetic process. A typical aspect among composers of this orientation was a form of critical loyalty to the socialist perspective that was characterized by solidarity and commonality, a striving for social utility, and a political and musical vigi­lance of international dimensions. Dessau emphasized time and again that one should become acquainted with everything. In 1990, Frank Schneider formu­lated these particularities as specific to East German music in the following manner, speaking of „its rhetorical seriousness, its intensely gestural spirit of contradiction, its relative lack of outward, simply playful experimentation. … Composers in the GDR took the risk involved in experimenting with this difficult balance of an attempted unity of critically enlightened, political conscience and a strong authenticity of aesthetic configuration in a different way … to those in the FRG.“³ Also: „It was essentially this group that rapidly found resonance in West Germany and was resolutely supported. One need only recall the note­worthy GDR presence in Witten and more recently at the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the numerous works commissioned by West German institutions, the many radio programs with GDR music and the extensive archives, partic­ularly at the WDR and the Deutschlandfunk, which probably far exceed the productions of GDR radio stations.“⁴

4. Various Observations Regarding Friedrich Schenker in the GDR

Schenker was born in 1942 in Thuringia and grew up there. He studied in Leipzig from 1961-1964, was a student of Paul Dessau from 1973-1975, was principal trombonist of the Leipzig Radio Orchestra from 1964-1983, and has been a freelance composer in Berlin since 1990. He has meanwhile amassed an im­mense oeuvre about which Lachenmann wrote: „It unifies the expansion of the concept of musical material, as introduced by the Western European post-war avant-garde, with the grand expressive air that characterizes our symphonic

Tradition.⁵ Frank Schneider writes: „His music shocks the listener through its extraordinarily polyphonic compactness and its cataractic violence, through an expressive volcanism and those „unheard-of products of the sonic imagination that will undoubtedly have a disturbing effect on normal listening needs that bow to tradition.“ And: „He truly explores the unsheltered, unordered and uncomprehended regions between such established, seemingly incompatible positions as those of Mahler and Cage, Ives or Nono, Berg or Xenakis, in a productive and inventive way…. He thematicizes his culture-critical and political commitment time and again ‘with reference to mythological, historical, political, ecological and psychological subjects in ever new forms and new variants.’“⁶

Alongside concertante works for double bass, viola, flute, cello and violin, as well as countless chamber pieces,, one finds works with explicit critical-political content. For example: Symphonic In Memoriam Martin Luther King (1970), the orchestral pieces Epitaph für Neruda (1973), and Fanal Spanien 1936 (1981), or the chamber work Jessenin-Majakowski-Rezital (1981). The chamber piece Aria di bravoura per tenore e otto strumenti „Die Friedensfeier“ (1982), the orchestral piece Dona nobis pacem (1983), from 1987/88 Traum…Hoffnung…Ein deutsches Requiem (auf Karl und Rosa), the radio opera Die Gebeine Dantons (1987/89) and Commedia per musica (1988/89), for full orchestra and children’s choir.

One should also mention Kammerspiel II „Missa Nigra“ (1978) with the group „Gruppe Neue Musik Hanns Eisler,“ which Schenker founded in 1970 with the oboist Burkhardt Glatzner and six other musicians from the Leipzig Radio Orchestra and the Gewandhaus Orchestra. When the American government opened a new round of the arms race in 1978 with the building of the neutron bomb, Schenker responded with the protest piece Missa Nigra. Regarding the piece’s conception and the choice of texts, Schenker stated in 2001: „Alfred Polgar’s satire Kriegsperspektiven [War Perspectives] anticipates an atomic apocalypse. I also quote the Prussian military and the Catholic requiem mass for the purpose of mockery. If naked people turn up while the oath of allegiance is being taken, I am very much in favor of that. It is a newer possibility for mocking today’s military. … One has to remember that when the piece was written, in 1978, Honecker had clothed himself in Prussian heritage and discovered this history. My attack is therefore directed not only at the A-, H- and N-bombs, but also against German national chauvinism. To this end I quote from a blood­thirsty battle song by the ‘freedom poet’ Theodor Körner.“⁷

3    Frank Schneider, 40 Jahre deutsch-deutsche Musik. Versuch einer Bilanz. Discussion carried out in May 1990 at the Akademie der Künste with Frank Michael Beyer, Klaus Ebbeke, Georg Katzer, Günter Mayer, Mathias Spahlinger and Jakob Ullmann, in hanseatenweg 10, 2/90, p. 29.

4    Ibid. p. 47.

5    Helmut Lachenmann, „Gratulation,“ in Landschaft für Schenker, Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Stefan Amzoll (Berlin: edition refugium, 2003), p. 58.

6    Frank Schneider, encyclopedia article „Friedrich Schenker,“ in Komponisten der Gegenwart, ed., Hanns-Werner Heister and Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer (Munich: text + kritik, 1992), p. 2.

7    Friedrich Schenker, „Du hast zu gehorchen,“ [You Must Obey] im Interview mit Stefan Amzoll, in Freitag 48, 23 November 2001,11/17.

Gerhard Müller writes about the work: „The intention was approved by the authorities, until they observed that Schenker not only rejected the American bombs, but considered all wars and arms races sheer madness. That was too much for some. The musical establishment of the city of Leipzig was outraged at the piece, and its performance was forbidden. Subsequently the musicians went to the SED district office and inquired as to whether criticism of imperialism and war was now forbidden in the GDR, and the secretary responsible took out the GDR constitution and was unable to find any such paragraph. So he banned the ban, and one evening this black mass against all wars took place in the banqueting hall of the old town hall. No one who experienced it will ever forget it. The scenery was cloaked in a pale light. The conductor, Christian Münch, entered the stage and shot himself, continuing the performance as a corpse. The concert became theater. The musicians appeared wearing ghostly white shrouds with owl-like winged masks created by the painter Hartwig Ebersbach – another enfant terrible of the colorful Leipzig art scene. And so the dead of coming wars performed an insane dance on the volcano, with the grim reaper as master of ceremonies. At the end, the dead themselves hung the dolls of their dead children on the gallows. Those who witnessed this shuddered at such macabre phantasmagoria.“⁸

The piece was performed both in the GDR and abroad, for example at the Festival des politischen Liedes in East Berlin as well as in Monte Pulciano, Zurich, etc. It was performed once again in the solo version on 11 October 2004.

processed in the electronic studio of the TIP (Theater im Palast, Berlin)… Following the premiere by Gerhard Erber in 1983 (broadcast live by the TIP), the use of the Brecht quotation ‘Let us sing  -even in dark times’ earned me an ominous warning from the culture authorities.“

Georg Katzer was „summoned“ by the First Secretary of the Komponisten-verband [Composers' Association]. He had the complete text before him and asked what its statement was: he was missing a positive stance. He had every reason to do so, for the text claims provocatively that art has nothing to do with life, and adds: „We believe we have met the recent demand for positivity in our work.“ The First Secretary also criticized the „defeatist stance“-though this did not have any negative consequences for the composer. Katzer recently wrote to me about this First Secretary (Peter Spahn): „I cannot say whether I am wrong, I never took him for a swine; but of course he was milked, and had to let himself be milked.“

Of the composers in the Dessau circle, it was Georg Katzer who occupied himself most with electro-acoustic music, for example in Aide Memoire. Zwölf Albträume aus der 1000jährigen Nacht [Twelve Nightmares from the Thousand-Year Night] (1983). This work, an acoustic reminiscence of the Third Reich using original recordings of Hitler’s speeches, was commissioned by Radio DDR II on the 5Oth anniversary of the Nazi book burnings. Katzer was also addressing the reality of the GDR – especially in the chapter „Erziehung und Bespitzelung“ [Education and Spying]. These allusions were very much understood.

5. Georg Katzer in the GDR

Georg Katzer was born in 1935, studied in Berlin and Prage and was a student of Eisler from 1961-1963, then of Leo Spies. He has been a freelance composer since 1963.

Speaking about his Ballade vom zerbrochenen Klavier [Ballad of the Broken Piano], Katzer told me the following: „The idea for the composition came to me on a walk: I discovered the ruin of a piano in the forest. The surreal situation, resembling a picture by Max Ernst, made me think. Was this sad wreck not standing there as a symbol? How does a person, how does society deal with music, are we right to let it transport us ‘to a better world,’ as Schubert recommends to us in agreement with his poet Schober? Reflecting on this led to a text, which I subsequently set. It is heard partly from the pianist, who is singing and speaking, and partly from the tape, which uses the fascinating sounds I was still able to coax from the moribund instrument. The last sighs and screams of this instrument punished by passers-by, however, were further

8  Gerhard Müller, „Der historische Kontrapunktist,“ in Landschaft für Schenker (see footnote 5), P.73.

6. Reiner Bredemeyer In the GDR

Bredemeyer lived from 1925-1995; he moved from Munich to East Germany in 1954, encouraged by Paul Dessau. He studied with Wagner-Regeny and was assessed negatively by Eisler.⁹ From 1961 onwards he was musical director at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.¹⁰ Bredemeyer was probably the only composer in the GDR who reacted very quickly-without any external requests-to current political events with musical „feature articles.“ When a Korean passenger aircraft was „mistakenly“ shot down by Soviet interceptors in September 1983, he set the press reports justifying it only a few days after their publication in a composition for choir and percussion, which he entitled 269 to commemorate the number of civilian deaths. He used the following reports:

9 Harms Eisler, „Uber die Arbeiten Bredemeyers,“ in Musik und Politik. Schriften 2948-1962, critical edition by Günter Mayer (Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag fur Musik, 1982), pp. 367 ff.

10   See Frank Schneider, „Reiner Bredemeyer,“ in Momentaufnahme. Notate zu Musik und Musikern in der DDR (Leipzig: Reclams Universal-Bibliothek Nr. 785,1979), pp. 47-61, and „Diskurse heiterer Vernunft. Neuere Kammermusik von Reiner Bredemeyer,“ in: MusikTexte. Zeitschrift für Neue Musik, issue 33/34, April 1990, pp. 89-92.

„Ascending Soviet jet fighters from the air defense attempted to assist the airplane in reaching the nearest airfield. Despite having invaded the Soviet air space, however, the aircraft did not react to the signals and warning of the Soviet fighters and continued its flight towards the Japanese Sea.“¹¹ And: „As the intruder still made no reaction to the instructions to follow the jets to a Soviet airfield, and instead attempted to escape, the interceptor from the air defense carried out the order from central command to stop the flight.¹²

There are numerous compositions of this kind by Bredemeyer, many of them existing only in manuscript form, for example Einmischung in unsere Angelegenheit [Meddling in Our Affairs], recitatives and arias for bass and full orchestra on words of Michail Gorbachev with a quotation from V. I. Lenin (1985, manuscript); Post-Modem for mixed choir and four horns on an ADN report from 19 November 1988 (1988, manuscript), Triostucke 3 in fünf Sätzen for viola, guitar and double bass using two texts by Heiner Geissler and Manfred Wörner (1983, published by Peters Leipzig); Nebenbei gesagt [As an Aside], recitatives and arias for bass and orchestra on answers by Kurt Hager (together with an Adenauer credo) (1987, manuscript); Kohlrabiates for two speakers, speaking choir and percussion on an interview with Helmut Kohl from 1986.¹³

7. Friedrich Schenker in the FRG

If one looks at the pieces of many different kinds written by Schenker after 1990, it is clear that he has remained true to his critical musical and political orien­tation: still musically advanced and politically aware. His „Allemandes,“ espe­cially the fourth, do not thematicize German dances so much as the political egg dances in and around Germany.

Let us consider the orchestral piece …ins Endlose … [into the Infinite], commissioned in 1992 by the ORF for the Graz Musikprotokoll that same year. He was concerned with the American celebrations taking place at that time: 500 years since the discovery of a continent. Schenker referred not to the ideology of the Columbus world anniversary of discovery, conquest and domination, but rather to Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel America, in which he described America without ever having been there – as was true of Schenker until 1992 (though he was certainly familiar with Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Dos Passos, Wolfe, Heller, Thomas Pynchon, Rauschenberg, Rothko, Warhol and Pollock – and of course with Charles Ives, Elliot Carter, George Crumb, John Cage and Morton Feldman).

Schenker was fascinated by Kafka’s question: „How can a subject assert itself in a context where the subject is swallowed by the masses, where every­thing can apparently be bought?“¹⁴ In his commentary on the work he writes: „Images of abrupt change, new beginnings and unrest, automation, of the ineffability of geographical dimensions and economic undertakings, of dom­ination of and threat to the world, of people as masses and/or individuals accompanied me and motivated me in my compositional work.“¹⁵ Schenker took his title from a letter written by Kafka to Felice Bauer: „The story I am writing, though it is conceived as extending ad infinitum … is set entirely in the United States of America.“¹⁶

8. Georg Katzer in the FRG

Georg Katzer also retained his advanced and critical stance after 1990. In the GDR he had never made such controversial political statements as Schenker did (and continues to do), but nonetheless formulated a political position, at times almost sarcastically. Regarding his electronic piece Les paysages fleurissants -laudate (for 4-channel tape) he wrote: „Supposedly everything is different compared to before. One does not need to worry about that. Nor does one need to worry that anyone might actually notice.“ About the work: „The labor of beginning, the constant failures, the regressions to beautiful melancholy, resig­nation, silence-but then the saving bell, the market is booming, progress is rife, greedily devouring itself, accompanied by the triumphantly resounding 16-foot pipe: Laudate, laudate!“

The approximately twelve-minute piece is derived entirely from two com­monly known sounds and is thus located in the tradition of musique concrete. Admittedly, however, the starting material is modified to the point of unrecognizability in order to obtain an almost constantly saturated sound spectrum from the second section onwards.

In the context of a well-known prophetic promise made by Helmut Kohl, the piece can certainly also be taken as having sarcastic connotations relating to the economy in parts of Germany. This „also“ is important, as it is primarily a compositional game with noise-like sounds, formed in classical fashion with suitable irony as an introduction-allegro-coda.“¹⁷

11   TASS announcement of 2 September 1983.

12   TASS announcement of 7 September 1983.

13   Reiner Bredemeyer, „Musik und Realität, Legungen am Schreibtisch: Offen-, Ober-, Zurecht-,“ in MusikTexte. Zeitschrift für Neue Musik, issue 33/34, April 1990, pp. 92-95.

14   Friedrich Schenker, Du hast zu gehorchen (footnote 7), p.u.

15   Ibid., pp.ioff.

16   Quoted by Stefan Amzoll in the booklet for Friedrich Schenker, WERGO CD 1996, p. 12.

17   Georg Katzer, letter to the author, August 2004, information for the hosting of the concert on 11 October 2004.

9. Reiner Bredemeyer in the FRG

Bredemeyer also continued his own characteristic practice, already begun in the GDR, of critical composition with brief documentary-musical commentaries in the FRG. Thus in 1990 he composed rauh an Rau, using a statement by the Bundespräsident Johannes Rau that the reunification of the GDR and the FRG had made Germany larger. Referring to the catchphrase of „blooming land­scapes“ propagated after the reunification, Bredemeyer composed Quartettstück 4 AUFSCHWUNG 0ST für Klavier, Oboe, Schlagzeug und Tuba in 1993 – with the additional note: „with misuse on trust of no. 2 from the Phantasiestücke op. 12 by Robert Schumann.“

His program note, showing his typical predilection for suggestive plays on words: „The pseudo-pathetic F minorish-sinister ‘Schumann’ is not destroyed, broken or devastated, but rather broken up, interrupted, trebled and deliber­ately (as dictated by the title) – also in a listener-friendly manner – slowed down. The frequently swerving, title-sabotaging counterpoints are allowed to crow dominantly three times. The important, over-weighty ‘trio’ (0/S/T) is supposed to ‘be in charge,’ although the quantities of notes would allow different conclusions. Overhangs and instructions can be quite inconsiderate. Any other ‘nastinesses’ suggested by the title should be brought into play. The man from Zwickau who went westward was driven mad by the world there, as we know (it is a matter for speculation whether the proximity to Bonn could have had a part in that). The final, eighth piece from his op. 12 is called ‘Ende vom Lied’ [End of the Song, also Moral of the Story], and is supposed to be played ‘with good humor.“ This naturally presupposes the small, but rare ability of self-irony together with great skill, and the pianist in ‘Quartettstücke 4‘ requires the same: he should begin fully in command -but ends¹⁸ with a claim to sole representation.“¹⁹

10. Herrmann Keller Today

Herrmann Keller was born in 1945, is a classically trained pianist, studied in Weimar and East Berlin from 1963-1971, is active primarily as a composer and improviser, and lives in Berlin.

In spring 2004 he performed a piano piece interrupted by shorter and longer pauses, during which he spoke words of commemoration for the victims of reactionary politics. The stimulus had come from a pamphlet his son had brought home from school, where the Iraq policy of the US administration under

Bush Jr. is criticized harshly. Title Mehr als 4:33 [More Than 4:33] refers to the famous piece by John Cage, in which the pianist does not play a single note during those four minutes and 33 seconds. Keller took up this idea of silence and gave it a political function.

11. Ralf Hoyer

Another figure who can be considered part of „critical composition“ in East Germany is the Berlin composer Ralf Hoyer. He was born in 1950, studied sound engineering at the Hochschule für Musik „Hanns Eisler“ from 1968-1975, worked for VEB Deutsche Schallplatten from 1975-1978, studied composition at the Akademie der Künste der DDR with Ruth Zechlin and Georg Katzer from 1978-1980, and has worked as a freelance composer since 1981.

I am including him here because the concert and subsequent discussion on 11 October 2004 included one of his works. The piece was Allgemeine Erwartung-Aktion fur 2 Klaviere und einen Schauspieler [General Expectation - Event for 2 pianos and one actor] on a text by Volker Braun, composed in 1979. It was premiered in 1980 at the second Volker Braun evening at the Berlin En­semble with Ekkehard Schall. Hoyer writes about the work: „In the text, Volker Braun uses the empty words and party catchphrases of our times and puts them in the mouth of a worker who, standing by his machine, ‘starts thinking… until we lay aside our blind faith like soggy newspapers and ask: what can we really expect?’ The piece has been performed several times, and each performance was endangered. The broadcast of a television recording, made under adventur­ous conditions during the 1984 DDR-Musiktage, was prohibited. It was impos­sible for the composer to obtain a recording; the authorities evidently feared illegal distribution. In summer 1989, the piece was finally recorded for an LP in the Lukas-Kirche in Dresden, with Jörg Gudzun and the two pianists Susanne Stelzenbach and Thomas Just, but it was never released. Formally speaking, the piece takes up the old genre of the melodrama, while in terms of compositional technique there are many details that can be attributed to Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen, with whose writings I occupied myself intensely during that time.“²⁰

12. In Conclusion

Let us return to the problem area sketched at the start. I quote a statement made by Frank Schneider in 1990: „Whereas the leading composers of the older generation further refined their individual styles, the music of their students

18   Translator’s note: in the original, Bredemeyer uses „Endenich,“ the name of the town in which Schumann settled, as the verb, suggesting something archaic in the manner of „endeth“.

19   Note in the score, 1993.

20 Ralf Hoyer, letter to the author, August 2004, information for the hosting of the concert on

11 October 2004.

articulates an underlying feeling of fracture and powerlessness that seems to correspond to their existential helplessness amidst the ever more dominant intellectual dearth and political apathy, to the sponsored delirium of entertain­ment and the dwindling performance opportunities. Without any truly binding models from within or without, without faith in the old doctrines of progress from the East or the West, creative subjectivity risks turning into a non-commit­tal subjectivism in which every composer satisfies his or her own personal preferences, follows privatistic conceptions and draws on the most hetero­geneous sources brought to him/her by the winds between San Francisco and Shanghai. This younger generation is showing an increasing disinterest in restricting itself to compositional criteria of the classical European tradition, or indeed a constructive critique thereof. Rather, it also articulates its disturbed relationship with it in the light – one could say – of the new post-modern, global sound experiences, for example out of interest in archaic forms, non-European models of music-making, or the boundless manipulative possibilities of com­puter-assisted creation and electronic sound production.²¹

Question: is this not still relevant? Is the direction taken in the past and seamlessly continued by the older generation, namely composing in a material-centered or function-centered manner that is both advanced and critical, really „out“? And can the meanwhile stale post-modern rejection of well-worn critical political positions – present-day positions are no longer identical to earlier positions – still be justified? As the contradictions in society have not dis­appeared, but are in fact becoming stronger, critical reaction on the part of the composer, at least as a thinking citizen, is in itself necessary for survival. Should this not affect one’s work as a musician?

21   Frank Schneider, 40 Jahre deutsch-deutsche Musik (footnote 3), p. 47 ff. I 184

This text is published in: Critical Composition Today, Edited by Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Hofheim 2006, 171-184

Postsowjetischer Marxismus (Druckansicht)

Seiten 407-411

Kasernen-Kommunismus (Druckansicht)

Im der Ankündigung dieser sehr engagierten Sendung wird durch deren Redakteur und Moderator Wolfgang Seifert über die Eisler-Rezeption formuliert: „Selten nur wird er aufgeführt“. Dieses Urteil entspricht nicht der Realität. Und es bedarf der Differenzierung.

Obwohl die Massenlieder bei Streiks, Demonstrationen, Kundgebungen usw. nur noch selten gesungen werden, so etwa von der Gruppe „Arbeit“ aus Frankfurt am Main, werden die Chöre, das breite Spektrum der Lieder, der Klavierkompositionen, der Werke aus dem Bereich der instrumentalen Kammermusik, der Orchestermusik und der Vokalsinfonik seit 1998 zunehmend und zudem kontinuierlich nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern auch in anderen Ländern erfolgreich aufgeführt. Unter der Rubrik „Eisler-Termine“  ist das in den in diesen zehn Jahren bis heute erschienenen, von der Internationalen Hanns Eisler Gesellschaft herausgegebenen 45 Heften der „Eisler-Mitteilungen“ im Detail nachzulesen. Einige ausgewählte Beispiele aus diesem Jahr, in denen nur Eisler oder auch Eisler aufgeführt wurde oder wird, mögen das belegen (wer, was im einzelnen aufführt: genauer in Heft 44 und 45):

Chöre: Chorkonzert am 16. Mai (Berlin), 23. Mai (Bremen); 27. Juni (Berlin); 15./16. August (Freistadt und Wörgl, Österreich). Lieder: vor allem das „Hollywooder-Liederbuch“ (oder Teile daraus), sowie andere Lieder:  2. März (Stuttgart); 5. August (Salzburger Festspiele); 2. September (Beethovenfest Bonn); 17. Juli (Mendocino Music Festival ); 6. September (Europ. Musikfest Stuttgart); 19. September (Beethovenfest Bonn); 26. November (Linz).

Bühnenmusik: „Die Massnahme“: Mai/Juni (Berlin, Volksbühne); 7.-10. August Salzburger Festspiele (norwegische Produktion aus Bergen). Klavierstücke, Kammermusik: 9. Januar (Wuppertal); 10. Januar (Aachen); 11 Januar (Mannheim); 13. Januar (Essen), 13, Januar (Mainz); 8. März (Berlin); 8. Mai (Berlin); 17. Juli (Mendocino Music Festival).

Orchesterwerke: 29. Februar (Den Haag); 10. Mai (Dresden). Vokalsinfonik: „Ernste Gesänge“ 31. Januar (München); 13./14. März (Berlin); „Deutsche Sinfonie“ 22. August (Weimar); 31. August (Beethovenfest Bonn). Spezielle Eisler-Programme: 8./9.März „Eisler-Material“ (Heiner Goebbels mit niederländischen Musikern, Den Haag); 6. Juni (Bertolt-Brecht-Revue, Dortmund).

Diese Vielfalt, die wesentlich mehr ist als „selten“,  ist typisch auch für die Jahre zwischen den Jubiläumsdaten. Fast alle Werke sind in mehrfachen, historisch wie neueren Aufnahmen auf CD vorhanden.

Die historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Musiken und Schriften von Hanns Eisler, die im Verlag Breitkopf&Härtel bereits erschienen sind bzw. erscheinen werden,  wird von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft langfristig gefördert. Neuere Ergebnisse der Eisler-Forschung liegen vor. Zur Planung, zum Stand der Edition sowie der Eisler-Forschung siehe: www.hanns-eisler.de; oder www.hanns-eisler.com; oder www.hannseisler.net.

Günter Mayer

Quelle: Das Argument Nr. 276, Heft 3/2008, 322