presented by the festival „100 Years of Copyright“
zeitkratzer does Arnold Schönberg the honor! Together with Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, the Schönberg Award will be granted for the first time: how can the music of the maestro be condensed, realized in a simpler way, leading to the same or similar musical result?
René Kuwan - Kleine Kammermusik (Variationen für Orchester op.31)
Click Nilson - Dodecacophony /Meta-dodecaphony (twelve chosen works by Schönberg)
Martin Wurmnest - Sonett op.24 ! really cheap imitation (Serenade op.24, Sonnet)
Cristian Vogel - Spectral reimagining of “Hier hinein?” (scene 1 of Erwartung op.17)
Four works have been chosen out of numerous entries: The youg composer René Kuwan reduces Schönberg‘s Variationen für Orchester op.31 to his Kleine Kammermusik. The resulting thematic density reminds of Webern and realizes an utopia by Schönberg: the music is only the theme, constantly variated, always similar to itself, but never exactly repeated. The British producer Cristian Vogel refers to another utopia by Schönberg: “In Erwartung op.17 the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour.” Vogel does so literally and created an electronic score with a long spectral reimagining of the introduction of Erwartung.
The British musicologist/scholar Nick Collins, who has been working on the archives of the Danish composer Click Nilson (1938 – 2013) for a long time, recently made a discovery: Nilson had developed a Meta-12-tone-technique: Why should only a single composition be organized by serial principals? He proposed to combine materials from arbitrary compositions by Schönberg in a new way: Dodecacophony /Meta-dodecaphony. Last but not least, Martin Wurmnest composed a very cheap imitation of the sonnet by Petrarca from Serenade op.24. Schönberg’s melodic gestures and instrumentation preferences are cheerfully denuded: composed music analysis!
The jury (Dörte Schmidt, president of the Gesellschaft für Musikforschung, Diedrich Diederichsen, Akademie der Bildenden Künste Vienna, and Bass-Bariton Nicholas Isherwood) will publicly discuss the four chosen compositions to decide who gets the award. For the award ceremony, Nicholas Isherwood and zeitkratzer – conducted by Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen – will perform Reinhold Friedl‘s Schönberg Pierrot Lunaire Cheap Imitation: Even the children of Schönberg could not distinguish this cheap imitation from the original and threatened to file a lawsuit. But they had to withdraw: nothing concrete was stolen from Schönberg, because only the characteristic gestures have been imitated. This is, of course, not forbidden.
zeitkratzer: Frank Gratkowski (cl, bcl, fl), Hayden Chisholm (sax, fl), Hilary Jeffery (tb, tp), Reinhold Friedl (pf); Maurice de Martin (perc); Lisa Marie Landgraf (v); Biliana Voutchkova (v); Nora Krahl (vc); Ulrich Phillipp (b);
Conductor: Thorbjørn Tønder Hansen / Voice: Nicholas Isherwood
· Reinhold Friedl Schönberg Pierrot Lunaire Cheap Imitation