Austrian seminar for twelve-tone music

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The Austrian Seminar for Twelve Tone Music (1953–1959) was a forum in Vienna for Josef Matthias Hauer's view of music and the world .

prehistory

On April 9, 1918, Hauer presented New Paths in Music at the Institute for Cultural Research of the so-called “World Cultural Society” in Vienna . After critical analysis (the 12 letters from musicians ) and suggestions for self-discovery (parallel actions with Johannes Itten), he outlined his view of the essence of the musical in May 1919, which was quickly published as a book. So he was willing to teach these musical fundamentals as elementary courses as part of the beginning of the “ Bauhaus ”, and he was prepared to move from Vienna to Weimar like Gropius and Itten with numerous students. Hauer was able to spread the doctrine of the tonal system of all possible twists and turns in twelve-tone music in a trilingual program number of the magazine "Melos" in 1922 when the IGNM was founded and he tried to present this new common language himself in Salzburg. With his Aeolian harp published as a sheet music supplement in Melos , the Atonal Melodienlehre as an acoustic listening school, with Melodiose twelve-tone etudes , which he finally dedicated to Schönberg as lecture pieces for more highly organized listeners, Hauer endeavored to pass on the knowledge of his universal worldview throughout his life: a fundamental order structure, the freedom between the mind and strives for harmony with the whole of human beings.

requirements

In 1945 Hauer postulated the comprehensive structural thinking of twelve-tone music - culturally between Bolshevism and Americanism - as the best spiritual and human path to the future. As a “chair”, wrote family friend Johann Muschik , he liked to use his Viennese tavern. He found influence on Herbert Boeckl and Fritz Wotruba , was both considered the clearest head in the reorientation of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, was particularly valued by cultural magazines ( Leopold Wolfgang Rochowanski Agathon 1946,47,48, Otto Basil Plan 1947 or in the music era Friedrich Wildgans 1948), and prominently performed by interpreters such as Othmar Steinbauer , Ilona Steingruber and Victor Sokolowski . In terms of cultural policy, Peter Lafite campaigned for the Vienna School and, at the same time, Hauer's work dedications (1950) to the Federal President.

The seminar

When current twelve-tone music was best performed in the Art Club by Paul Kont and Hans Kann (January 12, 1952), Hauer mocked this “Russian barbaric salon music”. In a “draft” he offered his view of the twelve-tone system as a cosmic game - whereupon the seventy-year-old received both the Art Club honorary membership, and many creative people from there followed him as the basis of the “Austrian Seminar for Twelve Tone Music”. Johannes Schwieger, who contacted the composer on friendly terms as early as 1921 and 1947, organized everything in his apartment (Vienna IX, Bauernfeldplatz 4/8) with space for conversation and performance. He also looked after archiving copies, any inquiries or official business. Starting on March 17, 1953, the music “master” Hauer occasionally took part in the seminar on composition tasks, through corrections, and individual encounters, and on the other hand expanded the conception of his teaching. The training consisted of I. learning twelve-tone notation, II. Singing or using the instrument to find the voice leading of the melos movement, III. To orient ear and mind within all possibilities towards the order of the perfect. Music games with a given beginning and ending should be completed and performed as a goal by the students. As an example in the quartet, the fourfold counterpoint was polished, tempered and brought to harmony - a model of human existence in a spiritual structure as of growth in nature. Twelve-tone music was exemplified after the two volumes “Atonale Musik” (1920-22) as “Thesaurus Duodecaphonii” ( XXIV. Twelve-tone play, etc.) and “The completion of the well-tempered piano” as volume 3 and volume 4 with the piano work for four hands as “Das Well-tempered piano ”. Orders of all religions or current atomic theory, micro and macro components of natural science or the intellectual horizon of philosophers and minds of music history were included as reference .

"Being and time" was visualized by Schwieger on educational boards. Hauer led doctrinal conversations with him from his developmental stages with the sources of thought, through intuition to absolute music, to the synthesis of body and mind in the unity of "melos" (Schwieger formulates, for his part, "pathodicy - theodicy - melodic"). Transcripts such as shorthand notes in diaries have been preserved that have not yet been researched, but have only been recognized as a basis.

The participants

60 participants are listed in tabular form in the seminar book, their engagement with Hauer's twelve-tone music dated (sheet music was occasionally preserved). Including:

documentation

Hauer understood his music (comprehensive catalog raisonné and, in particular, his “Well-Tempered Clavier”, which was further developed from the baroque era), writings (“Theory I-III”, testaments, manifestos) and conversations (notes, letters, encounters) as three respective formulations on a path to Wholeness. Schwieger wanted to categorize the new to music / man / world as three force fields of Melos / God / the atomic and tried to bring Hauer's life's work to knowledge in a synthesis as sonorous / moral-religious / cosmic testaments.

For a "thinking book", materials were put into folders, through sources, research, letters, glossed daily newspapers with counterpositions and official acknowledgments, which reveal Hauer's life as an example from the germ to the completion in different periods of a creative being. As a learned university librarian, Schwieger was able to access books on the world view of ancient cultures as well as the science and humanities teaching of great minds, in order to bring in more basic research into Hauer's structure for the seminar on twelve-tone music. The award of the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1955 to Hauer, whom Schwieger was allowed to take over as deputy in 1956, marked a high point for the twelve-tone seminar. In 1958 a television film about Hauer in the music metropolis of Vienna followed. But everything ended with Hauer's death in 1959. The "Denk -schrift" started in 1956 was recognized by the Theodor Körner Foundation in 1958 and financially supported in 1960. The work, no longer formulated for publication, only exists as a large-scale collection that is now preserved in the music collection of the Austrian National Library.

literature

  • Hermann Pfrogner: The twelve order of tones , Amalthea, Zurich 1953.
  • Josef Matthias Hauer: 80 years of twelve-tone music , Robert Michael Weiß , Cultural Office of the City of Wiener Neustadt, 1999.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Publication by the City of Wiener Neustadt Cultural Office