Dieter Mack

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Dieter Mack (born August 25, 1954 in Speyer am Rhein) is a German composer , musician and ethnomusicologist whose specialties include the music of the Indonesian cultural area and gamelan .

biography

Dieter Mack grew up in Speyer. After his first musical activities in the field of experimental rock music and jazz, he studied composition ( Huber , Ferneyhough ), piano and music theory at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg from 1975 to 1980 . Since 1980 he has been teaching music theory and Balinese music in Freiburg, Trossingen and Basel. In 1986 he received a professorship for music theory in Freiburg and has been professor for composition at the Lübeck University of Music since 2003 . From 1977 to 1981 he was an assistant (1981 also scholarship holder) at the experimental studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of the SWR and in 1980 he joined the Stuttgart “ExVoCo” ensemble. Since 1978 numerous study trips have taken him to India and Japan, but above all to Indonesia. After a one-year research stay in Bali in 1981/82, he founded the Freiburg gamelan ensemble "Anggur Jaya", which in 1988 also performed in Bali. In 1988 he started teaching in Indonesia because of the concert tour mentioned above. 1992–95 he was DAAD long-term lecturer at the UPI [Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia] in Bandung and a member of the Indonesian national curriculum commission. From 1996 to 2007 he was a consultant on a Ford Foundation funded educational research project at UPI Bandung. Since 2000 he has been teaching as a visiting professor in the postgraduate course in composition at the ISI [Institut Seni Indonesia] in Surakarta. Guest teaching positions have taken him to Indonesia, mainly to the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia and China. From 2003-06 Mack worked as a musical advisor at the House of World Cultures in Berlin and is currently chairman of the DAAD's music selection committee and a member of the advisory board of the Goethe Institute . Mack is a co-founder of the Indonesian Composers' Association and has been a member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Hamburg since 2008 . In numerous texts and essays, he takes a stand on intercultural issues.

Work as a composer and ethnomusicologist

Mack's musical interests are broad. In addition to classical music, which he learned on the piano as a student, he was equally enthusiastic about pop and rock music ( electronic organ and synthesizer ). Among other things, he came to contemporary “ new music ” through the music of Frank Zappa . During his composition studies with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough in Freiburg , he worked intensively on electroacoustic music and was an assistant in the experimental studio of the H. Strobel Foundation of the SWF . The decisive turning point in Mack's artistic development was a study visit to the island of Bali in 1978. Since this first encounter with the music of the Indonesian cultural area, it has played a central role in Mack's artistic direction. The first documentation of his newly acquired artistic position is the composition Kebyar (1980), the temporal-formal structure of which refers to Balinese models. The obvious parallels to gamelan pieces are, however, "not to be seen as sheer imitations", but "as an attempt to achieve a certain playing stance with your own musical means." After his first stay in Bali, Mack turned away from electronic music and has been composing since then Especially for larger chamber music ensembles, but also for solo instruments, or orchestra and choir . The works that he classifies as “educational compositions” play an important role, and their target group is often musicians from the Southeast Asian cultural area. Later the perspective broadened to include the music of Japan.

“The extensive examination of the life and music practice of Bali and Japan made a significant contribution to the compositional self-discovery of Mack.” The result was a music that is anything but folkloristic. Rather, the composer sees his goal in incorporating the impressions gathered in foreign cultures into a music shaped by Western thought, until something genuinely unique emerges from it. From the “subtle and respectful reception” he developed “an individual and independent tonal language”, whereby he was “in no way concerned with a superficial and epigonal takeover of exoticisms”. "Mack's music does not go the easy and long way of using non-European musical cultures - such as the idioms of gamelan music - as a new, invigorating juice for tired European music"; rather, its author uses “the intensive view of the foreign culture in order to gain a foreign, distant view of one's own.” Thus, Mack's music is “completely free of any esoteric and exotic”.

stylistics

In the pursuit of personal and artistic independence, Mack developed a tonal language that largely eludes assignment to any of the common patterns in new music and derives its liveliness from a strikingly highly developed rhythm. As a result, the percussion instruments play an important role, the use of which as a structuring and articulating element can also be seen as an indication of a transformation of Mack's experience with Southeast Asian music practice. Undoubtedly, the origin of the composer from the rock field also plays a role here. In contrast to this, however, the percussion instruments are used in highly complex patterns and rhythmically accentuated time sequences, whereby Mack points out that he has listened to the “rhythmic complexity” from the “not very regular speech rhythm”. In Mack's understanding, music is more than just sound, it can only develop its full power through the performance, in which the musicians are in direct contact with each other as well as with the audience. His compositions, which usually place high technical demands on the performers, surprise with their timbres and structures that are unfamiliar to European listeners. "Her compositional driving force is a difficult tonality in repeatedly surprising colors." In this context, the many unison structures (for example in Quartet No. 2 ), whose purpose is primarily to create new timbres by mixing instruments, are remarkable . “Full of energy and demanding the highest virtuosity” (for example in Tiga Kata ) “the often parallel saxophone and percussion lines run through the constantly changing instrumental and tonal constellations.” Dieter Mack uses “all sorts of contemporary playing techniques, but dispenses with tonal alienation the instruments in order to generate the mentioned timbres through traditional playing styles. ”The tonal model is not only traditional Balinese music, but - according to Mack's own words - also European composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , what the formal, more additive organization concerns, Maurice Ravel and Olivier Messiaen regarding the tonal structuring through the combination of harmonics, instrumentation and voicing. In addition, the composer's openness to pop and rock music as well as jazz was reflected in his compositional oeuvre in the form of several works for big band.

Works (selection)

Compositions

  • Saba for vocal trio, tape and live electronics (1979)
  • Kebyar for flute and piano (1980)
  • Cina for vocal trio with 3 percussion instruments (1982)
  • Organ cycle (1984-87)
  • Taro for 2 pianos, percussion, flute (picc.) And bass clarinet (1987)
  • Angin for wind orchestra and 3 percussionists (1988 / rev. 2003)
  • Wantilan I for alto flute and percussion (1988 / rev. 2008)
  • Chamber music I - V for ensemble (1991-2007)
  • Rafting and Beyond for 2 pianos and 2 percussionists (1991)
  • Balungan for vocal quartet (1993/94)
  • Segara Variations for Percussion Quartet (1998/99)
  • Chedi for piano solo (2000)
  • Crosscurrents for 8 percussionists (Gamelan dagger) and (Sundanese) solo flute (2000)
  • Vuh Concerto for solo percussion, wind orchestra and 3 percussionists (2001)
  • Selisih for alto and baritone saxophone (2003)
  • Tunjuk for large orchestra (2006)
  • Ramai I for ensemble (2007)
  • Terasi for orchestra (2009)
  • Voyage for ensemble (2009/10)
  • Speech dance for Bb clarinet (2010)
  • Yonsei for ensemble (2010)
  • Dalang for bass and drums (2011)
  • Kokon for guitar and harp (2011)
  • Delta for flute and double bass (2012)
  • Wooden Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra (2012)
  • Kebyar Baru I for flute and piano (2012)
  • Air for Ensemble (2012)
  • Ramai II for ensemble (2012)
  • Ical for choir and orchestra (2014)
  • Ngumbang-Ngisep for ensemble (2014)
  • Kebyar Baru II for violin and piano (2015)
  • Sounding threads for ensemble (2016)

Texts

  • On the translatability or non-translatability of cultures - music and mission in Indonesia . In: Orientierungen I / 1998, Zeitschrift zur Kultur Ostasiens, B. Damshäuser / A.Kubin (eds.), Publications of the Ostasienseminar der Universität Bonn, Bonn 1998.
  • On the way to a culture of its own. In: Klaus Hinrich Stahmer (Hrsg.): New Music 2000 - Five texts by composers (writings of the University of Music Würzburg, Volume 6) . Würzburg 2001, pp. 27-46.
  • Contemporary Music in Indonesia - Between Local Traditions, National Commitments and International Influences . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim 2004, ISBN 3-487-12562-5 .
  • Music from Bali and West Java. Oldershausen 2003, Lugert-Verlag.
  • Bali (country booklet of the Musik der Welt series ), Oldershausen (Lugert) 2003.
  • Scales, tone symbolism and tonal appearances in more recent Balinese gamelan music . In: Microtones and More - On György Ligeti's Hamburg Paths , ed. by Manfred Stahnke, Hamburg 2005, from Bockel Verlag.
  • The sense of tolerance . In: KunstMUSIK, Cologne, No. 6, spring 2006.
  • Nyoman Windha's 'Catur Yuga'. A New Concept of Balinese Chamber Music? . In: Music Theory as an Interdisciplinary Subject , ed. by Christian Utz (Report on the 8th Congress of the Society for Music Theory Graz 2008), Saarbrücken (Pfau) 2010.
  • In search of one's own culture: composing in the field of tension between bi- or multicultural experiences , in: Darmstädter Discurses 2 - Music Cultures , ed. by Jörn Peter Hiekel, Saarbrücken 2008.
  • Thoughts, suggestions, rejections regarding the concept of the transcultural - and what does historical awareness do? . In: KunstMUSIK, Cologne, No. 13, spring 2010.
  • Article Southeast Asia , in: Jörn Peter Hiekel and Christian Utz (Eds.) Lexikon Neue Musik , Stuttgart (Metzler) 2016.


See also

literature

  • Alan Wells: Dieter Mack: German Individualist. In: Music in New Zealand. Summer 1991/92, No. 15, pp. 23-28
  • Bernhard Weber: Dieter Mack. Hanns-Werner Heister, Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer (ed.): Contemporary composers . Edition Text & Criticism, München 2006
  • Klaus Hinrich Stahmer: Dieter Mack - a portrait of the composer. In: Flöte Aktuell 3/2002, pp. 35–39
  • Margarete Zander: Music as a contemporary ritual: the composer Dieter Mack and his cultural and political work in Indonesia. In: New magazine for music: 5/2004
  • Torsten Möller (Ed.): If A is, is A - The composer Dieter Mack. Pfau, Saarbrücken 2008
  • Christina Schott: German Composer Lets Music Speak Between Cultures. Jakarta Post, August 9, 2009
  • Art .: Dieter Mack , in: Riemann Musik-Lexikon , 13th edition, Vol. 3, Mainz (Schott) 2012, ISBN 978-3-79570006-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Bernhard Weber: Art .: Dieter Mack , in: Composers of the Present (loose-leaf edition, 31 supplement 7/06), Munich (Edition text and criticism)
  2. ↑ Heinz-Jürgen Staszak, in: Intensiver Blick auf die Fremdkultur , Neue musik Zeitung, 2016, issue 2, p. 19.
  3. ↑ a b Achim Heidenreich: As from this world , in: Neue Musik Zeitung Jg. 2017, issue 6, p. 12.
  4. ↑ a b Quoted from: Uwe Engel, Im Rhythmus der Sprache , in: Die Rheinpfalz, No. 113, May 16, 2017.
  5. ↑ Heinz-Jürgen Staszak on the festival for new music "Brücken" in Rostock, in: Ostsee-Zeitung December 2, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Mack, Dieter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and musician
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Speyer on the Rhine