Elke Mascha Blankenburg

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Elke Mascha Blankenburg (1982)

Elke Mascha Blankenburg (artist name: Mascha ; * December 15, 1943 in Mindelheim ; † March 9, 2013 in Cologne ) was a German church musician , conductor , music historian, music journalist and author.

In 1979 she founded the International Working Group on Women and Music in Cologne . V. with its important music-historical research facility, the Archive Women and Music . It has been based in Frankfurt am Main since 2003 .

Life

Study and training

Blankenburg had been taking piano lessons since she was six, plus ballet and violin. Her mother, Anneliese Feldmeyer, was a pianist and music teacher. She wrote poems and composed songs in the romantic style and taught her daughter on the piano. Elke Mascha Blankenburg was interested in singing, dance and composition and was active as a singer in various choirs and as a violinist in the school orchestra, and later in the Heidelberg University Orchestra. From 1963 Elke Mascha Blankenburg studied Protestant church music at the Heidelberg University of Music and at the Church Music Institute in Schlüchtern . This was followed by postgraduate studies in choir and orchestra conducting at the Cologne University of Music with Philipp Röhl in 1970/1971 . Between 1972 and 1979 Blankenburg completed several international master courses for conductors, among others in Nice , Sion , Stuttgart and Ossiach . In Vienna from 1973 to 1975 she was a master student of Hans Swarowsky . As a woman in Germany, she was a pioneer at the conductor's desk, which had previously been a male domain - according to Hortense von Gelmini . As a master student of Hans Swarowsky, Blankenburg had to assert herself against the humiliation and discrimination by her colleagues and by Swarowsky himself and fight for her place as the only woman in a class of 80 students. Swarowsky confronted her with the statement that as a woman she belonged in the kitchen and should not take the place away from men. This is how von Blankenburg reported in an interview with Freundin magazine . In addition to her studies, Blankenburg worked as a chanson and pop singer and music critic for radio and press.

Church musician and conductor in Cologne

From 1970 Blankenburg was a church musician at the Christ Church in Cologne-Dellbrück for twenty years . In 1970 she founded the Kölner Kurrende choir , in 1981 the Leonarda Ensemble and in 1986 the Clara Schumann Orchestra Cologne , a professional symphony orchestra made up of women only. Together with Gabriella Pallenberg, Blankenburg founded the Orchestra Clara Schumann Roma in 1995 as a sister orchestra to the German CSO Cologne. She recorded various LPs and CDs with these ensembles, and radio and TV productions were made in almost all German broadcasters.

Freelance conductor, musician and music historian

In the winter of 1980, Blankenburg organized the first international female composer festival in Cologne and Bonn despite resistance, together with Barbara Heller and others . In 1990 Blankenburg gave up her position as a church musician to work entirely as a freelance conductor for choir and orchestra. In 1999 she had to give up conducting because of a sudden hearing loss in her right ear.

Blankenburg lived alternately in Italy and Germany. From 2002 to 2004 she was a lecturer in choral conducting at the MHS in Frosinone (Italy), built up the International Archive of Women Conductors (IDAK) in Cologne, and from 2005 to 2007 she was again artistic director of the city's International Library of Women Composers, which she founded in 1989 Unna . There she announced the Fanny Mendelssohn Competition for composition every two years and was responsible for female composers festivals.

Grave of Elke Mascha Blankenburg in the Melaten cemetery in Cologne

For many years, Blankenburg has been particularly committed to researching forgotten female composers and their works. She writes about this in her book Conductors in the 20th Century ( Literature ), which is now regarded as the standard work on this topic: "I was aware that I was introducing a correction to the history of music that had been suppressed by female composers up until then."

In 1977 she wrote the article Forgotten Composers for the feminist magazine EMMA , which marked the start of the women's music movement in Germany because of the great sensation it caused. In 1978, Blankenburg and female composers like Siegrid Ernst founded the International Working Group on Women and Music in response to the EMMA article . V. , which has since been committed to the rediscovery of women composers and the promotion of professional musicians, as well as its archive of women and music . Not only in Germany, but all over the world, Blankenburg searched archives for compositions by women, most of which were only available in handwriting and which she transcribed so that they could be performed.

Blankenburg's work is characterized by numerous re- performances and world premieres , for example the oldest known opera written by a woman, Francesca Caccini's La liberazione di Rugiero in 1980 on the occasion of the International Festival of Women Composers , which took place in Cologne and Bonn . The Leonarda Ensemble premiered vocal works by female composers from the Renaissance , Baroque and contemporary compositions.

Blankenburg paid particular attention to the work of the composer Fanny Hensel . On May 27, 1984 she conducted the world premiere of their oratorio based on pictures from the Bible in the St. Maria Himmelfahrt Church in Cologne. Blankenburg had transcribed the score for nights and remembered: "The silence of the night gave me the highest concentration. The awareness that I am the first to listen to this music after 153 years and to prepare it for the premiere gave me the proud feeling of uniqueness . "

On June 7, 1986 she also performed Fanny Hensel's Overture in C major at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt am Main with the Clara Schumann Orchestra . Fanny Hensel's a cappella choirs from 1847 were also premiered under her direction. Elke Mascha Blankenburg published the above-mentioned compositions by Fanny Hensel in Furore-Verlag .

Her most important printed work is her European Female Conductor Reader (2002), which is also a pioneering work, as this was the prelude to collecting active female conductors in order to promote their visibility, their career opportunities and their networking.

She gave herself her stage name Mascha out of admiration for the Jewish poet Mascha Kaléko . Blankenburg died on March 9, 2013 in a Cologne hospice . Her musical legacy as well as her extensive recordings can be found in the Archive of Women and Music.

Awards

  • 1986: The special woman culture award from AVON-Munich for rediscovering the works of women composers.
  • 1989: City musician of the city of Unna .
  • 1999: Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon for her artistic achievement and her research work in the field of musicology .
  • 2008: Premio Domenico Rea ( Naples ), cultural award for life's work.

With her choir Kölner Kurrende she received the following awards:

  • 1981: 1st prize choir competition NRW.
  • 1982: 2nd prize in the German Choir Competition and a conducting grant from the German Music Council .
  • 1986: 3rd Prize International Choir Competition Arezzo (Italy).
  • 1994: Silver medal in the Riva del Garda International Choir Competition (Italy).

Publications

CD and LP publications as a conductor:

As an author:

  • Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel , in: Helma Mirus, Erika Wisselinck (Ed.): With courage and imagination. Women seek their lost history . Straßlach (Sophia) 1987, p. 92f.
  • Counterpoint: 1988 music calendar . Kassel (Furore Verlag) 1987.
  • Counterpoint: 1989 music calendar . Kassel (Furore Verlag) 1988.
  • European conductor reader . Publication series Internationaler Arbeitskreis Frau und Musik e. V. (Ed. Archive Frau und Musik), Vol. 4. Kassel (Furore Verlag) 2002. 197 pp. ISBN 3-927327-55-7 .
  • Female conductors in the 20th century. Portraits from Marin Alsop to Simone Young . Hamburg (European Publishing House) 2003.
  • Roses for Fanny Mendelssohn , in: Elke Heidenreich (Ed.): A dream of music: 46 declarations of love . Munich (Bertelsmann) 2010.
  • Keyboard Fever and Lovesome: An E-Mail Novel . Messkirch (Gmeiner) 2011.

Sheet music editions:

  • Fanny Hensel : Prelude for organ (1829) (= fue. 124). Kassel (Furore Verlag) 1988.
  • Fanny Hensel: Secular a cappella choirs (1846) (= fue. 510-515). 5 volumes. Kassel (Furore Verlag) 1988.
  • Maria Anna Martinez : Symphony in C major for orchestra . Cologne (Tonger) 1991.
  • Maria Anna Martinez: La Tempesta . Cologne (Tonger) 1992.
  • Fanny Hensel: Hero and Leander: Dramatic scene for soprano and large orchestra (= fue. 532). Kassel (Furore Verlag) 1993.
  • Fanny Hensel: Overture in C major for large orchestra (= fue. 2507). Kassel (Furore Verlag) 1994.
  • Fanny Hensel: Oratorio based on pictures from the Bible for solos, choir and orchestra . Kassel (Furore Verlag) 1994.
  • Barbara Strozzi : Il Primo Libro di Madrigali (1644) . Volume I: Two-part madrigals (= fue. 531). Kassel (Furore Verlag) 1993.
  • Fanny Hensel: Night dance . Cologne (Tonger) 1996.
  • Maddalena Sirmen : Six Sonates à deux violons . 2 volumes. Cologne (Tonger) 1997.

Web links

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger . March 14, 2013, p. 29.
  2. ↑ Anne-Marie Bernhard / Susanne Wosnitzka: Art. Elke Mascha Blankenburg , in: Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv (Ed.): Akteurinnen [1] , accessed on August 2nd, 2020.
  3. ↑ See ibid.
  4. ^ Elke Mascha Blankenburg: Forgotten female composers. In: Emma . November 1, 1977, accessed April 16, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Anne-Marie Bernhard / Susanne Wosnitzka: Art. Elke Mascha Blankenburg , in: Digitales Deutsches Frauenarchiv (Ed.): Akteurinnen [2] , accessed on August 2nd , 2020.
  6. ↑ See list of female conductors, list of female conductors , accessed on August 2, 2020.
  7. ↑ Kölner Stadtanzeiger (Ed.): Art. Warrior for women in music . [3] Online article from March 14, 2013, accessed on August 2, 2020.
  8. ↑ Elke Mascha Blankenburg: [4] , Georg Friedrich Haendel: Choirs from the Messias , LP, accessed on August 2nd, 2020.
  9. ↑ Elke Mascha Blankenburg: [5] , Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel: Oratorio based on images from the Bible , CD, accessed on August 2, 2020.
  10. ↑ Elke Mascha Blankenburg / Leonarda Ensemble: [6] , Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel: Garden songs. A cappella choirs , CD, accessed on August 2nd, 2020.
  11. ↑ Sacred and secular choral music: [7] , works by Francis Poulenc, Anton Bruckner, Heinrich Schütz, Zoltan Kodaly, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Johannes Brahms, Robert Schumann , LP, Hübert 1986, accessed on 08.8.2020.
  12. ↑ Albert Lortzing: [8] , Ali Pascha by Janina / Don Juan and Faust / Scenes from Mozart's Life , CD, music production Dabringhaus and Grimm 1991, accessed on 08.8.2020.
  13. ^ Gioachino Rossini: [9] , Petite Messe solennelle , CD, Koch International 1993, accessed on 08.8.2020.
personal data
SURNAME Blankenburg, Elke Mascha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mascha (stage name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor and music historian
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1943
PLACE OF BIRTH Mindelheim
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 2013
Place of death Cologne