Friedemann Schmidt-Mechau

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Friedemann Schmidt-Mechau (* 8. January 1955 in Frankfurt am Main as Friedemann Schmid ) is a German composer and choir director .

Life

Friedemann Schmidt-Mechau grew up in a pastor's family interested in music in Gambach / Upper Hesse until 1963, then in Oldenburg in Lower Saxony . From 1971 he completed an apprenticeship as a carpenter , passed the master craftsman's examination in 1982 and worked as a carpenter until 1986.

From 1986 he studied music (with Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt and Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann ) as well as history and art, as well as philosophy and mathematics at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg . From 1988 he also studied composition with Jens-Peter Ostendorf and piano at the University of the Arts in Bremen .

In 1990 he founded the association "oh ton - Promotion of Current Music in the Province eV" together with Eckart Beinke and organized numerous concerts with new music in the Weser-Ems district until 1995 and was co-founder and artistic director of the oh ton ensemble - chamber orchestra for new music.

He has been working as a freelance composer, pianist and choir director since 1992 and uses the stage name Schmidt-Mechau . In 1995 he was a speaker at the Vienna Summer Seminar for New Music on a grant from the Foreign Office . From 1997 he worked as an assistant to Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann and supported her with the publication of several books.

As a choir director, he has led various choirs since 1986: he was the founder and director of the JazzDeChor Oldenburg and subsequently led the choir Die Liederlichen, the Justizchor Oldenburg and the choir Die TonCoolen. After moving to Frankfurt am Main in 2014, he has been directing the Frankfurt-West Jazz Choir there since 2015 . In the course of his career as a choir director, Schmidt-Mechau wrote a large number of choir arrangements (approx. 160 arrangements, mainly of jazz, beat, rock, pop, chansons and hits). He also put together a collection of songs from the anti-nuclear movement.

From 2008 to 2013 he was in Oldenburg as the organizer of the concert series "Bach.heute" and from 2014 to 2019 of the concert series "Alte Meister" by cellist Matthias Lorenz . Since 2018 he has written the introductions to the Frankfurt Radio Symphony concerts for the “Society of Friends and Patrons of the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra”.

Schmidt-Mechau now lives in Frankfurt am Main.

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Schmidt-Mechau regards his compositional work as a statement on the conditions and developments in his human and natural environment. His musical language uses contrapuntal means and combines various elements such as tones, noises, scenes, images, language and gestures. However, this does not lead to the conception of a total work of art; the individual elements remain discreet and are often suddenly next to and against one another, e.g. B. in "freed root from memory" or "deer crossing or 'who hung the roaring deer?'". Here he follows Benjamin's idea of ​​a “dialectic in standstill”. When integrating the elements, he works with variation methods adapted from music history, which are achieved through the use of non-linear logics , fuzzy sets and the like. Ä. Be expanded, z. B. in "skin" or "intermediate time". He extends the traditional inversion and cancer processes by including time in a time-spatial rotation, as in "Aposiopesis" and "am on the edge, concentric". The process becomes three-dimensional in “proximity and curvature”.

He often composes structures in which they are played simultaneously, but independently of one another in terms of time and rhythm, or in which sequences of operations are organized with separate processes, such as “Outlines of a We” and “Beacon”.

Schmidt-Mechau also addresses social rituals of perception (e.g. in “Seven Little Movements for Violin, Cello and Piano”). The relationship between the unique and the reproduction is questioned - a larger number of compositions requires a different composition for each performance, some pieces have a limited number of performances - for example, "um Ecken", "Gratwandlung", "Blickwinkel" and "deviating expectation". He also examines the limits and possibilities of openness or closedness in the musical work. Examples of this can be found in “Wrong hiding” or “Don't turn around”.

Schmidt-Mechau's music is mostly reduced and quiet, often interspersed with pauses.

Compositions (selection)

Works for orchestra and ensemble

  • A pipe dream , for speaker, soprano and seven instruments, text by Adam Ważyk (1990)
  • am Rande am, concentric , for percussion, string quintet and orchestra (1990)
  • shimmering dream , for eight cellos (1991)
  • inner burning , for violin and orchestra (1993)
  • Schattenspiegel , for voice and string orchestra, text by Ossip Mandelstam (1994)
  • freed root from memory , for five ensemble groups (1995)
  • Turn into the open , for orchestra (1995)
  • Skin , for eleven wooden window sills in the atrium of the Professorenhaus zu Lingen (1996)
  • Meanwhile , for 3 ensemble groups of 2 to 6 instruments each (2001)
  • Outlines of a We , seven pieces for choir and orchestra, texts by Cyrus Atabay . George W. Bush (2004)
  • so next to each other , for organ and six brass instruments, motto by Ernst Jandl (2009)
  • Don't Turn Around , for four ensemble groups (2009)
  • Stranger Color, Heimlichkeit , for orchestra (2011)
  • Marxgespenster , for baritone and ensemble, text by Anna Seghers (2018)
  • Lines - Knots - Loops , for orchestra (2018)
  • Werden - Wachsen - Wuchern , for orchestra (2019)

Works for choir and voice

  • In January , for four-part mixed choir, text by Paulo Suess (1988)
  • Extrophie , for four sopranos, texts by Benjamin Franklin , Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Maurizio Kagel et al. (1990)
  • in the big in-between, overnight , music in ten variations for mixed choir, percussion, violin, cello and piano (1992)
  • Leuchtfeuer , for mixed choir, texts by Cyrus Atabay (2009)
  • Summer juggling , for mixed choir (2011)
  • different expectation , for female voice (2011)
  • Das Ideal , for voice and piano, text by Kurt Tucholsky (2017)
  • Songs based on Erich Kästner , for voice and piano (2017-18)
  • SLF , for six voices (2018)

Solo works

  • Aposiopesis , for violoncello (1990)
  • Daydream vault , for piano (1990)
  • The Never, the Before and the Maybe , for drums (1992)
  • Morgenlachen , for violoncello, motto by William Shakespeare (1997)
  • Dreierlei , for baroque clarinet, texts by Franz Kafka (2002)
  • Edges, wreaths, clutter , small pieces for piano.
  • Fehlversteck , five musical sketches for a cellist, texts by F. Eckhard Ulrich , Erich Fried , Peter Horst Neumann (2007)
  • Ent-Gegnung , for violoncello, text by WG Sebald (2019)

Chamber music

  • Reduction , for two or four pianos (1988)
  • wo gegen wart, January 15 , for violin and trombone (1991)
  • without reservation , for violin, violoncello and piano (1991)
  • From the black earth of this world , concert cycle of 17 pieces of music for 2 recorders, chitarrone, viola da gamba and harpsichord and 16 texts about the exile by Zafer Şenocak , Erich Fried , et al. (1992)
  • Difference and Encounter , for tenor saxophone and percussion (1994)
  • irrepressibly connected , for cello and accordion (1995)
  • temAmorph , for alto flute, trombone, female voice, percussion and violoncello (1996)
  • Overlap in the Outside , for two percussionists and two pianists (1999)
  • Seven small movements for violin, cello and piano (2001)
  • Tau , for flute and harp, texts by Friedrich Nietzsche , Heinrich Heine and a folk song text (2003)
  • The light and the seclusion , for two violoncellos, texts by Andrzej Stasiuk (2004)
  • Blickwinkel , for cello and piano with pictures by Anna Bohlen (2004)
  • um Ecken , for violin and cello, texts by Karl Kraus , Tomás Eloy Martínez (2004)
  • Private Dialogue , for Trumpet and Piano (2006)
  • Deer crossing or "Who hung up the roaring deer?" , For oboe, clarinet and bassoon, texts by Friedrich Nietzsche (2006)
  • Gratwandlung , for violin and piano, texts by Cyrus Atabay (2009)
  • possible access , for percussion ensemble of 3–6 players, text by Ernst Jandl (2010)
  • Proximity and Curvature , Rondo for the elole piano trio for its tenth anniversary (2011)
  • Schwellenzauber , for string quartet (2014)
  • Lichtklippen , for two violins (2015)
  • If one evening ... , for tenor saxophone, string quartet and piano (2015)

Incidental music

  • Pompinien , incidental music for viola sola, for the play "Pompinien" by Ingeborg von Zadow (1999)
  • Silhouette , incidental music for basset horn in F and tape, to the play "silhouette" of Lilly Axster (2000)
  • Little Men , incidental music for the play "Little Men" by Tiziana Lucattini (2001)

Discography

The CD Palimpsest of the Camerata Moderna includes Schmidt-Mechau's compositions "Spring Malmen" for viola da gamba and harpsichord, "the rose salt" for chitarrone and "mutually disturbed" for 2 recorders, chitarrone, viola da gamba and harpsichord.

Awards and scholarships (selection)

literature

  • Friedemann Schmidt-Mechau: Composition as Reality - Reality as Disorder . in: “Vom Moor aus” - works between landscape and painting material. Painting. Installation. Action. Ars lubecae Lübeck Art Gallery 1989.
  • Werner Matthes: Oldenburg composers in the 6th concert of the State Orchestra, works by Schmidt-Mechau, Poser, Berlioz and Brahms . Nordwest-Zeitung, Oldenburg, February 19, 1992
  • Heiner Schepers: 12 installations + 1 composition = 13 . Edited by Kunstverein Lingen, Buxus Verlag, Lingen 1998. therein: Friedemann Schmidt-Mechau Haut

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Oldenburg culture database: Schmidt-Mechau, Friedemann. Retrieved July 4, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Website of the association, accessed on July 1, 2020 from https://ohton.de/
  3. ↑ Christine Adam: With war drums and peace talks, the newly founded 'oh ton ensemble' presents contemporary music in Osnabrück . Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung from February 14, 1995
  4. ↑ Christiane Maaß: Holes and falling stands, premiere concert of the 'oh ton ensemble' in the Great House of the State Theater . Nordwest-Zeitung from November 14, 1995
  5. ↑ Manfred Klinkebiel : "Delicacies with a special taste, group 'oh ton' spanned a musical arc of time". Nordwest-Zeitung around June 10, 1991
  6. ↑ Die Liederlichen - Choir. Retrieved on July 4, 2020 (German).
  7. ↑ Choir - The Toncoolen. Retrieved July 4, 2020 .
  8. ↑ Frankfurt-West Jazz Choir. Retrieved July 4, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Songs against nuclear power. Retrieved July 4, 2020 .
  10. ^ Homepage Matthias Lorenz, cello. Retrieved July 4, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Walter Benjamin: Das Passagen-Werk, quoted in according to: ders. Collected writings, edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Vol. VI, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main, 1989³. N2a, 3 p. 576, N3.1 p. 577 f. and N10a, 3 p. 595
  12. ↑ Comment on the Stockhausen seminar in Darmstadt 1996 (together with Michael Wendeberg and Andreas Wagner), accessed on July 1, 2020 from http://schmidt-mechau.de/D/Text/Stockhausen-Da1996.htm
  13. ^ Camerata Moderna / Palimpsest. Retrieved July 7, 2020 .
  14. ↑ ARCult Media GmbH: Kulturpreise.de: Art Prize of the city of Cloppenburg. Retrieved July 7, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Schmidt-Mechau, Friedemann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schmidt, Friedemann (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main