Friedrich Ferdinand Hommel

Friedrich Ferdinand Hommel (born July 14, 1929 in Würzburg , † November 14, 2011 in Darmstadt ) was a German musicologist.

Life

Friedrich Ferdinand Hommel was born as the son of the philologist Hildebrecht Hommel and his wife Charlotte. Schad born in Würzburg in 1929. After in the Humanities College Heidelberg stored High School , he studied from 1948 to 1956 musicology in Heidelberg and Tübingen and Natural Sciences at the Munich Technical University .

For his early and, above all, sustained interest in all forms of contemporary music, Hommel named the suggestions he received during his school days in lessons with the Heidelberg pianist Alwine Moeslinger, a Berlin master student of Artur Schnabel , who became the first interpreters in the early 1920s of the Donaueschinger Musiktage and afterwards was the duo partner of the cellist Rudolf Hindemith . Likewise the personal acquaintance with Wolfgang Fortner and other members of the artist circle around Georgia Wiedemann and Alexander Mitscherlich . Among the musicologists, it was especially Carl Dahlhaus and the medieval experts Georg Reichert and Jacques Handschin , as well as Rudolf Stephan , who was almost the same age, from common high school in Heidelberg, to whom he owed fundamental insights into this matter. Friedrich Hommel came into contact with journalism in 1960 as a trainee for the features section of the Stuttgarter Zeitung. As the successor to Carl Dahlhaus and on his recommendation, he worked there from 1961 as a music critic, later as editor-in-chief and critic of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and as program manager for serious and popular music at Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden (today Südwestrundfunk). From 1960 to 1964 he was a music critic and head of the music department of the Stuttgarter Zeitung . From 1981 to 1994 he was director of the International Music Institute Darmstadt (IMD). During the years of his activity in Darmstadt, Hommel has considerably expanded the international activities of the institution. For many years the institute represented the Federal Republic of Germany in the World Association of Music Information Centers. In 1985 the central archive of the International Society for New Music (IGNM / ISCM) was set up in Darmstadt. And the first international jazz center in Europe, as the basis of which the city of Darmstadt was able to acquire Joachim-Ernst Berendt's private collections at Hommel's suggestion, was initiated by Friedrich Hommel. In addition, he was a member of numerous specialist juries for many years (including Prix Italia, Berlin Art Prize, DAAD, record edition of the German Music Council "New Music in the Federal Republic of Germany"). While he was in charge of the IMD, John Cage , Iannis Xenakis and Morton Feldman were invited to Darmstadt and thus long-neglected currents were given a forum again. And in the end it was Friedrich Hommel who set up the institute and the holiday courses internationally, opened the gates of the courses wide stylistically and gave all participants the opportunity to present their work in various forums.

Friedrich Hommel was married to Maria del Carmen Hommel. Hommel died in November 2011 at the age of 82.

Honors

• 1994: Johann Heinrich Merck award from the city of Darmstadt.

literature

• The new Grove Dictionary of music and musicians , Vol. 8 - London [u. a.]: Macmillan, 1980
• Michael Custodis: Liberal internationalist. On the death of Friedrich Ferdinand Hommel (1929–2011) , the former head of the Darmstadt International Music Institute , in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , year 2012, issue 2

Individual evidence

1. ^ Obituary notice in the Süddeutsche Zeitung