Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann

Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann 1997

Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann (born March 1, 1918 in Oldenburg ; † December 19, 2014 there ) was a German composer , pianist , musicologist and music teacher .

Life

Youth and education

Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann was the youngest of four daughters in a family of craftsmen. She received piano lessons from the age of 6 and later organ lessons. At the age of fifteen she passed the state examination for the office of organist. This was followed by organist activities at the Oldenburg prison and in various parishes, choir director exams and state exams for music education. After the Reich Labor Service in East Prussia and work as a private tutor in Berlin, she got her first job as a piano teacher at the youth music school in Oldenburg in 1943, and at the same time began studying piano in the master class at the Bremen Conservatory .

She married the cabinet maker Gerold Meyer and had a son. She lived in Oldenburg.

Professional career and activities

Her apprenticeship was initially followed by a teaching position in Oldenburg, in which she went beyond the usual framework of piano lessons and improvised experimentally with groups of children. She received inspiration for this from her encounter with Reinhard Pfennig, who taught at the Oldenburg University of Education and analyzed structural principles of the visual arts that Meyer-Denkmann applied to music.

In 1957 she attended the International Summer Courses in Darmstadt for the first time , where she got to know the pianistic peculiarities of new and experimental music from Eduard Steuermann and David Tudor (New York). She also studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Maurizio Kagel and for many years took part regularly in the Darmstadt composition courses for new music (since 1957) and the Cologne courses for new music .

There was a close relationship with John Cage in particular for a long time. She performed many of his compositions herself, with other musicians and with their students, invited him several times to Oldenburg for concerts and workshops, and fundamentally dealt with his musical thinking. A long-standing friendship and working relationship also existed with the composer Dieter Schnebel .

Activity as a pianist

Meyer-Denkmann began an extensive concert career as a pianist with ensembles by Karlheinz Stockhausen , Maurizio Kagel , John Cage and other composers, participated in radio and record productions and played numerous solo concerts in which she performed many piano works of the new music.

Activities as a musicologist and teacher

For many years she regularly produced radio and television programs for Radio Bremen , NDR , WDR , ZDF and others. a., as well as newspaper articles with reports, reviews and essays.

From 1971 she taught at the music academies in Cologne and Düsseldorf , and from 1976 at the music academy in Bremen . In 1975 she received her first teaching position at the University of Oldenburg and from 1984 also at the University of Bremen . She taught at the Oldenburg University until 2004.

In addition, she held numerous courses in Germany, in many European countries as well as in the USA and India. From 1970 onwards she published numerous books, initially mainly on music pedagogical topics. With her last books from 1996, which were created in collaboration with the composer Friedemann Schmidt-Mechau , especially with More Than Just Tones. Aspects of the gestural in new music and in music theater went far beyond that.

In the 1980s she researched and taught at a special school for people with learning disabilities and developed concepts for integrative communication and language promotion, which were incorporated into her last book Language Spoken - Play - Learned.

Music education

“It is important not only to accept and understand musical categories, but also to be able to process them. Only then do they become a personal experience. This productive music-making enables from the beginning of musical instruction to grow into the elements not only of traditional but also of new music. "

On the basis of this knowledge, Meyer-Denkmann developed the basic principles of her music pedagogy analogous to Reinhard Pfennig's work on the visual arts, even before her encounter with new music in Darmstadt in 1957. With her first book Klangexperimente und Gestaltungsversuche im Kinderalter , which was extremely successful and has also been translated into Dutch, English and Greek, she formulated a new music pedagogy based on free, experimental research into the possibilities of sound, using musical structures as well with instrumental and body language movement and expression gestures. In this way children could improvise the structures of new music. Common, self-created music was created through cooperation in the group and their communication. She rejected any form of childish drudgery, especially pedagogically ambitious music or music-making aimed at pure reproduction. The inclusion of technical possibilities of music production in musical experimentation found her particular interest.

With the book Structure and Practice of New Music in Classes , she expanded her method, deepened her insights and analyzes and thus created a broad compendium of experimental and improvisational methods. With her methods she shaped elementary music education to this day.

Musicology

She also processed her practical pedagogical approach scientifically, especially in her book More Than Just Tones. Aspects of the gestural in new music and in musical theater . Here she relies primarily on the work of Vilém Flusser , Roland Barthes , and Bertolt Brecht . and Walter Benjamin . On this basis she developed extensive differentiations of the concept of gesture, in which she sees the physique of making music, the repertoire of movements on the instrument, the structural peculiarities of compositions and their intellectual content connected.

Meyer-Denkmann pursues a different approach, following a statement by Adorno , who formulates: "... in the most recent development the boundaries between the art genres flow into one another, or more precisely: their demarcation lines get frayed ..." and she was concerned with the artistic areas in which Boundaries are crossed, performance , fluxus , music theater , sound installation , mixed media , DJing , interactive media art , etc.

Awards

• Awarded the Dr. phil. hc (University of Oldenburg) 1988.
• Big city seal of the city of Oldenburg 1998
• Culture Prize of the Oldenburg Landscape 2002

Publications (selection)

• Sound experiments and attempts at design in childhood. New ways of a basic musical education . Universal Edition, Vienna 1970 (also in Dutch, English and Greek)
• Structure and practice of new music in the classroom. Experiment and method . Universal Edition, Vienna 1972
• School social work with music and other media . Eres, Lilienthal near Bremen 1979
• Cassette recorder games and tape productions. Models and projects for teaching . Bosse, Regensburg 1984
• Body - gestures - sounds. Improvisation, interpretation and composition of new music on the piano . Pfau, Saarbrücken 1998
• More than just sounds. Aspects of the gestural in new music and in musical theater . Pfau, Saarbrücken 2003
• Border crossings between music, art and the media today . Library and information system of the University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg 2005
• Time segments of my life with new music and music education 1950–2005 . Wolke, Hofheim 2007
• Speak language - play - learn. A communicative language support . BIS, Oldenburg 2009

• Performance Art - An attempt at orientation . (PDF) In: Werner Pütz (Hrsg.): Music and body . Die Blaue Eule, Essen 1990, pp. 166–178.
• Time sections between three cultures: Weimar 1995 . (PDF) Memories from “Zeitschnitte”. Cloud Publishing House, Hofheim 2007

Articles and radio programs are compiled on Meyer-Denkmann's website under Bibliography (see web links)

Lectures

• On the simultaneity of different musical cultures in the 20th century . (PDF) Lecture from January 2003
• Crossings between music, the arts and some aspects of science . (PDF) Lecture from May 2003
• Aspects of the gestural in art and music . (PDF) Lecture from November 2003
• Forms of audio-visual and interactive media art . (PDF); Lecture from April 2004
• Difficulty with new music . (PDF) Lecture from November 2004

literature

• W. Joosen: Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann: Sound experiments and attempts at design in childhood. In: Vlaams Muziektidschrift , Zeitschrift des Algemeen Nederlands Zangverbond, Antwerp, No. 3, 1971, p. 91
• Egon Kraus : Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann: Sound experiments and attempts at design in childhood. In: Music and Education , Issue 1, Schott, Mainz 1971, p. 46
• Jörg Schwenk: The "red series" of the Universal Edition . In: Film-Bild-Ton - magazine for audiovisual means in education, Heering-Verlag, Munich, issue 3, March 1971, pp. 38–41
• Sigrid Abel-Struth: Models for music lessons . In: Musica , Heft 6, Bärenreiter, Kassel 1972, pp. 594-596
• Peter Fuhrmann: untitled . In: German Studies , Section II. Volume VI, No. 2. Edited by the Institute for Scientific Co-Operation, Tübingen 1973
• Klaus Schweizer: New Music in Class . In: Melos , Heft 2, Schott, Mainz March / April 1974, p. 91
• Werner Klüppelholz : On some of the requirements for group improvisation . In: Music and Communication . Issue 1, Eres Edition, Lilienthal-Bremen, November 1978, pp. 15-19
• Siegfried Borris : The aurally pre-shaped child - an upbringing problem . In: Musik und Bildung Heft 11, Schott, Mainz 1979, pp. 662–667
• Walter Piel: Building musical instruments with school children. Comments on the sources in Germany . In: Altenburg, Detlef (ed.): Ars musica, musica scientia . Festschrift Heinrich Hüschen for his sixty-fifth birthday on March 2nd, 1980. Guitar a. Laute-Verlags-Ges., Cologne 1980, pp. 364-368
• Günther Noll: Improvisation in music lessons . In: Music and Education , Issue 2, Schott, Mainz February 1980, pp. 90–92
• Walter Heise : Meyer-Denkmann, G .: Cassette recorder games and tape productions . In: Zeitschrift für Musikpädagogik , Issue 32, Bosse, Regensburg, Nov. 1985, p. 63
• Meyer-Denkmann, Gertrud . In: Siegmund Helms , Reinhard Schneider, Rudolf Weber (Hrsg.): New Lexicon of Music Education . Kassel 1994
• Marion Saxer: Childhood Images and Artistic Concepts: From the 1970s to the Present . In: positions. Contributions to New Music , 39, Berlin May 1999, pp. 14-20
• Magdalene Melchers: "Music is there to be listened to, not to relax" - GMD on the 80th birthday . In: Woman and Music . Issue 49, Bärenreiter, Kassel March 1999, pp. 13-14
• Bernhard Weber: New Music and Mediation . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim / Zurich / New York. 2003

Web links

• Literature by and about Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann in the catalog of the German National Library
• Website for Gertrud Meyer-Denkmann
• Comprehensive biography and bibliography on the website of the Hamburg University of Music and Theater
• Obituary by Claudia Meyer
• Presentation of the educational work with children with a sound example (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ later presented in: Visual Art of the Present - Analysis and Method . Oldenburg: Isensee 1959
2. ↑ Dieter Schnebel wrote forewords on the structure and practice of new music in lessons , on body, gestures, and sounds . Meyer-Denkmann's autobiography Zeitschnitte is dedicated to Dieter Schnebel.
3. ↑ Wergo 60043, DGG 2536018
4. ↑ Jugendhof Vlotho , Remscheid Academy , University of Paderborn , Musikhochschule Freiburg , Hannover University of Music , Music Academy Trossingen , European Piano Congress Leipzig
5. ^ The Netherlands (Groningen and Amsterdam), Austria (Salzburg - Orff Institute ), England, Switzerland ( Kulturmühle in Lützelflüh ), Liechtenstein (Musikhochschule), Italy (Toscana), Portugal ( Goethe Institute Lisbon ) and Greece ( Goethe Institute Athens and Mathey Music School Athens)
6. ↑ Brooklyn
7. ^ Goethe-Institut Mumbay , Goethe-Institut Poona , Goethe-Institut Delhi
8. ^ G. Meyer-Denkmann: Structure and practice of new music in the classroom - experiment and method . Universal Edition, Vienna 1972, p. 70.
9. ↑ see note 1
10. ↑ Vilém Flusser : Gestures. Attempt at phenomenology . Bollmann, Bensheim / Düsseldorf 1993
11. ↑ Roland Barthes : The oncoming and the dull sense . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1990 (= ders .: Critical Essays , Volume 3) and Fragments of a Language of Love . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984
12. ↑ Bertolt Brecht : Correction of old myths . In: ders., Gesammelte Werke [in 20 volumes], ed. in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann. Volume 11. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1967. Writings on the theater . Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1964
13. ↑ Walter Benjamin : Illuminations , ed. by Siegfried Unseld. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1961 (= ders .: Selected writings ). Experiments on Brecht , ed. by Rolf Tiedemann. 7th edition., Suhrkamp Frankfurt am Main 1988. Angelus Novus . Surkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988 (= ders., Selected Writings , Volume 2)
14. ↑ Theodor W. Adorno : The art and the arts . In: Without a mission statement . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1967, p. 158