Hans Otte (composer)

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Hans Günther Franz Otte (born December 3, 1926 in Plauen ; † December 25, 2007 in Bremen ) was a German composer and pianist .

Life

Otte came from a music-loving pharmacist family and grew up in Dyhernfurth (now Brzeg Dolny ) near Breslau . At the age of five he was already fascinated by the arts, devising dramas and staging them in the family circle on miniature stages they had built themselves.

He received basic pianistic training from Bronisław von Poźniak since the mid-1930s . Since then he has composed piano and instrumental pieces, a piano concerto when he was nine and a symphony 1 when he was 14. At the age of 16 he was drafted into the Reich Labor Service in Czechoslovakia and a year later as a radio operator in the Navy in Kiel, from where he did military service on the Baltic Sea until 1945 under oppressive conditions.

From 1946 on, Otte studied composition with Kurt Rasch at the Musikhochschule in Weimar , conducting with Hermann Abendroth , as well as fine arts and theater at the Stanislawski Drama School. In the same year he won a “Weimar State Prize” for improvisation.

From 1948 to 1950 he continued his studies in Stuttgart in piano with Arno Erfurth and in composition with Johann Nepomuk David . In 1950 he went to Yale University in New Haven and studied composition with Paul Hindemith , then organ with Fernando Germani in Siena , but soon left Italy to develop further as a pianist in Stuttgart. From there he took part in Walter Gieseking's Saarbrücken master classes from 1954 to 1956 . He worked as a piano accompanist, composer and concert pianist; the first record was made in 1955 with the Berlin Philharmonic under Paul Hindemith.

From a study visit to the Villa Massimo in Rome (1959), Radio Bremen engaged Otte as ARD's youngest head of music at the age of 32 . Here, parallel to his own artistic career, he developed an epoch-making activity as a cosmopolitan mediator of music and sound art, with undogmatic, sensual and direct mediation based on the presentation of new, old and cultural ones, especially within the framework of the pro musica antiqua and pro musica nova festival biennials he founded until 1984 different musical art made Otte Bremen one of the top addresses in the music world for many years.

Often against massive resistance of the broadcasting bodies forgave Otte, who always initially little-known composers, artists, theater people, visual artists and philosophers in international exchange with the contemporary head stood, momentous work orders to the new performance practitioners of early music of Safford Cape to Nikolaus Harnoncourt , upgraded such as the creation of more than 100 new works from John Cage to Karlheinz Stockhausen and the European introduction of young American music from La Monte Young to Terry Riley , organized live performances and piano music productions by David Tudor to Herbert Henck , philosophical lectures by Theodor W. Adorno to Ernst Bloch and, not least, initiated a large number of multimedia works by visual artists from Wolf Vostell to Nam June Paik .

On the basis of internalized tradition, moving forward calmly and in amazement into the unknown - this attitude not only characterized Otte's organizational ethos, but also his career as a composer. In his works of the 1950s and 1960s, influenced by the Second Viennese School and serialism , such as his Passages for piano and orchestra (OWV 24, 1966), which were booed at the premiere in Donaueschingen , Otte never renounced the use of consonant sounds, which in the "absolutist new music temples" were ostracized as "politically incorrect design means". (Source?)

As an example, Otte's traditional sense of new sound was revealed in the twelve-part piano cycle Das Buch der Klänge (OWV 42, 1979–1982). Carefully abolishing the European piano tradition, he condensed here - with traces of Schubert , Chopin , Debussy , Ravel , Satie and American minimal music - a refined, constantly flowing synthesis of old and new worlds of sound and form. The Book of Sounds , an almost popular composition for works of contemporary serious music , has been widely distributed around the world to date - in Otte's own recording from 1983. This work, newly recorded by Herbert Henck in 1997, is also being recognized by more and more performers in international concert life.

With his second major piano cycle Book of Hours (OWV 62, 1991–1998) Otte continued the path of integrative opening, this time with an even stronger focus on the “essential, seemingly simple”: Otte's lived dialogue with the Japanese Zen tradition, started almost simultaneously with one Decades of friendship with John Cage, continued during multiple stays in Japan, led the composer to his open, listeners and interpreters (quite in the Cageian sense) "free" sound work, which however does not require aleatoric techniques. Rooted in the air, as it were, the 48 related miniatures in the Book of Hours evoke harmoniously complex “sound plants” despite the almost consistently retained two-part voice. Otte again presented the completed cycle in 2000 in his own recording.

To share the experience of hearing directly with other people, to expose the beauties of the self-referring sound and thus to open horizons for philosophical thinking and spiritual sensations - these are the driving longings that are also associated with Otte's numerous multimedia works. From the archetypically direct sound object breath (OWV KI 1, 1972) to the refined work Namenklang (OWV KI 16, 1995) that transforms speech sound into choral music (OWV KI 16, 1995), Otte has continuously developed this group of works. In formal terms, Ottes use almost 50 sound installations, sculptures, light and sound environments, image series, videos and, last but not least, 17 music theater pieces from a spectrum of artistic design techniques that is extremely broad for one and the same person.

Otte lived in Bremen as a musician and intermedia artist from 1959 and was also active as a radio broadcaster until 1984, organist and pianist until 1999, text and music theater author, sound installer, visual artist and composer. In 1999, Otte was honored by the Bremen University of the Arts with the title of honorary professor for his life's work.

Works

  • On November 20, 2006 the bilingual (German / English) publication Hans Otte - Klang der Klänge / Sound of Sounds (book with DVD / CD) by Ingo Ahmels , published by Schott by Rolf W. Stoll , ISBN 3-7957-0586 -X . In addition to audiovisual documents such as conversations with Hans Otte, Herbert Henck and Hans-Joachim Hespos , the work u. a. Otte's detailed biography, his list of works, a media pool as well as studies on artistic work, in particular the harmonic conception of the composer Otte.
  • CDs with his music are u. a. published on the labels Amiata Records (ARNR 0394), Kuckuck (Celestial Harmonies), ECM and d'c records ( Dacapo ).

literature

  • Alfred Baumgartner: Propylaea World of Music - The Composers - A lexicon in five volumes . tape 4 . Propylaen Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-549-07830-7 , pp. 214 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Otte, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Otte, Hans Günther Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician
DATE OF BIRTH December 3, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Plauen
DATE OF DEATH December 25, 2007
Place of death Bremen