Herbert Hübner (editor)

Herbert Hübner (born June 11, 1903 in Bockau , † October 9, 1989 in Hamburg ) was a German radio editor .

Live and act

Herbert Hübner received a wide range of artistic training. In the autumn of 1922 he began basic studies in the fine arts at the Weimar Bauhaus , where he studied with Paul Klee , Walter Gropius , Wassily Kandinsky , Johannes Itten and László Moholy-Nagy . From the spring of 1923 he attended the ceramic workshops in Dornburg, Thuringia . From 1926 to 1928 he studied composition, piano and organ at the Weimar Academy of Music .

He then moved to the University of Jena , where he studied musicology. During his studies he taught music himself, directed choirs and worked as a répétiteur . He also wrote music reviews in which he advocated serious new music and supported modern form of performance. He completed his studies in 1936 with a doctorate on "The Music in the Bismarck Archipelago", which was published in 1938 as a book. He then trained as a sound engineer with Hans Rosbaud in the music department of Radio Frankfurt . From 1938 to 1944 he worked as a sound engineer for the German broadcaster in Berlin .

Shortly after the end of World War II , Hübner got a job at Radio Hamburg , which was under British control. In 1947 he switched to the NWDR and edited its musical night program. At first he designed the program “Von neue Musik”. He tried to explain this art form with sophisticated contributions and examples of modern music. He treated Arnold Schönberg , "La Jeune France" or "The young and youngest".

Since he did not see the night program as suitable to make modern music known to a wider public, he planned a series of public studio concerts. With this "educational-artistic attempt" the radio was supposed to fulfill its cultural mandate and support up-and-coming artists of new music. This is how the new work was created , which was heard for the first time on January 31, 1951 in Studio 10 of the Hamburger Funkhaus.

Concept and meaning of the new plant

With the development of a "free studio character", the concerts differed from usual radio recordings. Until 1957, excerpts from the program were only broadcast with a time delay. As a result, the concept established itself almost without restriction as an experimental form of event. Herbert Hübner tried to show connections between diverse new music and other art forms. Therefore, he also invited speakers on musical aesthetics and art history. These included Ernst Krenek , Luigi Dallapiccola , György Ligeti , Herbert Eimert , Theodor W. Adorno , Leo Schrade , Josef Rufer , Heinrich Strobel and Werner Haftmann . The program also offered space for modern art outside of music. This included abstract puppet theater by Fred Schneckenburger accompanied by a suite of "Yellow and Green" by Bernd Alois Zimmermann , surrealist films and dance performances. The performances were accompanied by artistically designed invitation cards and programs that Bernd Alois Zimmermann worked on for a while.

As part of the program, Huebner tried to provide financially and ideally support to little-known artists he had chosen. On behalf of the NDR, numerous commissioned compositions were created that were performed for the first time in the new work . These included pieces by Pierre Boulez , Bruno Maderna , Luigi Nono , Hans Werner Henze , Mauricio Kagel , Luciano Berio , Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen . Particularly noteworthy were the radio opera Ein Landarzt von Henze in 1951 , the Carré von Stockhausen in 1960 and Aventures by György Ligeti in 1963 . The highlight of the program was the musical premiere of the opera Moses und Aron in the Laeiszhalle in 1954 .

In 1953, Hübner received the Arnold Schönberg Medal for his “exemplary service to contemporary music”. Until his retirement in 1969 he was head of the modern music department at NWDR and NDR. It accompanied a total of 112 broadcasts from the new plant . The manuscript collection of the State and University Library and the Hamburg State Archives keep documents relating to these broadcasts.

literature

• Imke Wendt: Hübnert, Herbert . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 5 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8353-0640-0 , p. 197-198 .