Klaus Netzle

Klaus Netzle (born April 26, 1926 in Munich ; † April 16, 2019 in Munich) was a German composer , musician and visual artist. He has also published his musical productions under the pseudonyms Claude Larson , Carlos Futura , VC People and Gyan Nishabda .

Beginnings

While Netzle was studying composition and singing at the Munich University of Music (graduated in 1951), he founded the folk theater group "Die Altbayrische Spielgruppe", with which he toured small Bavarian towns. After the cultural department of the City of Munich became aware of the group, it engaged them for representative events and congresses. The four-person ensemble “Die Isarspatzen” developed from this. She was discovered by Bayerischer Rundfunk in 1947 and hired her for "Colorful Evenings".

For around 20 years the group released various albums and appeared in films, radio series and on German television stations. Well-known are the series “ Die Weißblaue Drehorgel ”, “Brummel-Gschichten”, “Isarspatzen-Schlagerschau” or the “Frankfurter Wecker” (with Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff ). Klaus Netzle was one of the first to mix Bavarian folklore with modern rhythmic arrangements, which later became common in pop music .

Music expeditions

"The Outsider" (1962-1969)

In 1955, Klaus Netzle founded the music publisher Edition Komet and then worked as a producer . He also founded a studio choir for background recordings in the Munich music scene and started producing musical series in cooperation with Bavarian television . From 1962 he composed the music for his own television series such as "Outsider" for ARD . The 13-part series was only filmed on outdoor locations. While it was still customary to record entertainment programs in the studio at the time, he was breaking new ground with this concept. For example, Klaus Netzle produced B. two of the contributions on cruise ships and thus also satisfied his wanderlust.

"Music Expedition" (1969–1970)

In order to sell his next idea "Music Expedition" to the Bavarian Broadcasting Corporation, a prototype was necessary, which he shot at his own risk in Istanbul . With his friend Frank Forster , he traveled there with a camera and sound equipment, contacted local artists and shot in unusual locations. The episode was successful, whereupon more music films were made in Kenya , Ghana , Congo and South Africa .

South Africa

In 1970 Netzle received an offer from an advertising company in Cape Town to set up and run a recording studio. He then moved to South Africa. While looking for musicians, he came across enormous talents. He took on an English-sounding pseudonym "Claude Larson" and called the studio choir he put together "The Claude Larson Singers". The radio SABC became aware of her, followed by several broadcasts, tours and a dozen studio productions on Gallo Records. In 1976 the "Claude Larson Singers" received the "Sari Award" as the best singing group in South Africa. There were two reasons for the success: As with the "Isarspatzen", Klaus Netzle combined folk music (in this case the Boers ) with modern arrangements and was soon considered to be the innovator of local folklore. On the other hand, he always sensed modern trends - in this case experimental electronic music based on the model of Karlheinz Stockhausen - and of course incorporated them, as in his film music compositions. For example, in 1972 he purchased the first commercial synthesizer " ARP 2600 " and experimented with oscillators and effects devices to add special timbres to his music arrangements. The music for a documentary film about South African landscapes "A world in one country" was awarded the gold medal for the best tourist film music at the international film festival in Cannes .

Elmulab

In 1976, the interest in electronic music set in completely. Netzle was fascinated by the possibility of automating electronic processes in several tracks and producing complete orchestral sounds with synthesizers. In Osaka , he acquired one of the first six prototypes of the MC8 microcomposer from Roland and the then most modern synthesizer, the Roland System 700 . Back in Munich, these devices formed the basis for his own studio for electronic music, called elmulab ("Electronic Music Laboratory") for short . With "Environment" Netzle's first purely synthetically produced album was created. This was followed by trips to Australia, the USA and Japan, where he developed further in this field and also got to know manufacturers of electronic musical instruments such as Bob Moog and Roger Linn . Further technical equipment such as multi-track tape recorders, compressors, reverb devices and a drum computer completed elmulab.

Fairlight

With the success of his first production and technically well equipped, a decade began at the front of electronic music development. He acquired the second prototype of the Fairlight CMI , a music computer developed and produced in Australia, with which you can develop sounds with a light pen on the monitor and collect natural sounds. The inventor of the device, Peter Vogel , brought it to him personally in Munich and drove with him to Linz for the first " Ars Electronica " to be held there. There the Fairlight was recognized as the best future-oriented musical instrument in a competition.

In 1979 Netzle took over the distribution of Fairlight for Europe (except Great Britain), later for the German-speaking area. From then on he imported the Fairlight for other interested composers and gave lectures and workshops on electronic music (including "Ars Electronica" in Linz in 1980 and the 13th Tonmeistertagung in Munich in 1984).

In 1983 the conductor Herbert von Karajan found out about the possibilities of the Fairlight to sample original bells (instead of piano and tubular bells ) for his Salzburg production of "Parzival". Klaus Netzle then programmed the electronic bells at the Easter Festival for two consecutive years .

A series of albums with landscape and meditation music have now been created in Netzle's elmulab studio. The floating electronic sound carpets originally used in this music genre were later joined by repetitive sound patterns in the style of minimal music , which were made possible through the use of sequences. In the mid-1980s, further investments in technical equipment followed (including synclavier ) and large orchestral arrangements were made, e.g. Sometimes also with musicians from the big band scene, such as Georges Delagaye and Delle Haensch . In 1989 he contributed the music to Herbert W. Franke's multimedia performance "Homage to Eadweard Muybridge".

After this epoch - again influenced by technical developments - another series of albums was created. With "World Music", Klaus Netzle returned to his original interest in foreign musical cultures. Klaus Netzle expanded his sound archive with new digital recording devices and traveled to Spain , Morocco , Indonesia , Thailand , South Africa and the Balkans . At the same time he started producing the "Affair" series.

Klaus Netzle's electronic music productions belong to the genre of production music (or library music), which specializes in setting TV and film productions to music, and were mainly published under the Sonoton or Selected Sounds labels.

Path to fine arts

Since the early "music expeditions" at the end of the 1960s, Klaus Netzle also felt familiar with the medium of film. Since the early 1980s at the latest, he has been experimenting with photography and experimental video art , not least after Fairlight had also brought a video computer onto the market. He accompanied the resulting videos with meditative patterns from his music. Stills from these videos not only grace many of his own albums, but were also used for covers by his fellow musicians.

In the further course he dealt with digital image processing . In 1988 he opened his studio in Menorca , where he has since worked as a visual artist. First he produced the album "Taula" and some of his last "Affair" productions at Fairlight, which he then completed in his studio in Munich with the help of his long-time sound engineer Rolf-Theo Schulte. At the beginning of the 1990s, Klaus Netzle turned to painting with a cross-border and cross-genre impulse and created a series of expressive material images in the field of tension between figuration and abstraction. Representative representations and symbolic forms are combined in impasto application of paint with non-art materials such as asphalt, sand or joint putty and found objects from everyday life. The result are pictorial objects of three-dimensional quality, which in their concrete materiality - following on from Art Brut and Arte Povera - break with the illusionistic pictorial tradition.

As in music, Netzle also expressed himself in the visual arts in the openness to the experimental use of new media (photography, video, digital techniques) and the expansion of the image object into a painterly sculpture, taking into account the surrounding architecture and landscape. Since the mid-1990s, Klaus Netzle has shown his works in solo exhibitions in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, South Africa and Switzerland . He also took part in numerous group exhibitions, e.g. B. in Munich at the House of Art.

Netzle was a member of the German Association of Composers and the Professional Association of Visual Artists Munich and Upper Bavaria eV (BBK).

Web links

• Klaus Netzle at Discogs (English)
• Claude Larson at Discogs
• Isarspatzen at Discogs (English)
• Klaus Netzle at Fotocommunity

Individual evidence

1. ↑ https://trauer.sueddeutsche.de/mobil/trauerbeispiel/klaus-netzle
2. ^ Entry "Klaus Netzle" in the composers directory of the German Composers' Association. Retrieved December 26, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Grand Prize Ars Electronica 1979 for Peter Vogel. Retrieved December 26, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Short excerpts from the ORF Documentation about the first Ars Electronica Festival 1979. Accessed December 26, 2018 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Markus Huber: elmulab - website. Retrieved September 10, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Interview with Boris Blank, in: Amazona.de, April 15, 2017 ( https://www.amazona.de/interview-boris-blank-yello-mastermind-teil-2/ )
7. ↑ Klaus Netzle, "Programmierte Electronic Music" (workshop), entry in the catalog for Ars Electronica 1980. http://archive.aec.at/print/showmode/2/
8. ^ Klaus Netzle, The practical application of music computers in the studio, in: Report of the 13th Tonmeistertagung, Munich 1984, 263–269. http://www.musik-for.uni-oldenburg.de/elektronischemusik/literatur.html
9. ^ Jean Baptiste Doerr, Computer Helps Karajan Conduct, in: Bild-Zeitung, April 21, 1980, page 5
10. ↑ Herbert W. Franke, "Hommage an EM" (excerpt from DVD production), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOf-_xg8Ig4
11. ↑ Ralph Hofbauer, Obskuradio Claude Larson, in: 78's (July 26, 2012) http://www.78s.ch/2012/07/26/obskuradio-claude-larson/
12. ^ "Klaus Netzle, un artista polifacético" (Interview with Klaus Netzle, February 9, 2010, in: Menorca diario) https://www.menorca.info/menorca/migracion/2010/02/09/513940/klaus-netzle -artista-polifacetico.html
13. ↑ Klaus Netzle, Circulos (exhibition catalog), Mahon / Menorca 2007 (www.lafortalesamola.com)
14. ^ Gallery of Artists 1977-2014 (Professional Association of Visual Artists Munich and Upper Bavaria eV). (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on August 11, 2018 ; accessed on December 26, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
15. ^ Entry "Klaus Netzle" in the composers directory of the German Composers' Association. Retrieved December 26, 2018 . 
16. ^ List of members of the Professional Association of Visual Artists Munich and Upper Bavaria. Retrieved December 26, 2018 .