Klaus Runze

Klaus Runze (born July 20, 1930 in Berlin ) is a German pianist , music teacher , author and university professor who calls himself an “intermedia artist” and seeks to combine music with child-friendly pedagogy, art and philosophical reflection.

Career

Runze studied piano, harpsichord and rhythmic education at the State University for Music Berlin (West) from 1948 to 1962, as well as visual design at the University of Fine Arts in 1956 and 1957 , both of which are now Berlin University of the Arts . From 1961 onwards, together with children at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Music School, he developed a music educational concept that focuses on their creativity . As a result, two volumes of his "Piano School for Children" appeared in 1971 and 1973. From 1973 he taught piano, piano didactics and improvisation at the Cologne University of Music , from 1989 also at the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf and the former University of Music Westphalia-Lippe in Dortmund, now Detmold University of Music .

In 1975 Runze appeared with students at the World Congress of Jeunesses Musicales in Paris. In 1976/1977 he was invited to Basel, where he held seminars on "Alternatives in piano lessons" in the Information and Experiments series at the music school of the Music Academy of the City of Basel .

From 1980 to 2000, Runze appeared as an improvisation and performance artist and took part in festivals for new music, combining musical with visual design. In 1998 his contribution Thirty Years of Future-Oriented Beginner Pedagogy in Piano Playing appeared at the annual conference of the European Piano Teachers Association in Graz .

From 2006 to 2014 Runze published a literary-historical trilogy under the title “Under the Black Rainbow”. The three parts of the trilogy ("The Voice of an Un-deceased", "Bübchen's Dream and Trauma" and "Karl Boguslav 1933-1945. Childhood and Youth in the Third Reich") thematize and are based on the life of a family during the Nazi dictatorship on family history and autobiographical retrospective. In addition, Runze published a volume with his own poetry and acted as editor of the poetry volumes of other authors.

In 2010, the Hessischer Rundfunk made a contribution to Runze in the series “My Teacher”.

Piano method

The outer title of the first volume Two Hands - Twelve Keys illustrates Runze's methodical approach to tapping the instrument in terms of key structure and key layout and the 12 tones of an octave (white and black keys) immediately with all fingers. In doing so, sheet music is dispensed with and piano literature and composers are initially disregarded. Rather, the focus is on sounding and realizing the key image with its intervals and, as a principle, the improvisation of sounding movement sequences from the imagination of corresponding animal movements and other sound images.

“Based on the knowledge that notes are not music, but only represent an extremely abstract, rational sign language, the preliminary decision for starting educational work must be not to begin a musical exercise with learning the notes: the development of the musical imagination takes place by grasping and hearing [...] "

- Klaus Runze: From comments and instructions p. 1

The second volume, Spiel mit Noten, does not develop musical notation on the basis of piano pieces, but rather plays with sounds of both tonal , fundamental melodies and new music ; The mirror image of the hands and the notation is intended to clarify the relationship between the two piano clefs (G clef on the right, F clef on the left).

Fonts

The piano as a medium for all-round early education. In: Music and Education. Journal for Theory and Practice of Music Education No. 67, Schott-Verlag , Mainz 1971
Two hands - twelve keys: the modern teaching tool for early beginnings on the piano. Volume 1: A book with pictures for little pianists - performance book without notes Schott-Verlag, Mainz 1971 (2nd, revised edition 1982, ISBN 979-0-001-06531-3 )
Two hands - twelve keys: the modern teaching tool for early beginnings on the piano. Volume 2. Playing with notes. Schott-Verlag, Mainz 1973 (2nd, revised edition 1984, ISBN 979-0001-06703-4 )
Alternatives to piano lessons. Music Academy Basel, 1976
Playing the piano as improvisation. About the seminars held at the music school of the Basel Music Academy. Printed by the Music Academy of the City of Basel in 1979
Gesture and language in instrumental play. In: Neuland - Approaches to Contemporary Music. Yearbook, Volume 3 1982/83, Ed. Herbert Henck, ISBN 3-922875-04-1
Two hands - twelve keys: the modern teaching tool for early beginnings on the piano. Teachers' band. Revised and expanded edition. Schott-Verlag, Mainz 1984 ISBN 3-795-72705-7
Karl-Boguslav 1933-45. Childhood and youth in III. Rich, documented and traced by his brother . Edition archive of contemporary witnesses. Monsenstein and Vannerdat publishers. Münster 2007. ISBN 978-3-86582-414-1
In the shadow of the sea anemone. Poems from the fifties with some hand drawings from that time . The little library of poetry. Monsenstein and Vannerdat publishers. Münster 2010, ISBN 978-3-86991-125-0 .
Under the black rainbow. Biographical episodes from the time of the "brown soaked earth" (Edition Octopus). Monsenstein and Vannerdat publishers. Münster 2014. ISBN 978-3-95645-332-8
Octavia Runze [author], Klaus Runze [Hrsg.]: Amazonenritt - Gedichte 1915 to 1962. Verlag Monsenstein and Vannerdat. Edition archive of contemporary witnesses. Münster 2010. ISBN 978-3-86991-057-4
Otto de Grahl [author], Klaus Runze [Hrsg.]: Time robbery - poems between Minnesang and morality. The little library of poetry. Monsenstein and Vannerdat publishers. Münster 2011. ISBN 978-3-86991-284-4
Octavia Sacuntala Runze [author], Klaus Runze [Hrsg.]: Stories and fairy tales 1915-1917. Verlag Monsenstein and Vannerdat. Münster 2013. ISBN 978-3-86991-969-0

literature

Sabine Schutte : Two models of early musical education (comparison of early musical education of the VdM with Runze's two hands - twelve keys ), 1971

Web links

Klaus Runze website
Klaus Runze in the German Composers Archive
Klaus Runze - Intermedia Artist Short text on his view of music and painting

Remarks

↑ Self-reported on Runze's website .
↑ Runze's report on his appearance “Animation allemagne” together with Rosemarie Krafft appeared in: Neue Musikzeitung , December 1975 / January 1976, p. 24; How the bat teaches hearing, improvisation as an impulse for playing an instrument - structure and emotion.
↑ See text "Radio broadcast from December 14, 2010 in Hessischer Rundfunk [...] The pedagogue, pianist and artist Klaus Runze. Presented by his student Johannes S. Sistermanns “on Runze's website
↑ The graphic design of the title pages of both piano school volumes comes from children.
↑ See the review of volume I by Reinhold Schmidt on Runze's website
↑ There are piano schools that start with a finger or limit themselves to the white keys.
↑ See review of Vol. II by Fritz Emonts on Runze's website
↑ The hands start from a central (imaginary) note line (= C 1) in the middle, from which the notes go up into the area of the treble clef (G, right hand) and down into that of the bass clef (F, left hand ) to lead; a system to locate both keys / hands at the same time; this was known for a long time, but was applied particularly consistently by Runze and in particular the symmetry of the keys (3 white / 2 black - 3 black / 2 white) and the use of the mirror-image arrangement of the hands in parallel and countermovement deepened. Some things also spread in later piano schools, such as the stimulation through pictures of keys and animals.

Individual evidence

↑ New Lexicon of Music Education. Person part. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg 2001.
↑ Klaus Runze: Under the Black Rainbow. Biographical episodes from the time of the "brown soaked earth". Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2014, ISBN 978-3-95645-332-8 .

personal data
SURNAME	Runze, Klaus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German pianist, intermedia artist, music teacher, author and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH	July 20, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin

[1] Self-reported on Runze's website .

[3] Runze's report on his appearance “Animation allemagne” together with Rosemarie Krafft appeared in: Neue Musikzeitung , December 1975 / January 1976, p. 24; How the bat teaches hearing, improvisation as an impulse for playing an instrument - structure and emotion.

[5] See text "Radio broadcast from December 14, 2010 in Hessischer Rundfunk [...] The pedagogue, pianist and artist Klaus Runze. Presented by his student Johannes S. Sistermanns “on Runze's website

[6] The graphic design of the title pages of both piano school volumes comes from children.

[7] See the review of volume I by Reinhold Schmidt on Runze's website

[8] There are piano schools that start with a finger or limit themselves to the white keys.

[9] See review of Vol. II by Fritz Emonts on Runze's website

[10] The hands start from a central (imaginary) note line (= C 1) in the middle, from which the notes go up into the area of the treble clef (G, right hand) and down into that of the bass clef (F, left hand ) to lead; a system to locate both keys / hands at the same time; this was known for a long time, but was applied particularly consistently by Runze and in particular the symmetry of the keys (3 white / 2 black - 3 black / 2 white) and the use of the mirror-image arrangement of the hands in parallel and countermovement deepened. Some things also spread in later piano schools, such as the stimulation through pictures of keys and animals.

[2] New Lexicon of Music Education. Person part. Gustav Bosse Verlag, Regensburg 2001.

[4] Klaus Runze: Under the Black Rainbow. Biographical episodes from the time of the "brown soaked earth". Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2014, ISBN 978-3-95645-332-8 .