Laura Gallati

Laura Gallati (born August 10, 1939 in Näfels GL), née Laura Fischli / Furmanik, is a Swiss musician, pianist and politician. She is considered one of the first feminist parliamentarians in a Swiss cantonal parliament (Lucerne).

life and work

Laura Gallati was born in 1939 in the canton of Glarus as the second of five children. The father was Polish, the mother Swiss.

At the age of 17 Laura Gallati attended the preliminary course at the Zurich School of Applied Arts before studying piano and music theory at the Zurich Conservatory and the Zurich Music Academy from 1958–63 . Hans Eduard Steinbrecher and Adrian Aeschbacher are among her teachers . Even before completing her studies, she gave regular concerts of contemporary music (e.g. in the “Bohémia” gallery in Glarus, the Glarus parish hall and as part of “Jazz and Classic” in Zurich and Basel). 1973-94 she taught at the Immensee high school and at the city music school in Lucerne.

Laura Gallati has been part of the non-conformist left scene in Lucerne since the late 1960s. In the 1970s, together with the architect Marianne Burkhalter, as a board member of the Schweizerischer Werkbund, she organized the series “Verstand und Vernunft”. As an independent candidate, she was elected to the Lucerne Grand Council (cantonal parliament) on the list of progressive organizations in Switzerland (POCH) , to which she was a member from 1982-91. In 1987 she founded the Independent Women List Lucerne (UFL) together with other feminists . 1991–93 she represented the UFL in the Lucerne city parliament and ran for the Lucerne government council.

In her political work, Laura Gallati was mainly involved in the area of ​​spatial and transport planning as well as fundamental questions of social and cultural policy. Her demands included a free, public music school, inner-city Tempo 30 zones and equality institutions - including not only a position for equality for women, but also an analogue position for explicitly dealing with male deficits. Many of these postulates were ridiculed at the time. They are virulent to this day, even if some of them were implemented according to the intention.

Laura Gallati's way of politicizing was often described by the media as “aggressive, loud, excessive and insubordinate”. In 1993, she said goodbye to active politics in a media-effective manner: in her place in Lucerne's city parliament, between the Social Democrats and the Greens, she put a mannequin that, with a wig and black clothing, was reminiscent of herself. Gallati is quoted in the Luzerner Zeitung as saying that the puppet is as one imagines a member of the political caste : "She does not think, does not speak and is well-mannered, so a full member of her association."

Since the 1980s, Laura Gallati has also intensified her experimental musical projects, including a. with the rock vocalist Magda Vogel , the composer Mela Meierhans , the mezzo-soprano Gabriela Stocker, also with the improviser Dorothee Schürch and the jazz pianist Irene Schweizer . This is followed by joint projects and performances with the social scientist, author and later partner Christina Thürmer-Rohr (classical and experimental music for two pianos). In 1993, Gallati received his first teaching assignment at the Technical University of Berlin on the subject of listening habits.

Between 1994 and 2004 Laura Gallati wrote regularly for the column "world of music" in the WOZ Die Wochenzeitung . In 1996 she received the work grant from the Canton of Lucerne for her electro-acoustic composition “Quer zur Zeit”. In the same year, her apartment and studio in Lucerne were completely destroyed by a mudslide. As a result, she moved to Berlin.

In 2003 Gallati and Thürmer-Rohr founded the Forum Akazie 3 association as a “forum for political and musical thinking”. In 2006 she created another place for mainly contemporary music with the monthly «musicology seminar». Laura Gallati has two grown sons. She has lived in Berlin since the mid-1990s.

Excerpt

• 1963 "Oedipus Schnulze's pre-embryonic auntie love", an operatic persiflage
• 1989 "Visible Music", Copy Art about Luigi Nono's "..sofferte onde serene"
• 1990 «Funeral music for Lucerne» for piano and electro-acoustics
• 1991 World premiere of "Triton" for piano by Mela Meierhans
• 1991 «Street Music - a musical political action», together with Mela Meierhans
• 1994 “Mourning Music for Lucerne” for tape and prepared piano
• 1994 «Staying on the topic. Fugues for thinking, fugues for hearing, fugues for seeing ”, on Johann Sebastian Bach's“ Art of Fugue ”and Hannah Arendt's political thinking, together with Christina Thürmer-Rohr
• 1995 Music for Ursula Stalder's exhibition "Strandgut"
• 1995 «in a» for two pianos
• 1995 "Quer zur Zeit - Suite in 4 parts", a collective composition by Christina Thürmer-Rohr , Mela Meierhans and Laura Gallati
• 1996 "Structures" for two pianos, together with Christina Thürmer-Rohr
• 1999 «Gusow lies between Krakow and Berlin», an electro-acoustic study, together with Inge Morgenroth
• 2001 «Palimpsest switched-on Beethoven», together with Inge Morgenroth
• 2004 «Morton Feldman meets Franz Schubert», with Leslie Leon
• 2006 «exile»
• 2008 «stradlab - Stradivari in the laboratory»
• 2009 “With Handel in the Volkspark Halle” for the University of Art and Design Halle / Saale
• 2010 «Layer by Layer», for the International Festival of Women Musicians «As You Like It», Berlin
• 2011 “Penthesilea”, homage to Heinrich von Kleist and Othmar Schoeck, for the Kleist celebration of the Swiss embassy in Berlin
• 2014 Laura Gallati, Fritz Hauser, Tomek Kolczynski, Leslie Leon and Lenka Zupková play Mela Meierhans: phase1_soloduotrio (2014)
• 2015 «Ex tempore», Thomas Noll (Aerophon), Magda Vogel (voice), Laura Gallati (MOOG-Synthesizer)
• 2016 «Entbegrenzung», music for metal
• 2017 «Music from a glass factory»
• 2017 "Reverberation and Reverberation - The Strange Sounds"
• 2018 "Strangeness", for prepared piano
• 2018 «des mouches volantes» floating over Luigi Nono's «... sofferte onde serene», for prepared piano
• 2019 «Durchmess des Raumes» for organ and prepared piano, with Thomas Noll, organ

New pianistic developments since 1998

• Galina Ustvolskaya : all piano sonatas
• Morton Feldman : "For Bunita Marcus" and "Palais de Mari"
• Beat Furrer : the piano work (“Voicelessness”, three piano pieces, “Phasma”)
• John Cage : "Etudes Australes"
• Luciano Berio : "sequence per pianoforte "
• Mela Meierhans : "Piano Studies"
• Arnold Schönberg : "Book of the hanging gardens" and "Pierrot lunaire" (with Magda Vogel and with Leslie Leon)
• "Written down? Improvised?" John Cage and Instant Composing (with Magda Vogel and Leslie Leon)
• Franz Schubert's song cycles "Winterreise", "Schwanengesang" (with Leslie Leon)
• Wolfgang Rihm : Hölderlin Fragments (with Leslie Leon)
• Occupation with Franz Schubert's late piano sonatas

Web links and publications

• Forum Acacia 3: Forum Acacia 3
• Laura Gallati: Palimpsest - an electro-musical examination of the cult of genius and the sonata form. In: Kirsten Beuth (ed.): The jump in the bowl. Artists and theologians in exchange . Centaurus: Herbolzheim 2002.
• Laura Gallati: Unequal and still guardians of the democratic cradle? No thanks! in Harald Hetzel [ed.]: Holes in the cheese. 700 years of the Swiss Confederation. Plain text: Essen 1991, 68–92.
• Laura Gallati: CH91 - Witches' Ride and Oath of Women (PDF) . In: Emanzipation: feminist magazine for critical women 12/9 (1986), pp. 18-20

About Laura Gallati

• Daniela Bühler: With "Quer zur Zeit" off to Berlin. In: Lucerne today, October 26, 1996.
• Hanno Ehrler: I don't like to hold on to myself. The pianist, composer and politician Laura Gallati. Broadcast on August 22, 2015 on Deutschlandfunk.
• haa: Dialogue is imponderable. Thürmer-Rohr and Gallati philosophized in Foyer U3. In: Südwest Presse Tübingen, October 27, 1998.
• Elisabeth Joris: Laura Gallati - Portrait in: Public disputes - Awakening and protest movements. In: Jürg Schmutz, Katja Hürlimann (Ed.): The Canton of Lucerne in the 20th Century. Volume 2, Society, Culture and Religion. Chronos, Zurich 2013, pp. 21–50.
• Gabriele Knapp: About being able to start again and again. Conversations with the musician Laura Gallati. In: Inge Hansen-Schaberg (Ed.): The political becomes personal. Family history (s): Experiences and processing of exile and persecution in the life of the daughters (II). Wuppertal: Arco Wissenschaft 2007.
• Marie-Josée Kuhn: The indomitable stubborn. Portrait of the Lucerne feminist and politician Laura Gallati. In: The weekly newspaper December 24, 1993.
• Sibylle Omlin: mediator of contemporary serious music. In: Zuger Nachrichten, September 17, 1991.
• Waltraud Schwab: Rule is bluff, the politician, essayist, musician Laura Gallati. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 29, 2000.
• Waltraud Schwab: Laura Gallati - not just a musician: in: Blattgold - the monthly overview for women. No. 10/2000, pp. 12-13.
• Waltraud Schwab: Rule is a bluff. In: taz, March 5, 2005.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Waltraud Schwab: Rule is a bluff. The politician, essayist, musician Laura Gallati . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . No. 10/2000 , April 29, 2000, pp. 12-13 .
2. ^ Elisabeth Joris: Public disputes - departure and protest movements . In: Jürg Schmutz, Katja Hürlimann (Ed.): The Canton of Lucerne in the 20th Century . tape 2 , society, culture and religion. Chronos, Zurich 2013, ISBN 978-3-0340-1198-3 , pp. 21-50 .
3. ↑ Sylvia Egli von Matt: "She does not think, does not speak, is well mannered" . Ed .: Luzerner Zeitung. November 27, 1993.
4. ↑ WALTRAUD SCHWAB: Rule is a bluff . In: The daily newspaper: taz . March 5, 2005, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 27 ( taz.de [accessed on November 3, 2019]).
5. ^ ^{A b} Daniela Bühler: With "Quer zur Zeit" joyfully to Berlin . In: Aperitif. The Lucerne entertainment magazine . No. 229 , October 26, 1996.
6. ↑ Daniela Janser: “We have to learn to make friends with this world again and again if we don't want to perish”, interview with Christina Thürmer-Rohr. In: The weekly newspaper. January 30, 2020, accessed March 4, 2020 . 
7. ↑ Mela Meierhans: phase1_soloduotrio - Laura Gallati, Fritz Hauser, Tomek Kolczynski, Leslie Leon, Lenka Zupková | Songs, reviews, credits. Retrieved April 9, 2020 (American English).