Lilli Friedemann

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lilli Friedemann (born June 17, 1906 in Kiel , † December 20, 1991 in Mölln ) was a German violinist, violist and improviser. The student of Carl Flesch and Paul Hindemith developed the " musical group improvisation " from the mid-1950s . In 1964 she founded the "Ring for Group Improvisation" with the subsequent series of publications "Ring Discussion for Group Improvisation". In 1968 Friedemann became a university lecturer in Hamburg in the subject she created. Her practical experiences and writings are used today in particular in music therapy. Her work “Order without Rule”, on which she worked to the end, remained unfinished. These and the estate of the sound artist Lilli Friedemann contain something worth discovering.

Life

Lilli Friedemann was born in 1906 into an artistic family. The mother painted, the father, a Germanist and teacher at the grammar school, wrote poetry and, as she writes in her memoirs, did so without wanting to publish. She lived through both world wars. Her first violin lessons were given by a violinist who was friends with her mother. The eleven-year-old was already enjoying teaching other children on the violin.

After graduating from high school, she began studying art at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts , but soon moved to Berlin to study music. Her teachers at the music college were the well-known violinist Carl Flesch, to whom she switched after she did not harmonize with his predecessor, a "Nazi" (he called her an "intellectual beast"), and the composer Paul Hindemith in composition. In the "economically difficult time of the 20s" she interrupted her studies by working for several years as a violin teacher at a country school, which she found Hindemith, "who liked me". She became aware of her special educational streak, which she inherited from her father.

After the final exam in Berlin - in order to continue her studies, she had to pass an entrance examination again, as she describes in the memoirs - an artistically important time began for her as a violin teacher in Gdansk at the local music college . From 1940 she published music practical and theoretical works. These and their publishing work in the following years are evidence of lively cooperation with well-known publishers. At the end of the Second World War , Friedemann managed to escape from Danzig on one of the last trains before “the Russians came”. Alone and “with a handcart” that she pulled behind her, she “somehow” made her way to Hameln to her family.

After the Second World War

Friedemann's first stop after the war was a teaching position for violin at the Hanover University of Music . She has given concerts as the leader of an ensemble with new and old music. The violin seemed “too solemn” to her for historical dance music, so she had a historical Rebec (dance master violin ) built especially for her . She used a short-necked baroque violin for the sound recordings of a violin sonata and suite by Johann Jakob Walther (1650-1717), which she recorded with the gambist Johannes Koch and the lutenist Walter Gerwig for Deutsche Grammophon . Friedemann is thus one of the German pioneers of historical performance practice at the time . As Gesine Thomforde writes, little can be learned from her memories of 1988 about her violin repertoire. After this, Lilli Friedemann had a predilection for Johann Sebastian Bach and, as Friedemann himself writes, had particular success with Bach.

Her development to "music without notes", Friedemann's musical transformation and turning away from the traditional music profession towards group improvisation , is described in her memoirs in an unspectacular and understandable way. In it she first describes experiments with music accompanying the theater. She ended her teaching position for violin in Hanover at her own discretion. In 1968 Lilli Friedemann was given a teaching position for the subject group improvisation she had created at the Hamburg University of Music . She taught this practice across Germany. The Hamburg composer and Hindemith student Felicitas Kukuck (1914–2001) was one of the players on the record collective improvisation as a study and design of new music in 1969 .

In 1986 Friedemann founded the ensemble "Ex Tempore", with which she brought musical group improvisation into the concert hall.

Musical group improvisation

"Part of exploring a new area is that you love it before you know where it is going."

- LilliFriedemann : Memories 1988, p. 16

A participant in group improvisation:

"I had never been asked about my own design abilities before, but to my amazement they were there."

With the founding of the ring for group improvisation in Hamburg in 1964, which still exists today, and the series of publications Ring talk for group improvisation - today a journal for theory and practice of improvised music - this way of making music got an international foundation. It drew other institutions such as the Exploratorium Berlin , a center for improvised music and creative music education .

“In group improvisation we don't do what we should, but what we think is right at the moment. And it is not easy to believe something is right and react correctly. That's not absolute freedom, that's concentration [...] "

- Lilli Friedemann : memories

Both at the same time and later as Lilli Friedemann, innovative musicians worked in America who, like her, worked contrary to European musical tradition and broke new ground. Lilli Friedemann's contribution and importance in this environment has yet to be largely determined . The two live records from her improvisation group, for example, which were released by Universal Edition , testify to the creative sound processes .

On the music educational level, Lilli Friedemann has created and written down a variety of ideas and, during her practical musical work with children and adults, created concepts and rules that are implemented in music education and music therapy .

Sound carrier

  • Lilli Friedemann: UE 20 P 007, record on collective improvisation as a study and creation of new music . In: red series , ed. by Franz Blasl and Otto Karl Mathé. Universal Edition 7, 1969.
  • Lilli Friedemann: Record to enter new areas of sound through group improvisation . In: red series , ed. by Franz Blasl. Universal Edition 50, 1973.
  • Early music: (German) gramophone: 2 records (no year), containing: Johann Jakob Walther violin sonata with suite in A major, played by Lilli Friedemann, baroque short-necked violin, Johannes Koch, viol and Walter Gerwig, lute. Date unknown.

Texts for group improvisation

Examples and descriptions of Friedemann's free artistic group improvisation:

  • collective improvisation as studying and creating new music . In: red series universal edition , ed. by Franz Blasl and Otto Karl Mathé. Universal Edition 7, Vienna 1969
  • Entry into new sound areas through group improvisation . In: red series universal edition , ed. by Franz Blasl. Universal Edition 50, Vienna 1973
  • Order without rule (unpublished, unfinished)

Writings by Lilli Friedemann about and with music

Lilli Friedemann worked as a teacher all her life. She created her own teaching material:

  • Violin school to start with . In: Folk music series for music lessons , volume 1, Ragozky Berlin, 1940
  • Group lessons on the violin ( 6 Little Papers on Folk Music Education , No. 3). In: Folk music series for music lessons , 1941
  • Violin school to start with . Schott Music , Mainz 1950
  • Studies Suite (composition). Edition Peters and Collection Litolff , Frankfurt / Main 1955
  • Music primers I and II . Edition Peters, Frankfurt / Main 1956
  • Cheating [and] basket counter dance. Helmut Segler (Ed.) Gustav Bosse Verlag Regensburg 1960
  • Joint improvisation on instruments . Bärenreiter-Verlag , Kassel 1964. With extensive written part
  • Dance duets as a violin exercise . Karl Heinrich Möseler Verlag Wolfenbüttel, 1968
  • Improvising to Christmas carols . Bärenreiter Verlag Kassel, 1968
  • Children play with sounds and tones . Möseler Verlag Wolfenbüttel, 1971. With extensive written part
  • Drumming – dancing – tones: 33 games for young and old . Universal Edition, Vienna c. 1983

Literature about Lilli Friedemann

  • Gesine Thomforde: Lilli Friedemann and its importance for music therapy. A contribution to the history of music therapy after 1945. PDF with memories of Lilli Friedemann, written in 1988 [3] , diploma thesis at the Institute for Music Therapy at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama , 2005
  • MUGI Music and Gender on the Internet [4]
  • See also web links

See also

Women in music

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Since 1928 associate professor at the Berlin Conservatory
  2. ↑ Since 1927 professor for composition at the Berlin Conservatory
  3. ↑ Today, a journal for theory and practice of improvised music , funded by the Lilli Friedemann Foundation.
  4. ↑ Lilli Friedemann: Memories . Mölln 1988 as an "appendix" to the diploma thesis by Gesine Thomforde Lilli Friedemann and its importance for music therapy Hamburg 2005 (PDF).
  5. ↑ Memoirs 1988, p. 52.
  6. ↑ Memoirs 1988, p. 54.
  7. ↑ Compare Thomforde: Diploma thesis 2005 Lilli Friedemann , p. 5 and memories , p. 52.
  8. ↑ Today this institute, founded in 1947, is called Akademia Muzyczna im. Stanisława Moniuszki w Gdańsku .
  9. ↑ See title in the German National Library.
  10. ↑ Memoirs 1988, p. 57.
  11. ↑ Memoirs 1988, p. 58.
  12. ↑ See literature.
  13. ↑ Appendix thesis Thomforde.
  14. ↑ Barbara Gabler: Pedagogical Eros P. 1 (see web links).
  15. ↑ Start page Exploratorium [1]
  16. ↑ Half-year program [2]
  17. ^ Lilli Friedemann Foundation
  18. ↑ Eva Weissweiler in the chapters Contemporary Composers, especially In Search of a Language of Their Own in her book Female Composers from the Middle Ages to the Present 1999.
  19. ^ Eva Weissweiler: Female composers 1999, p. 388 ff.
  20. ↑ For audio examples, see sound carrier.
  21. ↑ See Thomforde p. 8.
personal data
SURNAME Friedemann, Lilli
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German violinist, violist and improviser
DATE OF BIRTH June 17, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Kiel
DATE OF DEATH December 20, 1991
Place of death Mölln