Michael Maierhof

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Michael Paul Maierhof (* 1956 in Fulda ) is a German composer and improviser for new music .

Life

Michael Maierhof studied music and mathematics in Kassel as well as philosophy and art history in Hamburg . The first works were written in 1989 after he started composing through an amateur choir. He has given lectures on his music at Trinity College (Dublin) , at the Mozarteum in Salzburg , at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles , at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing and during the Darmstadt Summer Courses in 2012. Maierhof received the 2008 Composition Prize from State capital Stuttgart and in 2009 the composition prize of the ad libitum competition . In 2011 he was a fellow at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. In 2019 he was awarded the German Music Author's Award in the Composition Ensemble with Electronics category.

Maierhof lives in Hamburg.

music

As a composer and sound researcher, Maierhof develops new material with instrumental and electroacoustic test arrangements and improvisations. He also uses everyday objects such as clothespins, plastic cups, balloons or electric toothbrushes, which can function as instruments themselves. In splitting 2 for cello solo (1999) the instrument is prepared with wooden clothespins. To this end, Maierhof prefers detailed instructions in his scores, in which the preparations and the associated playing techniques are precisely described. In shopping 4 for 3 players (2005/06) there are balloons on which gaffa tape, a wooden clothespin and a household sponge (the product descriptions are also explained in detail in the score). This music is in the tradition of John Cage's idea of ​​the prepared piano and Helmut Lachenmann's Musique concrète instrumentale with extended playing techniques.

Maierhof works with reduction, limiting himself to individual sounds which, with their rich internal structures, turn out to be extremely difficult sound complexes: interferences, lower and overtone spectra, vibration systems and other acoustic-physical phenomena. The sounds are subjected to a compositional microscope. This splitting of sound complexes gives the series of works "splitting" its name, on which Maierhof has been working continuously since 1999.

That Maierhof is concerned with the attentive focus of hidden layers of sound in his compositions can also be seen in the formal design of his music. Like acoustic sculptures, Maierhof exhibits the complex sound complexes, arranging them temporally as an interplay of sound and pause - i.e. H. attentive perception and regeneration - on.

Everyday objects serve to expand the compositional material, but at the same time are also an expression of anchoring art in reality. To deal with his acoustic environment, to dissolve the aesthetic hierarchies between historically grown instruments and profane mass-produced goods when composing, is part of the composer's self-image.

production

His works are performed worldwide. Works like shopping 4 are played by different performers and ensembles. On August 31, 2012 he realized the work EXIT F for ensemble and hot air balloons with the Belgian ensemble Nadar in Sint Niklaas (Belgium). Various interpreters and ensembles - such as Ensemble Nadar, SUONO MOBILE, Ensemble L'ART POUR L'ART, Ensemble Decoder - perform his experimental and often multimedia compositions. Maierhof composed solo pieces a. a. for Sebastian Berweck, Michael Moser, Erik Drescher, Christian Kemper, Mark Lorenz Kysela, Ute Wassermann, Brian Archinal and Birgit Uhler.

In 2004 and 2005 Maierhof composed the music for the audio pieces from Kafka's "Amerika" and "Der Prozess", spoken and conceived by Philipp Hochmair and Andrea Gerk. The concert audio piece “Penthesilea” with his music has been running in Hamburg's Thalia Theater since 2011. In 2003 the first portrait CD "collection_1" was released in collaboration with Christof M. Löser. A second edition "collection # 2" is planned for early 2014 on the London label Migro records.

Maierhof is a cellist in the free improv formations "NORDZUCKER" and the "stark wolkkt" quartet. He is a co-founder of the "Association for Current Music Hamburg" and a founding member of the artists' collective stock11 .

literature

  • Sebastian Berweck: Beyond Pitch Organization: an interview with Michael Maierhof. In: Aaron Cassidy / Aaron Einstond: Noise In And As Music. Huddersfield 2013.
  • Neele Hülcker: Music as an exhibition object . On some aspects of Michael Maierhof's composing. In: POSITIONS. Texts about the current music. Issue 93, Berlin 2012.
  • Jan Kopp: The split sound. To the music of Michael Maierhof. In: MusikTexte. Volume 122, Cologne 2009.
  • Sebastian Berweck: Michael Maierhof , in: Contemporary composers , in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Christof M Löser: SUONO MOBILE-x-fold: Movement in countless sound dimensions , in: CD booklet "Michael Maierhof collection_1"
  2. ↑ Peter Niklas Wilson: Reduction. On the topicality of a musical strategy , Mainz 2003, p. 53ff.
  3. ↑ Michael Maierhof: Anchor in Reality. Current music and the aesthetics of contemporary everyday life , in: POSITIONEN. Texts on current music, issue 71, Berlin 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Maierhof, Michael
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maierhof, Michael Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and improvisation musician
DATE OF BIRTH 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Fulda