pro musica nova

pro musica nova was the name of a festival for new music of the ARD broadcaster Radio Bremen , which was founded in 1958 by Hans Otte , the then main department head music.

Since 1960 pro musica nova has been carried out by Radio Bremen in alternation with its counterpart pro musica antiqua . The two biennials owe their names to the Brussels ensemble Pro Musica Antiqua of the conductor Safford Cape , which had been experimenting with historical performance practice since the 1930s and documented this, for example, for the archive production of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft .

The aim of these festivals was to bring the no longer known or nonexistent works of ancient and contemporary music closer to the public. Hans Otte commissioned hundreds of compositions from then completely unknown composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen , John Cage , Mauricio Kagel , György Ligeti , Terry Riley , Lamonte Young , Conlon Nancarrow or Hans-Joachim Hespos , often against the fierce resistance of the radio committees . Specialists in early music who became famous later, such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt , also received a working forum, as did important performers such as Herbert Henck , David Tudor and Herbert Tachezi .

The management of the Bremen radio station ended both biennials in 2001. Its founder Otte, who consciously and as far as possible renounced his own taste preferences in his program policy in order to enable and demonstrate the broadest development within art, had directed the pro musica antiqua and pro musica nova festivals for almost a quarter of a century until 1984. Important artists from the most varied of “factions” unanimously rate Otte's effect as “epoch-making”.

literature

• Rüdiger Weißbach: radio and new music. An analysis of the promotion of contemporary music by public broadcasters . History of pro musica nova up to 1984, Verlag Barbara Weißbach, Dortmund 1986, ISBN 978-3-924100-04-9 .