Sago - Mainz Academy for Music and Poetry

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Sago ("Mainz Academy for Music and Poetry", previously "Friedberger School for Music and Poetry", songwriting school) is a songwriting school founded in 1989 by Christof Stählin . Until his death in 2015, he invited artists several times a year, mainly between the ages of 18 and 30, to seminars lasting several days , in which he taught the basics of songwriting using a method he developed himself ("SAGO Didactics"). Since Stählin's death, several of his students have continued the school with the same concept.

history

background

Christof Stählin and his instrument, the Vihuela

At the end of the 1980s, there was increasing talk of a downturn, in isolated cases even of the death of the songwriting scene in Germany, which was attributed to an oversaturation effect on the one hand and to the fact that the songwriters had not opposed or from the commercially stronger " New German Wave " a few years earlier on the other could not benefit from their popularity . Christof Stählin himself criticized as early as the 1970s, at the time of the “songwriter wave”, which was mainly supported by the student movement and the movements that resulted from it, a skepticism of further training, if not a general hostility towards education in the songwriting scene. In the period after the student movement, this group concentrated too much on naturalness in the sense of a deliberate dilettantism and the rejection of artistry that was perceived as artificial. Wolfgang Neuss summarized in 1986: "In our latitudes, songwriting is an excuse for not having a joke, not spreading esprit, being stupid, being stubborn, [...]"

During Stählin's lifetime

In April 1989, Christof Stählin's seminar “Rules of Art for Poet Musicians” was offered at the Rendsburg Folk High School (today “ Nordkolleg Rendsburg ”). In his seminar, he wanted to develop philosophical and mythological backgrounds and linguistic knowledge as a source for poetic ideas, convey methods of creative work and work with the students on finished and emerging songs. Only two participants registered for this seminar of the HVH Rendsburg ( Martin Sommerhoff and Herbert Storjohann ); in order to still be able to carry it out, Stählin contacted the Berliner Festspiele , which annually organize a young talent competition for songwriters (then “Meetings of Young Songwriters”, today “ Meetings of Young Music Scene “). They sent some individual prize winners from the 1988 competition to Rendsburg, so that Stählin was able to hold the seminar with a sufficient number of participants. It was at this first meeting that the name "sago" was invented.

Until 1992 the seminar took place regularly in Rendsburg, because most of the participants stayed together for the next meetings. New participants from the Berlin competition came regularly.

In 1992 the city of Friedberg (Bavaria) organized the final concert of the seminar on the mediation of the artist Rose Maier Haid, who is well-known with Stählin . After the seminar days in Rendsburg, the entire seminar and the teacher went to Bavaria. The following year the school moved and from then on called itself "SAGO - Friedberger School for Music and Poetry". The project was funded from the funds of the Kulturförderung der Sparkasse Friedberg and received workrooms in the “archive gallery” on the market square, and later for a short time in Rose Maier Haid's art school KunstWerk. During this time, the songwriting school in Friedberg gradually became a well-known institution.

While the participants were temporarily accommodated on air mattresses in the archive gallery in the first year, the Pallottine monastery in neighboring Ottmaring served as an overnight accommodation from the second year .

This cooperation lasted until 2005, this year a concert took place in the "Unterhaus" in Mainz after the Friedberg seminar . In the following year, Sago was mediated by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Hardeck ( Rhineland-Palatinate Foundation for Culture ) was part of the Rhineland-Palatinate cultural summer and first appeared in the “Villa Musica” in Mainz, the final concerts then took place in the “Lower House”. The working meetings have recently taken place in the Landesmusikakademie at Engers Castle. The move to Mainz led to the name being changed to "SAGO - Mainz Academy for Music and Poetry".

Since 2005 there has been a second regular seminar location in Wasungen, Thuringia . Two annual meetings were established: a meeting in the week before Easter in the Weyenhof in Wasungen and in autumn the seminar in Friedberg, Mainz or in Engers. There, the students meet with the two speakers of the school, Martin Betz and Matthias Binner , as well as exiled schoolmates to work on their songs and study the basics. The Easter seminars are designed to be more open and, in addition to the so-called “instructions”, also offer space for all “Sagonauts” to get to know, meet and exchange ideas.

In addition to the larger seminar meetings, there were regular smaller meetings at different locations, e.g. B. in Tübingen, in Berlin, in the Jugendhof Vlotho or at the Waldeck Castle .

Continuation of the school

In the spring of 2017, after Stählin's death in 2015, his relatives and friends as well as his students founded the “Christof-Stählin-Gesellschaft eV”, which is supposed to look after the artist's estate. The association initiates the processing of the contents of the school, e.g. B. the publication of individual instructions or a more extensive book. The school itself will be continued - as an independent organization - by Martin Betz and Matthias Binner with the involvement of former SAGO graduates. Betz was Stählin's assistant at Sago for many years. The cooperation with the “Kultursommer Rheinland-Pfalz” will also be continued.

Naming

In 1987 Christof Stählin spoke about cabaret in a contribution to the MIMUSE festival in Hanover-Langenhagen. Here he ironically portrayed that a distinction is being made between “great art” and “small art” in Germany, such as between Asia Minor and “Greater Asia”. The cabaret only has a "collecting function". It is like the sago drawer in the parents' kitchen that served as a collecting basin for odds and ends: “Everything that otherwise had no place in the system, i.e. no separate budget title, was now grouped under 'Sago', it would also have 'Varia' can be called 'other' or 'cabaret' ”. Here, “Sago” is already equated with cabaret: “... when there are cabaret days in Emsingen an der Benz, let's go. The Asians Minor must also come to their sago! "

At the first seminar in 1989 in Rendsburg, Stählin once again made the “collective meaning” of the term “cabaret” clear using the example of the sago drawer, whereupon the student Philipp S. Rhaesa suggested that one should call oneself the “artist group SAGO”.

In the following time the term was used more and more consistently by the seminar participants, so that Stählin spoke of "SAGO meetings" or "SAGO seminars" just one year later. Since it was mostly a publicly funded project, but at the same time it was completely free in its design and direction, Sago did not always have a fixed name. In the beginning it was called “Volkshochschul-Seminar”, then it became “Friedberger Schule für Musik und Poesie”, after which Stählin changed the name to “SAGO” together with the Rhineland-Palatinate sponsors. Mainz Academy for Music and Poetry ”.

The term “academy” was already an important point of reference for Stählin in Friedberger's time: the school should be in the tradition of a free gathering of learners and artists, and this in the sense of the Platonic Academy under the direction of a “creative mind”. The current speakers at the school are again using the term “songwriting school”.

Tours and festivals

Sago is a loose group of individual artists, but due to the intensive cooperation and the growing awareness of both the school and individual members, the idea arose to perform together regularly in addition to the SAGO seminars. Concluding concerts of the respective seminar week are part of the program right from the start. Usually the "homework songs" are in the foreground in the first part, whereas in the second part the members choose freely. The final concerts of the Rendsburg period did not yet have a large audience, but in Friedberg they were part of the city's cultural life and, like the final concerts in collaboration with the “Kultursommer” in Rhineland-Palatinate , attracted numerous guests. In 2007 and 2008, Stählin also made tours with around five students each from his academy, mostly also as part of the “Cultural Summer Rhineland-Palatinate” to venues in Rhineland-Palatinate, Berlin and Füssen. Friedberg / Bavaria was also on the itinerary. The last big sago concert took place here in 2008. There were other appearances by the songwriting school in Bern (in "La Cappella") at the end of 2017 or in October 2013 in Tübingen to frame the award ceremony for the Fred and Irmgard Rauch Prize The Whitsun Festival at Waldeck Castle, at which Christof Stählin himself did his had experienced artistic beginnings, had a concert with several Sago graduates from 2011 to 2013.

Sound carrier

On Stählin's 70th birthday, students at the SAGO Academy produced a CD on which they interpret songs by their teacher. The title, “The Gathering of the Isles. Sago sings Stählin ”, based on a spoken text by Stählin from the 1970s. On this CD you can also hear the actress, singer and cabaret artist Maren Kroymann , who Stählin met in Tübingen in the late 1960s. Your musical stage partner Matthias Binner is one of the SAGO speakers today.

Well-known students

Some artists who attended this school were able to celebrate successes on cabaret stages in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. These include, for example, Sebastian Krämer , Bodo Wartke , Dota Kehr , Uta Köbernick , Danny Dziuk , Tom van Hasselt , Max Prosa , Andreas Thiel , Judith Holofernes and Lennart Schilgen . Like their teacher, several graduates received the German Cabaret Prize (Kehr, Wartke, Dziuk, Krämer) or were presented with awards such as the Prix ​​Pantheon or the Salzburg Bull .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. for example: Aragorn Gatter: The castle spirit and the many bards: at a loss? (Or: culture is when you do it anyway). In: musikblatt 1984, issue 6, p. 40
  2. ↑ See aba (author's abbreviation): Poetry and Music. Christof Stählin's song school. In: Augsburger Allgemeine, No. 216, September 19, 1994.
  3. ^ Wolfgang Neuss: songwriter. In: taz 05/20/1986.
  4. ^ Annual program of the Heimvolkshochschule Rendsburg 1988/89, Rendsburg 1988
  5. ↑ 15 years of Mimuse and the consequences - the photo album of the Langenhagener Kleinkunst . Langenhagen 1995, cabaret - the Tübingen cabaret artist Christof Stählin thought for us in 1987, p. 37 ( mimuse.de [PDF; 3.8 MB ; accessed on March 24, 2018]).
  6. ↑ The gathering of the islands - Sago sings steel woman. Text and Ton Records 2013, LC 29751, Brokensilence 12715.