Urs Frauchiger

Urs Frauchiger (born September 17, 1936 in Mungnau im Emmental , Canton Bern ) is a Swiss cellist , music theorist , writer and author . After decades of work in music education , he sometimes expresses very critical views on aesthetic and social issues that are directed against the prevailing conditions, and advocates a change in music education .

Life

Frauchiger is a cellist by training, trained at the University of Music (Basel) . He played the cello for 20 years.

He was general secretary of the European music academies, honorary professor at the University of Bern. From 1970 he was in charge of the music department in the Studio Bern of the German-speaking Swiss Radio, and in 1977 he was elected director of the Conservatory and Music Academy in Bern. From 1992 to 1997 he headed the Swiss cultural foundation Pro Helvetia , based in Zurich.

Urs Frauchiger also works as an important mediator of music in various media and as a juror in international music competitions (e.g. " Concours international d'exécution musicale de Genève " and "CREDIT SUISSE GROUP Young Artists Award")

Theories

Frauchiger thinks that human hearing has generally deteriorated. As an example, he cites a newspaper report according to which a submarine was only firing at metallic garbage on the seabed in Sweden because the crew could no longer hear the water-borne sounders and it is difficult to find recruits whose hearing works well . Frauchiger has no military concerns, but only takes this newspaper report as evidence. He remarks that the alarm is raised about the damaged hearing only when the military capability suffers.

In this context, Frauchiger differentiates between the purely physical ability to hear and the knowledge to hear. He claims that there are people who pass every hearing test at the doctor's with shine, but still do not hear well. Furthermore, the young people are not hearing impaired because of the disco music, but rather they hear disco music because they were not taught to listen. In their “ghettos” of stuffy disco music, they only set themselves apart from the noise of the others. If they couldn't have it quiet, they wanted to at least hear their own noise to separate themselves from the other noise.

Frauchiger cites a prophecy by Arthur Honegger that one day people would no longer be able to distinguish half tones from whole tones . In general he sees a loss of hearing and reception, instead people sent more and more. He goes even further and believes that the desire to hear is related to whether one has ever heard tones of love. Anyone who has heard such will also want to hear them in the future.

Works

Fonts

• " Mani Matter ", Sudelhefte, Benziger, Zurich, 1974
• "Mani Matter", Rumpelbuch, Benziger, Zurich, 1976
• “Rajane, angel and triangle. Musical Legends from Paradise Lost ”, 1986
• “Burned-out people do not give off any warmth. Plea for a self-confident culture ”, 1988
• "Äuä de scho. Zyt / losi Täggscht. Dialect songs, texts from the DRS -Zytlupe and a " Schreckmümpfeli ", 1989
• “ Talking to Mozart ”, 1990
• “Switzerland”, Departure from Delay, Weltwoche, Zurich, 1991
• “What the hell is wrong with the music? A kind of music sociology for connoisseurs and lovers ”, 1981/1982
• “The Return of the Muses”, lecture, University Press Konstanz, 1992
• with Hans A Lüthy , Jura Brüschweiler , and Oskar Bätschmann : “ Ferdinand Hodler . Views and Visions ", 1994
• “Focus on Switzerland”, NZZ , Zurich 1995
• “Encounters with Yehudi Menuhin ”, Krebser, Thun 1996
• "The New Switzerland", The Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship Palo Alto, 1996
• “Sound waves”, on the history of radio. Lecture, Chronos, Zurich, 1996
• "From landscape garden to garden landscape", ETH University Publishing House, 1996
• “Culture as an obligation”, NZZ, Zurich, 1996
• "... on the literary loom ...", Ulrico Hoepli NZZ, 1997
• “Personal development through music education?”, Lecture. Chronos, 1997
• “Swiss, Made”, Switzerland in exchange with the world, Scheidegger and Spiess, Zurich, 1998
• "Wilderness Light", Switzerland Rediscovered, Stemmle, New York, 1998
• with Max Schmid : “Where the mountains were born. Switzerland photographed ”, 1998
• “Draft Switzerland. Incitement to cultural rowdiness ", Ammann, 2000
• with François DeCapitani , Roman Brotbeck , and Gerhard Anselm : “Swiss tones. Switzerland in the mirror of music ”, 2000
• “Your own tone. Conversations on the Art of Violin Playing ”, 2000
• “Swiss tones”, Switzerland in the mirror of music. Lecture, Chronos, 2000
• "World art in the country", here + now, Baden 2000
• with Jutta Limbach , Wolfgang Huber , Ruth Dreifuss : “Is the rule of law also a state of justice? Interdisciplinary series of presentations at the University of Basel in the 1998/1999 winter semester. ”In collaboration with the“ Human Foundation ”, 2000
• “Ich”, book about the festival. Stroemfeld, 2003
• “Music and Medicine”, Two Arts in Dialog, Chronos, Zurich, 2003
• “My Mozart”, essays. Huber, 2005
• "Contemplating the Moon". Stories. Huber, 2006.
• Back then, right at the beginning, Huber 2010
• Mani Matter. The Cambridge Notebook, Zytglogge 2011
• you peoples hear !, Huber 2011
• Homesickness for freedom. Feedback to Hermann Hesse. Klöpfer and Meyer 2012
• Do you know the poem. In dialogue with poems. With Erwin Messmer, Offizin 2015
• Blog www.urs-frauchiger.ch from 2017
• What on earth are we supposed to die of? A Plea for Life and Death, eighteen-eleven, 2017

Radio plays / radio broadcasts

• “Top class classics”, broadcast: Swiss Radio DRS and foreign stations, 1974–1980
• “Would it be?” Broadcast: 1980–1987
• "Manufactory", broadcast: 1988–1990

TV / film / video

• "Great Hour Philosophy 1999"
• “Introductions to Concerto grosso”, produced: 1995–1997
• "Mani Matter - Why are you so sad?" (Actor), 2002

literature

• “Personalities in Bern”, Emmentaler Druck, 1987
• "Swiss Lexicon", Lucerne, 1991
• “Ingenious lateral thinker celebrates his sixtieth”, sda, 1996
• "Author / in the criticism: Willi Schmid in: Laudation for the award of the Paul Haupt-Preis", 1997
• He will be 70 in NZZ 2006
• Urs Frauchiger will be 80 in BZ 2016

Web links

• Literature by and about Urs Frauchiger in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry about Urs Frauchiger in the lexicon of the Association of Authors of Switzerland
• Interview with Urs Frauchiger in the NZZ Folio magazine