Volker Staub

Volker Staub (* 1961 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a German composer , musician and sound artist .

Life

Volker Staub studied piano with Friederike Richter (1981–1985) and composition with Johannes Fritsch (1981–1990) in Darmstadt and Cologne. During his student years he dealt intensively with the work of the composers John Cage and Morton Feldman , as well as the work of Joseph Beuys .

Staub has received numerous grants and awards, including a grant from the German National Academic Foundation , the Bernd Alois Zimmermann grant from the city of Cologne, a graduate grant from the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, grants at the Schreyahn artists' farm , in the Villa Massimo Rome and Villa Aurora Los Angeles . He won prizes at the Forum for Young Composers of the WDR, the composition competition of the Summer Music Days Hitzacker , the Hessian Composition Prize and the Logos Award of the Logos Foundation Gent.

Staub's works have been performed at concerts and radio appearances in numerous European countries, in Israel, the USA, Australia, Japan and Ecuador. His work has so far been documented on five portrait CDs and has been the subject of two television documentaries for WDR and SWR.

Since 1987, Staub has been teaching composition and experimental music to people of all ages and levels of musical education at various institutions in Germany and abroad . He was a founding member and board member of the Frankfurt Society for New Music (FGNM) and is a board member of the Institute for New Music and Music Education in Darmstadt (INMM).

Audio language

Staub's artistic work combines the exploration of sound and tonal and rhythmic structures with the creation of new music. From the beginning his composing was accompanied by the construction of musical instruments. Some have the primary quality of sending sounds, others act as receivers of vibration and sound. Percussion instruments made of wood, skin, metal, stone and glass as well as string instruments and electro-acoustic instruments with discrete or continuous sound properties were created. Some of these instruments, such as an approximately 7 meter long steel string stretched in the room, an arsenal of various motorized and hole sirens and a bass cymbal, became dust of personal means of expression which he himself played in concerts.

With the sound installation Witterungsinstruments (1999–2003), Staub developed a complex sound research laboratory to map energy events in the environment as sound-rhythmic phenomena. The analysis and subsequent transformation of this sound material is increasingly shaping Staub's musical language: its organically shaped rhythm, its harmony, which is often rooted in the splitting of complex individual spectra, its melody, which sometimes develops from infinitely fine nuances of a single pitch and its musical forms that often arise from the superposition of different musical layers or entire pieces of music. He is particularly interested in continuous sound processes, for which he also special instruments, e.g. B. with transformers controlled motor sirens or individual strings up to 70 meters long.

Staub wrote numerous pieces for experimental and traditional instruments, from solo to orchestral works. He realized three music-dance-theaters and several sound installations. In addition to Staub's sound research and observation, traditional compositional methods as well as serial and aleatoric techniques flow into his works. The spectrum of his work ranges from experiments on the fundamentals of sound generation and instrument making, the finding of harmonic and rhythmic reference systems and the development of adequate forms of notation to the composition, rehearsal and performance of his own works.

Works

Orchestra, musical theater (instrumental / vocal)

then still , music-dance-theater, joint composition with Daniel Smutny, for steel strings, cymbal, frame drum, motor sirens, feeds and live electronics (2009-10)
No. 21 , music for Världens Tak, music-dance-theater for sop., Bass., Instrumental ensemble, brass quintet, choir, car horns, steel string installation (1991–93)
No. 17 , music for the Rheinrot project, music-dance-theater for sop., Male vocal quartet, male choir, instrumental ensemble, metal objects, etc. Motor sirens (1989-90)
No. 15 for orchestra (1989)

Large ensemble (instrumental / vocal)

Current for Ensemble (2007)
Eudialyt for string trio, steel strings, motor sirens and weather instruments (2005–2006)
Suarogate for vocal quartet, speaker, instrumental ensemble, steel strings a. Motor sirens (1987-95)

Chamber music (instrumental / vocal)

for Cordatum for sop., alto, bass, Citolla (or Git.), Psalterium (or Zimbalon), Viola da Gamba (or Vcl), frame drum (2010)
for piano No. 43 (2003-09)
for two to play on one drum for large frame drum and two players (2007-08)
2nd string quartet (2007-08)
Northeast for Pos. U. Drumming (2006-07)
Gemini for Klar. and Sop.-Sax. (2006)
First string trio (2005-06)
Perseids for woodwind quintet (2004)
Four pieces for accordion No. 42 (2002)
Concert Tel-Aviv for trombone, steel strings, percussion, motor sirens (2000)
Three solos No. 37 for bottle, pos. And Percussion instrument (Yarrow Rods) (1999)
Vianden for fl., Pos., Steel strings, etc. Percussion instrument (1994-99)
Suarogate , version for flutes, steel strings and percussion instruments (1987-97)
Quartet No. 25 for vocal quartet (1994)
No. 19 for trombone, organ, percussion instrument. u. Motor Sirens (1991)

New percussion instruments

Quartet for metal drums No. 41 (2000–01)
Waldstück No. 24 for 3 tree trunks, rain stick, voice, bird songs (1987-94)
No. 1 to No. 5 for glass bells, wooden u. Felltr. (1984)

Experimental instruments

Reminder for 2 percussionists (24 sound stones) weather instruments and 8 resonance tubes, dedicated to Johannes Fritsch, (2010)
Concerto for steel strings, percussion and weather instruments (1991-2000)
Solo for motor sirens No. 33 (1994–97)
Soft Chants No. 26 for 2 steel strings (1994–97)

Text composition

Typhoon for speakers u. Instruments, poems by Dieter M. Gräf (2004)

Sound installations

Polychord II (2008)
Weather instruments (1998-2002)
Motor Sirens (1990)

Texts

Mechanical musical instruments in Wien Modern 2007: A festival with contemporary music , ed. by Berno Odo Polzer and Thomas Schäfer, Saarbrücken 2007, pp. 35–40
Morton Feldman's Untitled Composition , Cologne 1992
WINDWITNESSING. Sound art and sound-nature research by Leif Brush in networks. New music in the field of tension between science and technology , ed. by Jörn Peter Hiekel, Mainz 2009, pp. 202–228
Chance, hidden order or higher law. Composing in the field of tension between structure and continuity in the formation of meaning. Spirituality in Music Today , ed. by Jörn Peter Hiekel, Mainz 2008, pp. 139–167

literature

Warren Burt: Compositions for Steel Strings, Tree Trunks and Glass Bells , in: Experimental Musical Instruments , Vol. XIII # 3, Nicasio 1999
Michael Eldred : The Quivering of Propriation: A Parallel Way to Music , Section II.4.4 A musical subversion of harmonically logical time (Feldman) www.arte-fact.org 2010
Hans-Jürgen Linke: The work on the divided sound in Frankfurter Rundschau, topic culture, October 13, 2005
Marion Saxer (Ed.): Strings exposed in the beginning, memories of contemporary composers of their first instrumental lessons , Hofheim, 2003, pp. 153–157
Marion Saxer: Staub, Volker in Music in Past and Present , Kassel, 2008
Ernstalbrecht Stiebler : Vianden in the program for the world premiere of the work of the same name, 17th Music Biennale, Berlin 1999
Bernhard Uske: wood, steel, glass. Volker Staub's search for the lost sound in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 2/1999, Mainz 1999
Christian Utz: Sound finding, while listening to Volker Staubs No. 14 parts I and II in the catalog for the festival "Klang ... Zeit", Vienna 1990

Web links

personal data
SURNAME	Dust, Volker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German composer, musician and sound artist
DATE OF BIRTH	1961
PLACE OF BIRTH	Frankfurt am Main