Werner Pirchner

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Werner Pirchner (born February 13, 1940 in Hall in Tirol ; † August 10, 2001 in Innsbruck ) was an Austrian jazz musician , composer , poet and illustrator.

Live and act

Pirchner began his musical career in jazz, but dealt early on with the contemporary music of the time and its theorists ( Theodor W. Adorno , Arnold Schönberg , Olivier Messiaen and others). From 1963 he was a vibraphonist with the Oscar Klein Quartet. He plays the marimba on the first record of the Vienna Art Orchestra . Together with the guitarist Harry Pepl he appeared in the early 1980s as Pirchner-Pepl-JazzZwio , which was partly expanded to a trio with Adelhard Roidinger as bassist.

In the last 15 years of his life he mainly worked as a composer. In 1973 he published his first long-playing record with a cover he had drawn himself , a half double album , which triggered positive to enthusiastic media coverage in the German-speaking world. He plays a large number of different instruments in the playback, sings self-written songs, alienates familiar templates and mixes, almost always provocatively, styles and sounds. This earned him his reputation as a representative of new folk music and as an author of “critical local music ”.

He then used some of the songs from half the double album in a film that he produced together with Christian Berger in 1974: The Downfall of the Alpine Country . He not only wrote the music but also the lyrics and appeared in the film as a singer and actor. He ironically uses Tyrolean folklore stereotypes, which earned him severe criticism from conservative circles. In 1975 Bert Breit invited him to compose music for a film about Tyrol , which Breit was planning with Otto Grünmandl . This resulted in the string quartet for wind quintet , PWV 15.

Pirchner became known throughout Austria for his sound design for the ORF culture broadcaster Ö1 1994, which was in use until September 2017. In 1995 he composed the incidental music for Hofmannsthal's Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival . Another commission recognized by a large public was the music for the TV break film for the New Year's Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic on January 1, 2000.

Pirchner's multi-layered music combines elements from jazz, entertainment and so-called serious music in an unusual way. From the electronically processed yodel to the obliquely harmonized Schubert, from a homage for John Cage to the parody of the young pilgrims to India and drug users, from the parodied advertising language to socially critical texts that are still valid today, there is a wide range. His works often alternate between immediate vitality and a kind of metamusic that analytically deals with widely used music models. Pirchner started out as an autodidact ; He remained idiosyncratic and in no style cliché until his death. The widow Elfriede Pirchner maintains a website with a performance archive and a list of works.

Awards

Works (selection)

  • PWV 1: "half a double album", 1973
  • PWV 2: " The Downfall of the Alpine Country - Part One ", 1974
  • PWV 5: "Nausea for large orchestras"
  • PWV 9: " Prelude and fiasco for wind orchestra , vibraphone and guitar "
  • PWV 11: "Adrette Duette", 1975
  • PWV 12: "Good News from the Ziller Valley"
  • PWV 13: "Do You Know Emperor Joe?", 1982
  • PWV 14: "Small mass around C - for the good Lord"
  • PWV 15: "String quartet for wind quintet"
  • PWV 18: "Instead of a memorial for my teacher's brother who was murdered in the war because he refused to shoot hostages"
  • PWV 20: "Two War and Peace Choirs"
  • PWV 22: "Firewater Music from The Three Seasons"
  • PWV 23: "Emigrants Symphony"
  • PWV 26: " Stories from the Vienna Woods " - incidental music
  • PWV 29: "Home?"
  • PWV 30: "Shalom?"
  • PWV 31: "Who does the person belong to ...?"
  • PWV 32: " Zwentendorf - Wackersdorf ... a walk! ... to Chernobyl !"
  • PWV 36: Born for Horn
  • PWV 39: "Irrigation of Central Europe"
  • PWV 40: "With FaGottes Help"
  • PWV 44: "Birthdays"
  • PWV 47: " Ein Jedermann " - incidental music
  • PWV 53: "Field, Forest and Meadow Solos" for horn solo
  • PWV 56: "Fourth, almost finished sheet metal quintet"
  • PWV 60: "Notes for the paws"
  • PWV 63: "Today ... was yesterday morning. Today ... tomorrow is yesterday"
  • PWV 66: "Sound Design for Kultur-Radio Österreich 1 "
  • PWV 70: "Incidental music for everyone at the Salzburg Festival on Domplatz or in the Festspielhaus"
  • PWV 74: " Garlic meets Garlic"
  • PWV 75: "Glück und Glas" commissioned work for the opening of the Swarovski Crystal Worlds
  • PWV 79: "Trumpet Concerto for Brass Quintet or The Line of the Eraser"
  • PWV 82: "The composer present (with an open shirt and sneakers) bit with relish something on his chewing gum to the enthusiastic applauding audience"
  • PWV 83: "Experiment about flying ... with or without aids"
  • PWV 87: "Festive trio fanfare ... &: ... Where's the coal?"
  • PWV 100: "100 practical compositions for good orchestras"
  • PWV 124: "New fanfare for the opening of the Wiener Festwochen "
  • PWV 127: "3 clears for clarinet "
  • PWV 129: "The story of the candy, the princess and the creamy cream" - incidental music

Selection discography

  • Half a double album (self-published, 1973)
  • EU (ECM, 1986)
  • A-naa-nas Ba-naa-nas (with Vienna Brass ) (MSI, 1990)
  • Dur (self-published, 1995)

With others

  • "Gegenwind" - Pirchner-Pepl-Jazzzwio (Mood Records, 1980)
  • "Downside" - Adelhard Roidinger, Heinz Sauer, W. Pirchner, H. Pepl and Michael Di Pasqua, (ECM 1982)
  • "Live, Montreux '81" - Pirchner-Pepl-Jazzzwio (Wea Music, 1981)
  • "Werner Pirchner, Harry Pepl, Jack DeJohnette" (ECM, 1983)
  • "Live in Concert Montreux 1981, Innsbruck 1984" - Jazzzwio (Universal Music, 2009) CD + DVD

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Pirchner - PWV 29b | Claus-Christian Schuster. Retrieved October 22, 2018 (German).
  2. Pirchner - PWV 29b | Claus-Christian Schuster. Retrieved October 22, 2018 (German).