what happens in darmstadt music course

What is the Darmstadt School of music?

Darmstadt School refers to a group of composers who were associated with the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music from the early 1950s to the early 1960s in Darmstadt, Germany, and who shared some aesthetic attitudes. Initially, this included only Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, but others came to be added, …

What is the Darmstadt summer course?

What is the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt?

Which Darmstadt composers should be included in the list of composers?

The courses had two main goals: first, to propagate American political and cultural values as part of the general Allied effort to reeducate the German population in preparation for the establishment of democratic institutions; and second, to provide a meeting place where musicians from the former fascist or fascist-occupied areas of Europe — chiefly …

What was the importance of the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music?

Who started the Darmstadt group?

FESTIVAL

The program involves artists like Ensemble Modern, Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Pamplemousse, Ensemble Linea, Zöllner Roche Duo, Riot Ensemble, Ensemble Adapter, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Apartment House, HYOID, UFA Sextet, Neue Vocalsolisten and works by Julius Aglinskas, Ryoko Akama, Georges Aperghis, Malin Bång, Erika Bell, Louise Bourgeois, Raphaël Cendo, Chaya Czernowin, Tansy Davies, Natacha Diels, Milica Djordjević, Sara Glojnarić, Vitalija Glovackytė, Georg Friedrich Haas, Martin A.

SUMMER ACADEMY

We are fully committed to facilitating as much exchange as possible. But protective measures still have to be maintained, e. g. distancing, fewer people per room, masks where possible, proper ventilation, testing strategies. We are only able to host a smaller group of people here in Darmstadt.

History

Coined by Luigi Nono in his 1958 lecture "Die Entwicklung der Reihentechnik", ), Darmstadt School describes the uncompromisingly serial music written by composers such as Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Karlheinz Stockhausen (the three composers Nono specifically names in his lecture, along with himself), Luciano Berio, Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Niccolò Castiglioni, Franco Evangelisti, Karel Goeyvaerts, Mauricio Kagel, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Giacomo Manzoni, and Henri Pousseur from 1951 to 1961, and even composers who never actually attended Darmstadt, such as Jean Barraqué and Iannis Xenakis.

Background, influences

Composers such as Boulez, Stockhausen, and Nono were writing their music in the aftermath of World War II, during which many composers, such as Richard Strauss, had had their music politicised by the Third Reich.

Criticism

Almost from the outset, the phrase Darmstadt School was used as a belittling term by commentators like Kurt Honolka (a 1962 article is quoted in Boehmer 1987, 43) to describe any music written in an uncompromising style, despite the presence of many composers and schools which forbid serialism and modernism.

Further reading

Attinello, Paul, Christopher Fox, and Martin Iddon (eds.). 2007. Other Darmstadts. Contemporary Music Review 26, no. 1 [thematic issue].

Overview

The Darmstadt School refers to a loose grouping of composers associated with the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt, West Germany beginning in the early 1950s.#N#The summer courses at Darmstadt were founded in 1946 with the intention of rebuilding German musical culture on an international basis in response to the nationalistic and narrow-minded attacks on modern music in Third Reich.

Postwar Europe: The "Zero Hour"

This music of the Darmstadt School was a product of the post-apocalyptic mood shared by many young Europeans in the years after 1945.

Musical language

In technical terms, the composers of the Darmstadt school shared a fundamental orientation in a technique known as serialism . Serialism was seen as the basis for a new, international musical language capable of replacing common-practice tonality, which many composers felt to be obsolete.

Listening to Darmstadt

Stockhausen wrote of feeling that he was "part of a new epoch: and that an epoch which had started hundreds of years ago, even 2,500 years ago with the way of thinking of the ancient Greeks, had finished during the last war." And indeed, for many listeners, this music appears completely divorced from the classical music tradition.

Further reading

Fox, Christopher. 2006. "Darmstadt School." Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy.

Ethnomusicology in the Uncanny Valley: Jennifer Walshe and the age of AI

Jennifer Walshe, vocal extended technique extraordinaire, has been performing and speaking at Darmstadt on and off for nearly 20 years starting in the year 2000. “When I was ten,” she said with a wink during this year’s lecture.

Yours, Mine, Ours: Embracing the Enormity of New Music

When I was ten, I wanted to become a professional dolphin trainer. No joke. I loved going to the zoo to watch the dolphins do tricks, seeing how the trainers bonded and communicated with the animals.

Introducing: Synthetic Skin

10pm in Darmstadt equals electronics. Tonight is no exception – although the performance does have a slightly different premises than previous nights. With its combination of acoustic performance and tape music, Synthetic Skin might just be the highlight of the late night concert series in this second week of the festival.

Introducing: Natacha Diels

A giant butterfly is slowly rising between the seven mountains of Bergen, Norway. Lit by huge floodlights below and the starry night sky above, three green construction cranes are coming to the end of their debut ballet performance.

Introducing: Dance & Music

I ran into Scott, a participant of the Dance & Music workshop, late one night after a concert. His degree is in composition, but he is also a dancer, as well as a violist. Stepping into the workshop’s rehearsal yesterday, I discovered that such hybridity was common practice for this group.