cultural clashes_
thoughts on the Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2006_
In the 1950s Cage was generally highly critical of the European school, and this stance remained unchanged in his 1990 lectures. Cage still believed purpose of music is "to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences."2 His last Darmstadt lectures were simply constructed, containing mere word games and mesostics. He even described his daily routine:
I water the plants . . . answer the mail and the telephone . . . [and] some days I don't write music. I do graphical work or literary work. I also shop and cook my version of macrobiotic food. I like to play chess in the later afternoon. I no longer drink tea or coffee or alcohol. I use chinese herbs and acupuncture . . .2
Suitably shocking his Central-European colleagues to their cerebral roots, he offered little to say about his music, more around it. In effect, Cage had stripped away the unwritten code of Darmstadt.3 But it is a funny place—being an anarchist just makes you more Darmstadtian.
In the concerts of 2006, this anarchist trait was peculiarly rampant. It appeared that selected works had little to do with quality (if that really matters anymore) but were included for their "shock value", or for political reasons. This made concert highlights particularly easy to judge, as there were not many: Lachenmann's intertwining concertini (2005) and his string quartets impressed, as did Furrer's older work still (1998), Aperghis' crowd favourite Le Corps à Corps (1978), Mark André's ...ALS... (2001), Reudenbach's quiet musings in STÜCK=WERK (2006) and Wolfgang Rihm's deep Grund-Riss (2006).
The highlight for me was Klaus Huber's wonderfully spiritual and innovative epic à l'âme de déscendre de sa monture et marcher sur ses pieds de soie... (2004), a setting of fragments of "Le Monde Diplomatique" by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. His chilling soundworld was a call to arms against sleepy lacklustre postmodernism.
Some participants' works were also selected for concerts, but most were not well received. The American-Hungarian Dániel Péter Biró was probably hardest hit: his Mishpatim — Laws - Version 2 (2006) was too cerebral even for this new-music audience. He found himself (politely) booed off stage. There was simply too much of an active search for that elusive Central-European stamp of approval.
But this was serious business. Combined with the listening forums and three days of 9.00am-5.00pm participant concerts, there were scholarships to be won.
The coveted Kranichsteiner Preis for composition was awarded this year to Estonian Tatjana Kozlova and German Robin Hoffmann. Kozlova was a surprise choice: her ensemble work, Circles (2004), while exhibiting both a formidable technique and colourful orchestration, had strong undertones of Geörgy Ligeti and the Eastern European school.
Hoffmann's work Locken (2006), a difficultly-transcribed work for seven players armed with Black Grouse bird whistles, tossed different mating calls around a half circle in a game of lure and deception. Mid-work, some whistles were exchanged Sigfried Idyll-style for bird-like clarinet solos in a strange use of the expected cliché.
The public expressed mixed reactions concerning the decisions.
Nevertheless, this super-extreme-new-music-rush that is Darmstadt leaves an overwhelming impression. If the high-paced, scholarly approach doesn't convince you, then that little composer-nobody from Mexico will. It is a wonderful arena for networking and hearing new music from around the world.
And if you're up to it, you can still play the game, put that music on the table, get noticed and get that gig. But to be "liked" in postmodern Darmstadt has got just that much harder: tightrope-walking between intellectualist and anarchist somehow impresses little these days. 
© Daniel Salecich, April 2007.
1 Lachenmann, Helmut. Musik als existentielle Erfahrung. Häusler, Josef (Ed.), Wiesbaden:Breitkopf & Härtel, 1996.
2 Ästhetik und Komposition Zur Aktualität der Darmstädter Ferienkursarbeit. Borio, Gianmario and Mosch, Ulrich (Ed.), Mainz:Schott, 1994.
3 See John Cage's "Lecture on Nothing" and "Lecture on Something" in
Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1961.
External links
- Internationale Ferienkurse für neue Musik | IRCAM
Marc André | Georges Aperghis | John Cage | Beat Furrer | Adriana Hölzsky | Robin Hoffmann | Toshio Hosokawa | Klaus Huber | Tatjana Kozlova | Helmut Lachenmann | Klaus Lang | Dieter Mack | Manos Tsangaris | Michael Reudenbach |