The Austrian Music Council (ÖMR) writes that the situation at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna shows how urgently an expansion of training capacities is needed: Austria's largest music university can accept around 45 new students per year in the music education teacher training course. However, there is already a shortage of around 300 qualified music teachers for new secondary schools in Vienna and Lower Austria.

As an immediate measure, a new Master's degree course was launched at the Vienna University of Music in October, which trains lateral entrants with previous artistic knowledge and professional experience to become music teachers for secondary schools. However, this is by no means sufficient to ensure the quantity and quality of basic music education at schools in Austria, writes the ÖMR.

Since a reform entitled "PädagogInnen-Bildung Neu", the training of music teachers in Austria is to take place in close cooperation between teacher training colleges and music universities. In practice, however, implementation has been slow according to the ÖMR. The necessary harmonization of curricula and structures made the negotiation of cooperation agreements a time-consuming challenge.

315,000 francs have been earmarked to support cultural institutions of cantonal importance. In addition to the music institutions, the Appenzell Cultural Conference, the Ausserrhodische Kulturstiftung, Heimatschutz Appenzell Ausserrhoden and the Schlesinger Foundation are also supported. In addition, from 2018 the Herisau chair factory will be supported with an annual operating contribution by means of a performance agreement.

The performance agreements with the four institutions outside the canton, which are of particular importance for the cultural life of Appenzell Ausserrhoden and for which a total of CHF 24,000 is spent annually, will also be continued. These are the Museum im Lagerhaus St. Gallen, Nextex St.Gallen, art-tv.ch and bandXost.

The existing service agreements for the libraries will be renewed. CHF 60,000 is available annually for this purpose, which will be divided equally between the four libraries in Herisau, Teufen, Speicher-Trogen and Heiden/Grub.

A total of CHF 638,000 per year flows into the museums from the Cultural Fund. The following institutions are supported with an operating contribution: The Appenzell Customs Museum in Urnäsch, the Appenzell Folklore Museum in Stein, the Herisau Museum, the Grubenmann Museum in Teufen, the Henry Dunant Museum in Heiden and the Museum of Life Stories in Speicher. The service agreement with the Foundation for Appenzell Folklore will also be renewed, while funding for museum coordination will be reduced slightly.
 

Doctoral candidates who completed their doctorate between January 1, 2016 and December 31, 2017, including the defense, are eligible to apply. The application deadline is March 20. Details on the application conditions can be found at www.smg-ssm.ch/de/smg/News-2018/03-01-2018.html

In 2009, the Swiss Music Research Society awarded the prize named after the Moscow-born Swiss musicologist and organist Jacques Handschin (1886-1955) for the first time. The first winner was the Belgian musicologist Bruno Forment. Giovanni Zanovello won it in 2011, Dóra Kiss in 2014 and Angela Fiore in 2016.

The prize is financed by funds bequeathed to the SMG in her will by the Basel music historian Marta Walter (1896-1961). This legacy also allows the creation of the Glarean Prize for Music Research, which was awarded for the first time in 2007.

We creative artists - musicians, actors, authors, literary translators, filmmakers, cabaret artists, speakers, dancers - whether amateurs or professionals - stand up for a culturally diverse Switzerland.

We want a diverse cultural landscape
The No Billag initiative wants to break up the SRG. The existence of 13 regional television stations and 21 local radio stations would also be threatened. This not only calls into question the free formation of opinion, but also Switzerland's cultural tradition: from folk music to techno, from "Bestatter" to feature films, from crime thrillers to humor festivals.

One thing is crystal clear: purely advertising-financed stations have a massively smaller share of Swiss music than SRG and other fee-financed private radio stations. Genres such as classical music, folk music, jazz or rock would no longer take place. SRG is also an existentially important partner for film and documentary production in Switzerland.

With 146 projects, the music category leads the ranking of funding areas represented, followed by the society/socioculture (65 projects), visual arts (56 projects), stage (49 projects) and film (44 projects) categories. The campaign with the highest contribution was an album production by the band Bianca Story, which raised 91,662 euros from 625 supporters.

Of the 361 projects listed on the channel to date, 273, or 76%, have been successfully funded. This is well above the overall average for all Wemakeit projects, which is 63%. The average amount raised through crowdfunding for the Basel channel is 8942 francs. The average contribution per supporter is CHF 146, which is above average by national and international standards.

In 112 projects, the initiators even managed to raise more than 110% of the original target amount. The city attributes the fact that the Basel region was able to achieve such a top position in the statistics to the cantonal start-up support and advice.

Nadja Räss graduated from the Zurich University of the Arts with Kathrin Graf in 2005 as a singing teacher and has since taught mainly in the field of folk music, since 2009 in her own Yodel Academy. She not only interprets new - mainly her own - compositions, but also sings various types of Swiss natural yodel and yodel songs that have been handed down orally and in writing. From the 2018/2019 academic year, she will be teaching the new major subject "Yodelling" at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Sarah Buechi completed her jazz studies at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in 2007 with two distinctions. She studied Indian music in Bangalore for one and a half years. From 2008 to 2012, she worked as a lecturer at the Newpark Music Center in Dublin and studied at the Complete Vocal Institute in Copenhagen from 2012 to 2015. She is currently active with her quartet, the duo "Animata" and the "Christoph Stiefel Septett".
 

The completely revised Cultural Promotion Act, which comes into force on January 1, 2018 together with the new Cultural Heritage Act, anchors the division of tasks between municipalities and the canton in line with current practice, clarifies the cantonal priority funding by means of cantonal cultural locations (e.g. Lokremise St.Gallen, Werdenberg Castle) and defines the canton's funding instruments and principles, including cantonal contributions for the direct promotion of creative artists.

As in the past, the amount of the work grants is also flexible in the current call for proposals, can be CHF 10,000, CHF 20,000 or CHF 30,000 and is determined by the artists themselves. In total, a maximum of CHF 260,000 is available for the work grants.

The cultural apartment in Rome will now be advertised jointly with the Canton of Graubünden and the Principality of Liechtenstein every two years. In return, the Cultural Promotion of the Canton of St.Gallen can offer a cultural apartment in Berlin for three months every second year. Graubünden pays a corresponding contribution for the six-month use of the Rome apartment.

The Office of Culture is accepting applications until February 20, 2018. The final decisions on the awarding of work grants and studio residencies will follow in May 2018. Detailed information and the application form are available on the website www.kultur.sg.ch or can be requested by telephone, as can the 2018 funding guide (Amt für Kultur, St.Leonhard-Strasse 40, 9001 St.Gallen, 058 229 43 29).

Hardly noticed by the general music public, the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) regularly organizes prominent conferences on composers who have shaped modern music and who, ideally, are also guests themselves. The symposium in the presence of Vinko Globokar followed on from conferences on Alvin Lucier, Jannis Xenakis and Gérard Grisey and once again brought together a group of profound connoisseurs and confidants of the composer.

"It's all coincidence," said Vinko Globokar in conversation with Jörn Peter Hiekel, director of the symposium, and Jens Schubbe, artistic director of the Collegium Novum Zurich, about his career. The humorous tone and lightness of touch were surprising. Globokar, a composer, trombonist and improviser, is immediately associated with archaic physical strength or political and social impetus. As a fundamentally political person, he consistently questions the institutional structure of the classical music business, the concert format and the hierarchies of the classical music system in his compositions. Central aspects here are the relationship between body and instrument, composition and improvisation or individual and group. Legendary works such as Corporel (1985) or Res/As/Ex/Inspirer (1973) are devoted entirely to the body or the breath and take performers to the limits of their capabilities.

Globokar likes to quote his close composer friend Heinz Holliger's description that "as a composer, he is like an architect who constructs complicated buildings and at the same time lays bombs to destroy them again". Max Nyffeler (Munich) related this in his symposium contribution and concluded: "Building a precarious situation that can collapse at any time runs through his entire oeuvre." He also emphasized that Globokar's composing is never about exclusive knowledge, but that he composes "inclusively". Many of his works call for participation. Consequently, he is always present during rehearsals wherever possible, for example during rehearsals for Discours II for five trombones, whose performance by ZHdK students set the mood for the symposium.

Jörn Peter Hiekel emphasized Globokar's significance for contemporary music in terms of his world-relatedness towards cultural and political events. This manifests itself in anarchic power, performativity, the inclusion of space or in the essential contribution to the relationship between composition and improvisation.

Sabine Beck (Frankfurt) then went into more detail about this interplay between composition and improvisation. A time factor and an action factor are decisive for the methodological distinction: in improvisation, one decides on the procedure at the same time, whereas in composition, the decisions are made beforehand. Globokar said of the improvisation ensemble he co-founded in 1969 New Phonic Art"Everything that happens now happens on stage; we don't talk about it beforehand, we don't talk about it afterwards." According to Beck, Globokar needs a holistic, self-responsible type of musician who is always also a singer and performer and critically examines the concept of music and society.

Finally, Matthias Arter on lupophone and Vladimir Blagojevic on accordion gave a lecture performance based on excerpts from Septuor par treize sources (2017) presents Globokar with specific challenges for the performers. Globokar's latest chamber music piece, which was performed at the pre-art soloists' evening concert, dispenses entirely with improvisation, demands full performative commitment and uses the instruments almost as an extension of the body.

At the Collegium Novum Zurich concert the evening before, which Globokar presented alongside Mauricio Kagel and Bernd Alois Zimmermann, even somewhat older pieces seemed surprisingly contemporary. In Dialogue about earth for solo percussion (1994), for example, congenially interpreted by Julien Mégroz, is all about water. All kinds of rattles are heard outside and inside a transparent Plexiglas container filled with water, whereby the resonance of various elements is brought before the eyes and ears both visually and sonically, undermining the expectations associated with the title.

In La Prison for eight instruments (2001), on the other hand, Globokar uses grill grates as sound bodies that are visually reminiscent of prison bars. He does not allow the performers to play a single "normal" note appropriate to their instrument. "A piece like La Prison rejects all conventional criteria such as beauty of sound and sound organization," Schubbe said.

"It's the first time that someone has looked at my work with a magnifying glass. I was always happy that some friends found what I do interesting," Globokar said jokingly at the end of the symposium. There is a hint of truth in his subtle humor. His importance for the musical avant-garde has often been acknowledged. However, the ZHdK event is unparalleled in terms of both scope and depth.

GfK Entertainment will continue to compile the official Swiss music market data as well as the weekly single, album and compilation hit lists. The Planet Music online tool developed by the company will provide IFPI Switzerland with a comprehensive overview of current trends and developments in the Swiss music industry with immediate effect.

The contract follows a whole series of innovations such as the expansion of the single hit parade from 75 to 100 positions and the introduction of the Number 1 Award in the Official Swiss Hit Parade. Many more innovations are planned for 2018.

GfK Entertainment determines the official Swiss charts and market research data on behalf of the industry associations. At the beginning of 2017, the collaboration with the Swiss Booksellers and Publishers Association (SBVV) was extended until 2020. Other partners include the Swiss Video Association (SVV) in the film sector and the Swiss Interactive Entertainment Association (SIEA) for the video games segment.

Mauch presented Bosshard with the award on the occasion of the Schlippenbach Trio's concert at the Rote Fabrik. The Stadttaler is the City of Limmat's medal of honor and has previously been awarded to Elmar Weingarten and Peter F. Weibel as representatives of the Zurich Festival, as well as to the singer Udo Jürgens.

Fredi Bosshard, long-time president of the Fabrikjazz Zurich association, organized countless top-class jazz concerts in the city of Zurich - including as part of the Taktlos festival, which he directed for the 34th time in 2017. According to the city's press release, he always put art at the heart of his work and managed to ensure that the focus of Zurich as a city of culture was on this sometimes uncomfortable and constantly evolving music for a few days every year.

Bosshard made a significant contribution to the fact that the Zurich jazz scene today enjoys an excellent reputation far beyond the country's borders. He has a large international jazz network, which he has repeatedly put at the service of Zurich's culture.
 

Elmer earned his musical spurs in the canton of Glarus as a conductor and music teacher with the Harmoniemusik Glarus, the Con Brio orchestra and several choirs. He went on to study at the Lucerne University of Music, where he graduated with great success as a conductor.

Mathias Elmer's career continues to soar, the canton of Glarus explains, adding that he is at a decisive point in his career. The canton wanted to support him in these next career steps with the 2018 grant.

For cultural purposes, 36 individuals or organizations were granted contributions totalling CHF 168,000 from the canton's cultural fund by the Culture Commission or the Government Council, or were granted as deficit cover. Three applications were rejected and three were suspended. The cantonal government approved contributions and deficit contributions of 78,900 francs, including for the main concert of the Glarus Singing Society (11,100 francs).

Choirs wishing to participate study Jansson's work Mary IV (Bärenreiter BA 7412), make a video of it, upload it to YouTube and send the link to wettbewerb@baerenreiter.com The closing date for entries is October 31, 2018, and an international jury of choreographic experts will review the entries and select the winners. Three prizes will be awarded:

1st prize: A composition by Mårten Jansson tailored to the winning choir with the possibility of a world premiere, plus a music voucher for €500
2nd prize: music voucher for €300
3rd prize: €200 music voucher

Mårten Jansson (*1965) has made a name for himself in sacred choral music. For over ten years he was the director of Carmen, one of Sweden's best-known female vocal ensembles. The inspiration for his early compositions for female choir came from his work with this choir: "Knowing that what I had written during the night would be rehearsed the next day was a strong motivation for me. Other composers would be happy to have such an opportunity."

Mary IV (Här är din himmel) for mixed choir (SATB) was commissioned by the Swedish Royal Family for the feast of the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. The text is by the Swedish poet Einar Askestad (premiere on March 17, 2013). The music describes Mary's sorrow as the mother of a child who does not belong to her, but to all of humanity.

According to Suisseculture, the adoption of the initiative would not only mean the end of the existence of all SRG media, but also of numerous local private broadcasters that convey and enrich regional cultural life thanks to fees. This clear-cutting would mean "a direct attack on the foundations of our democratic and pluralistic society".

According to Suisseculture, radio and television represent an important forum for cultural creation and are "a vital source of income for cultural professionals and artists from all sectors and from all language regions of Switzerland". Art and culture are dependent on independent, non-profit media with a wide range of offerings such as those provided by the SRG media.

There are several kinds of resistance: fierce, existential, but sometimes also pleasurable. The one helps to endure the other. Jacques Wildberger (1922-2006) knew both; life had probably taught him both. On the one hand, there was his political commitment; he was a communist and had been a member of the PdA since 1944, but left the party three years later in protest against Stalinist crimes. However, this was no reason for him to revoke his commitment - on the contrary. Alongside Klaus Huber, who was two years younger, the clear-sighted Wildberger was the political conscience of this generation of composers. "Composing against this was and is my agita movens," he wrote.

However, he also had a mischievous side, for example when he, the avant-gardist, said in conversation that he liked the 2nd Rachmaninov Concerto and that Lehár had actually orchestrated it wonderfully. He liked kitsch in general, if it was well done. That must have taken some people aback. With a certain amount of coquetry, he also said that he had not donated his estate to the Paul Sacher Foundation like many of his Basel colleagues, but to the Basel University Library.

The relationship with Sacher was ambivalent. Even though Sacher later signed the certificate when the Swiss Musicians' Association awarded Wildberger the Composer's Prize, he must have been quite annoyed with Wildberger back in 1954. Tre Mutazioni The patron sent the score back "with my best thanks", noting the "interesting sound and rhythm experiments" in it, but found the piece "neither intellectually ingenious nor emotionally sensitive, but intellectually calculated", in short: "artistic gimmickry". Finally, he asked Wildberger "with the kindest regards" to "see this unvarnished judgment as proof of my trust and my friendly attitude".

Such connections are now evident in an exhibition currently on display at the University Library of Basel. It is called The left earwas curated by Michael Kunkel, Head of the Research Department at the FHNW School of Music, and was created in collaboration with the University of Basel and the Swiss Music Research Society. Kunkel said at the opening that they did not simply want to erect a monument to Wildberger. He prefers to show him in his many, sometimes somewhat contradictory facets, in twelve stations - with numerous scores, photos, audio and video documents. The box of sweets with documents found in the attic, which has also been included in the exhibition, is a special gift. The exhibition will be accompanied by several supporting events, in particular a symposium at the beginning of March 2018.

As can be seen here, Jacques Wildberger was a dazzling personality. It is worth investing some time in studying the documents and listening to the sound samples. Even those familiar with Wildberger may be surprised by some of the pieces, for example the Eisler-like Kampflied We want to march togetherwhich he composed for the Basel working-class cabaret "Scheinwerfer", or his appearances as conductor of the Gypsy baronsbut also the music for the army service film One of all from the year 1958.

His path was not easy because he sought opposition. This must have been one reason why he studied twelve-tone technique with exiled Russian composer Vladimir Vogel. The Swiss music scene at the time was dominated by neoclassicism. Figures such as Schönberg students Alfred Keller and Erich Schmid were outsiders. Exceptional personalities such as Rolf Liebermann, Hermann Meier and Wildberger sought contact with dodecaphony through Vogel. However, he did not become a twelve-tone dogmatist; Wildberger dealt with it in an idiosyncratic way. And yet he was caught between the times: In Switzerland he was considered avant-garde, in Germany he had to realize that he was not considered advanced enough. He was not absolutely modern: "I don't feel like a museum servant of an indisputable past, but I try to keep tradition alive by moving on and researching in our exciting present. I also like to be traditional in that I cherish the craft of 'composing'." And that is why he was free to dedicate some of his most important radio broadcasts and publications to the music of Dmitri Shostakovich.

Such unconventionality has to assert itself first, even if you come from a good, humanistic Basel bourgeoisie. The fact that Sacher never gave him a commission ultimately did not prevent Wildberger from becoming a recognized personality, not only in Basel's musical life, and from teaching at the music academy. His position remained decidedly left-wing.

Who is writing? The sound of a pencil on paper! Aha, literariness - or letters! Perhaps even hidden micrograms. Not for the first time in music theater. Which colleague once promised to write an essay on letter writing in opera? Because this is a delicate moment in the dramaturgy of time: either it happens unrealistically quickly or it stops the flow of time. Not in this case, of course, because the writing becomes the supporting element of the whole. It is not the poet who, as we see, has settled down on a bench with his notebook. It is a woman we hear writing, absent for the poet, present for us in a triune form. She prays to him from afar and writes him this letter, which Letter from a strangeras the novella by Stefan Zweig is called.

Claus Spahn, the chief dramaturge of the Zurich Opera, has condensed this text into a short, almost laconic libretto; Xavier Dayer, who comes from Geneva and is now a composition teacher at the Bern University of the Arts, composed the music - in parallel with a second chamber opera, incidentally, which deals with memory and forgetting in a completely different way: Alzheim was premiered on the same weekend by Konzert Theater Bern. These are chamber operas no. 6 and 7 in Dayer's oeuvre. Although he can certainly imagine writing something for the big stage one day, he says in the MAG of the opera house, it is the inner, ethereal worlds that interest him. "I want to take a look at the inner lives of characters."

He succeeds here in an impressive way: The adored poet (Cody Quattlebaum) is really just a catalyst and gains little character himself. The figure of the "unknown", however, is so rich and varied that it is divided between three singers (Soyoung Lee, Haminda Kristoffersen, Kismara Pessatti); they are so different in voice and appearance that they can represent the three ages of the girl, the young woman and the mother who is ready to die. The unknown woman met the poet when she was thirteen, later had a night and therefore a child with him, which he never knew about, and will eventually die after the death of her son. But she still writes this letter in which she tells the poet everything.

So pencil noises at the beginning, delicate piano and percussion sounds. "To you, who never knew me" begins the third female voice. The others join in; the breathing becomes clear. Only with the movement "In mir wuchs der Traum von Dir" does one voice take off - and the ensemble sound, this distant music, begins to blossom. The triple stranger moves between speaking and singing. She follows her dreams, her encounters, and we never know for sure whether she is just longing for and fantasizing about everything or whether she is experiencing any of it. It remains secondary, because it is all about the inner life of this woman. Instead, Dayer develops an incredibly subtle tonal language, precise in the instrumental sextet (the Ensemble Opera Nova under Michael Richter in the Pierrot instrumentation plus percussion that has long since become standard), very cantabile in the singing (yes, Dayer can write for voices), melodious and expressive, sometimes in a madrigalesque polyphony. This helps us to immerse ourselves in the person. The texts are so succinct that they almost only hint. Dayer expands them again through repetitions and variations, in a spiral and, in the best moments, in a way that is as good as a jugular. The unknown drifts into her inner self, as it were. Barbara Pfyffer's set design shows a kind of rollercoaster on which the emotions whirl. Nina Russi has staged the play very discreetly and unspectacularly.

This is how The dream of you through the almost seventy minutes, quite intense, even if it ultimately doesn't take off enough into the dreamlike or descends into its abysses. At that point, when the dry ice streams onto the studio stage and everything could become even more unreal, the lyrics and vocals remain stuck on the accusations against the beloved from afar. At this point, the emotional dramaturgy of the play also comes to a halt, it doesn't get any further. The "I, I, I" stammering at the end, the insistence on a repeated tone are more assertions of a psychological brokenness than they would take us another level deeper. Of course, anyone who wants to may also interpret this as the hopelessness of a person lost in himself ...

PS: World premiere of The dream of you was on December 2 on the studio stage of Zurich Opera House. There were only four performances in total until December 9. Zurich Opera has commissioned further chamber operas for the Opera Nova ensemble.