The elaborate study "Understanding the value of arts & culture" by Geoffrey Crossick & Patrycja Kaszynska comes to the conclusion that cultural community centers and cultural mediation only lead to rising property prices in the surrounding area and the displacement of long-established residents. She also questions the positive effects of music education in elementary school and music programs in hospitals and prisons.

Among other things, the study draws its conclusions from an alternative view of empirical data on the effects of the measures. So far, it has mainly been quantitative surveys, such as the number of participants in events. However, qualitative surveys, for example on the personal experiences of those affected, are crucial.

Link to the report:
www.ahrc.ac.uk/documents/publications/cultural-value-project-final-report/
Telegraph article on the topic:
www.telegraph.co.uk/art/what-to-see/how-weve-got-it-wrong-about-the-arts/

The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, endowed with 250,000 euros, has been awarded to the Danish composer Per Nørgård. The board of trustees praised him as one of the most original composers in the North, whose work "is of unique importance far beyond Scandinavian borders".

After a serious illness, Christobal Halffter began composing a concerto for double bass trio and orchestra. Halffter has a close personal relationship with Basel. Paul Sacher conducted some of his compositions. The collection of his works is now in the Foundation. Georg Friedrich Haas is writing a trombone concerto and Dieter Ammann has been commissioned to write a new viola concerto for Nils Mönkemeyer.

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation (EvS) has been awarding a music prize and prizes to promote contemporary music projects worldwide every year since 1973.

André Meier, born in 1974, studied trumpet, composition and improvisation at the Basel Academy of Music. He completed various further training courses in computer-aided composition. In addition to his work as a music teacher at the Winterthur Conservatory, he mainly devotes himself to new and improvised music. He plays in the duo Thand with the music electronics engineer Thomas Peter, and also performs as a freelance musician, both as a soloist and in chamber music.

Meier will be exploring computer-aided composition in depth in a research/composition project and developing instrumental music whose musical text/grammar is generated using algorithms. So-called non-trivial bots, which he either adapts or programs himself, serve as the starting point. In the new work, these decisions are intended to generate new sonic realities. What the listener ultimately perceives is not an originally composed piece, but the result of the bots' musical decisions.

In addition to Meier, the following artists will receive work grants: Photographer Michael Bodenmann, visual artist Annina Thomann, Rotes Velo Tanzkompanie/Hella Immler under the direction of Exequiel Barreras and filmmaker Ninian Green.

Since the beginning of 2016, the historically evolved, complex loudspeaker infrastructure has been supplemented by the "SpatialSound Wave" technology from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT. It can extend the reverberation time of the room. A signal is added to the original sound source. This increases the acoustic impression of the room. Effects and surround sound can even be adjusted spontaneously in live operation.

The audio objects can be positioned so that they can be at different distances from the listener. Effects can even be positioned as if they were sounding outside the room. Sound effects can be edited live and spatial, three-dimensional soundscapes can be created - without having to change the sound system or the room.

The software uses a process known as wave field synthesis. This involves different speakers forming a new acoustic waveform. None of the speakers play the same signal. Each one complements the neighboring one and contributes to the overall sound.

Even though the Valais song was already regarded as the canton's anthem, it had not yet been officially recognized. As the President of the Government and the President of the Grand Council explained, the official recognition should serve to consolidate cantonal unity and "convey a sense of Valais culture" to residents and visitors to the canton.

According to the canton's press release, President of the State Council Jacques Melly and President of the Grand Council Nicolas Voide signed the corresponding document in front of an audience and representatives of the authorities. The official instrumental and vocal versions of the newly appointed cantonal anthem were performed by the Sion Music Society and singer Sylvie Bourban.

In 1939, Jean Daetwyler was commissioned by the Central Valais Music Association to compose a "Marignano March". The musician, originally from Basel, wanted to incorporate the "Valais Song" (composer: Ferdinand Otto Wolf; text: Leo Luzian von Roten) into the march to express his attachment to the canton of Valais.

Daetwyler co-founded the cantonal music conservatory in Sion in 1949 and was also active as a conductor of various choirs and other musical formations.

There is much talk of exchange, of European culture, of the international and the global. National schools have had their day, it is said - especially in new music, which has taken up the cause of emancipation from the past. Now, in Witten: a completely different picture. Festival director Harry Vogt has a soft spot for the French. Tristan Murail was part of the last Witten editions, as were Georges Aperghis and Pascal Dusapin. Now it is Gérard Pesson, to whom Vogt offered plenty of space as part of a composer portrait, both for his electro-acoustic as well as his chamber and orchestral music. Pesson is a shrewd, imaginative composer who is not lacking in lightness. He playfully interweaves quotations from many stages of music history. He also has an unmistakable feel for colorful harmonies that flatter the ear.

Pesson's premiere of Catch Sonatawhich he wrote - nomen est omen - for the Catch trio. During the composition, he often had photos of the young performers on his desk, says Pesson in the concert. However, this particular sonata not only reveals the composer's personal, thoroughly French tone, but also a quality of interpretation that is second to none. Boglárka Pecze (clarinet), Eva Boesch (cello) and Sun-Young Nam (piano) have achieved a phenomenal standard in just a few years, which is also thanks to music academies that are finally devoting more attention to the 20th and 21st centuries.

Subordination instead of superordination
New music also means searching for other "formats" and for composers who have not yet become dizzy in the European festival carousel. During these Witten days, a silent film by the German director Arthur Robison called Shadow. Johannes Kalitzke wrote a new score for the 1923 film. Kalitzke's sounds are full-bodied, but do not push themselves to the fore. He doubles some of the events in the film with a wink, such as a passage where three salon musicians raise their instruments and at that very moment strange melodies from the 19th century are heard. Such "striking" things make the specialist audience shake their heads. However, the episodes clearly show that Kalitzke is consciously following film music traditions and does not juxtapose the amusing run-of-the-mill plot of jealousy and love with anything overly complex.

There was a preponderance of positives in this Witten vintage. In the face of such stupendously dense power as in Enno Poppe's string quartet Book the failure of younger composers is easy to get over. Birke Bertelsmeier, a former pupil of Wolfgang Rihm, was asked to write a solo piece for the established violist Tabea Zimmermann. She did so in the form of a three-movement From head through head to headwhich gets badly bogged down between powerless repetitions and strangely folkloristic-virtuoso attitudes. Similarly enervating is an ensemble piece by 28-year-old composer Malte Giesen, who studied for a time with Gérard Pesson. Completely disparate parts and ugly synthesizer sounds are strung together without obligation. This may be the result of a concept. But little sticks in the mind.

The cultural mission statement will have a significant impact on the cultural policy of the Canton of Basel-Stadt over the next ten years. For this reason, the Government Council considers it important that the new departmental management can steer the development process. The negotiations between Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft for the continuation of the content are also strategic. The Government Council has therefore decided not to start work on the mission statement in summer 2016 as planned. It intends to define the next steps and timetable after the change of leadership in the Presidential Department.

The cultural mission statement of the Canton of Basel-Stadt (2012-2017) sets out the current challenges of cultural policy and defines the criteria and objectives of state funding in the area of cultural creation. In doing so, the Government Council is fulfilling the legal mandate of the Cultural Promotion Act.

Who was Hermann Hans Wetzler? Heinrich Aerni makes no secret of the fact that this name has been forgotten today. All the more meticulous is his research into Wetzler's biography, which he divides into three parts based on the estate in the Zurich Central Library. First, Aerni traces Wetzler's numerous geographical "stations", which, even at a glance, are characterized by restless back and forth between the USA, Germany and Switzerland. Aerni then devotes two further sections to Wetzler's career as a conductor and composer. An extensive appendix also provides information about Wetzler's appearances as a conductor and musician as well as the performance dates of his compositions. Although Aerni announces in the introduction that he will focus on readings of the history of mentality and identity, the strength of the book lies less in a theorizing decoding of the material than in the material itself. The author is able to present the undoubtedly breathtaking wealth of sources clearly, even if a more frequent paraphrasing of the many quotations, some of which are reproduced at considerable length, would make the book even more reader-friendly.

But who was this forgotten man? Wetzler was born in Germany in 1870 to Jewish parents, but spent his childhood in Chicago and Cincinnati, where he was regarded as a musical "child prodigy" (p. 19). He later lived for long periods in both Germany and the USA and was not only active as an organist, violinist, conductor and composer, but also as a music organizer: at the age of 30, he already had his own orchestra, with which none other than Richard Strauss celebrated his US debut in 1903. Nevertheless, Wetzler moved back to Germany in 1905, where he oscillated between successes and failures as a conductor and composer for 25 years, and was in contact - and sometimes even rivaled - with renowned greats of the time such as Nikisch, Klemperer and Furtwängler. However, he was unable to achieve lasting success in either function. As a conductor, for example, he was criticized for his indistinct beat, while he also received little recognition as a composer of "comparatively small compositional works". Nevertheless, he devoted himself more and more intensively to composing, so much so that in April 1933 he wrote from Switzerland that he had no time to concern himself with political events as he was concentrating entirely on his work.

Detailed, source-rich descriptions of such biographical circumstances and developments are undoubtedly one of the advantages of Aerni's book. However, it would be desirable for them to be integrated into the history of music, time and society to an even greater extent than is done in a short subchapter (pp. 160-169). Aerni's portrayal of Hermann Hans Wetzler's life as such familiarizes the reader well. However, even after reading the book, it is not really clear why the author chose to focus on Wetzler in particular.

Heinrich Aerni, Between the USA and the German Reich. Hermann Hans Wetzler (1870-1943). Conductor and composer, Schweizer Beiträge zur Musikforschung, vol. 22, 476 p., € 37.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel 2015, ISBN 978-3-7618-2358-3

There are all kinds of publications on the violin, flute and horn, and the literature dedicated to the piano is diverse. In the German-speaking world, however, there has been no monograph on the pommer and shawm, the precursors of the baroque oboe. Barbara Neumeier has filled this gap with her dissertation and thus made a respectable contribution to organology.

In order to accomplish her task, the author has initially compiled all available direct and indirect sources in a comprehensive collection of material. The collection of around fifty Pomeranian instruments in European museums, including the collection of old musical instruments in Berlin with the magnificent Pomeranian sets, double-reed instruments of different lengths, from the Wenzelskirche in Naumburg and the Marienkirche in Danzig, is impressive and is listed in tabular form on pages 32-37.

Among the auxiliary sources, Barbara Neumeier cites music theory writings by Sebastian Virdung, Martin Agricola, Michael Praetorius and Marin Mersenne from the 16th and 17th centuries, books that invariably refer in illustrations to the difference between shawms with bare finger holes and pommer with a key protected in a fontanelle. The now established databases of music-related image sources - Euterpe in Paris and RIdIM (Répertoire International d'Iconographie Musicale) have undoubtedly made the organologist's search for images of these early oboe instruments easier, as the beautiful and informative illustrations suggest.

However, the literary evidence of Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide (1170) to Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Fiction and truth from the early 19th century. When describing the historical court of pipers in Frankfurt am Main, Goethe mentioned "three pipers, one of whom blows an old shawm, the other a bass, the third a pommer or hoboe", when these wind instruments had already given way to the modern oboe.

Barbara Neumeier's aim of focusing on a historical woodwind instrument and presenting the pommer as part of certain ensembles and instrumentation forms in town pipe bands and court bands has certainly been achieved with a comprehensive volume of over 400 pages.

Barbara Neumeier, The Pommer. Bauweise, Kontext, Repertoire, Saarbrücker Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, vol. 17, 436 p., € 68.00, Studiopunkt Verlag, Sinzig 2015, ISBN 978-3-89564-159-6

When we buy sheet music with the word "Urtext" emblazoned on it, we can expect to find the composer's undisguised intentions. Two recent editions of the popular wind sextet show that this is not always so easy Mládí (Youth, composed in 1924) by Leoš Janáček.

The source situation for Janáček's stroke of genius is in fact so confusing and multi-layered that it can be ruled out from the outset that two independent editions would arrive at the same results, as can be observed in the two editions under discussion. In addition to an autograph, there are several authorized copies of the score and parts from which the work was played at the premiere in Brno and the second performance in Prague (by various ensembles), all of which contain entries made partly by the composer and partly by participating musicians during rehearsals with Janáček and can therefore justifiably lay claim to authenticity. These include numerous modifications to the tempo indications, alternative versions of individual bars and figures, as well as octaves and instrumentation changes. Other sources include the first print of the score - which admittedly did not include all the changes made in the two performances - and the set of parts, which was published two months after the score and differs from it in several details.

How do two renowned publishers deal with this somewhat chaotic source situation? Jiří Zahrádka's Henle edition must be described as exemplary throughout. The preface explains the editorial pitfalls clearly and in detail and illustrates some of the autograph corrections with reprints of the sources. The publisher also makes the detailed Critical Report available as an 18-page download. In addition, numerous comments such as various tempo indications and ossias are included in the musical text (very important: also in the parts!) so that the sources can also be discussed during practical work. A generous and excellently legible print without unpleasant turning points rounds off the excellent overall impression.

In the Bärenreiter edition by Jan Doležal and Leoš Faltus, the impression is clouded in several ways: an extravagantly worded preface explains the source situation only inadequately; for notes and detailed explanations of the edition, reference is made to the complete edition, which makes a trip to a library unavoidable. The printing appears crowded, the time changes are difficult to read (because they are placed above the staff and not integrated into it), and the parts contain unfavorable turning points. Really dramatic, however, are the editors' uncommented and unmarked additions, such as the trills in the 1st movement (m. 34), the mf of the two bass parts in the 2nd movement (m. 7) and the obviously incorrect tempo indication in the reminiscence of the 2nd theme of the 1st movement (m. 142 in the 4th movement: mm. 72 for the dotted crotchet instead of the quaver). The invention of the key signatures in the 3rd and 4th movements is also very problematic: the performers have to accept up to 7 frequently changing accidentals, which makes flawless playing practically impossible (the reviewer tried it out with a very good ensemble!), as the music can by no means be described as "logically tonal". Janáček knew exactly what he was doing when he integrated the accidentals into the musical text, which an Urtext edition would have to take into account.

Considering that the Bärenreiter publishing house published the work within the complete edition 15 years ago, hope is justified. Hope that a rethink has taken place since then and that publishers can confront today's interpreters with a complex source situation. They don't need a musical text that pretends that everything is completely unambiguous and unambiguous, but rather a meaningful and comprehensive presentation of the source situation in order to reach independent decisions.

Leoš Janáček, Mládí (Youth), Suite for wind instruments (flute/piccolo, oboe, clarinet Bb, horn F, bassoon, bass clarinet Bb), edited by Jirí Zahrádka; parts, HN 1093, € 27.00; study score, HN 7093, € 16.00; G. Henle, Munich 2015

id., edited by Leos Faltus and Jan Doležal; parts, BA 9528, € 22.95; study score, TP 528, € 18.95; Bärenreiter, Prague 2009, single edition of the Janáček Complete Critical Edition, 2001

Although Corinne Huber comes from a family of musicians, she originally wanted to work as a journalist and not as an artist. The daughter of pianist and composer Felix Huber and sister of saxophonist Christoph Huber therefore enrolled at the University of Basel to study history, literature and geography. But in 2011 she made a U-turn and enrolled at the Bern Jazz School, where she studied singing with Efrat Alony and Andreas Schaerer and composition with Bert Joris, Martin Streule, Frank Sikora and Django Bates.

The following year, the musician, who took her first guitar lessons at the age of seven and later also learned the cello, met her future bandmates during her training. The first band concerts followed in the fall of 2013 under the name Nojakîn. Now the sextet, which also includes Huber's brother Christoph, who lives in New York, is releasing its debut Silent Smile. The album, co-produced by SRF2 Kultur, comprises ten songs, most of them written by Corinne Huber.

The Nojakîn singer, who grew up in Rupperswil in the canton of Aargau, describes her vocals as "rather deep and loud", but this understates how virtuosically and elegantly her singing meanders along the words and notes. Her voice sticks in pieces like All That's Past or Ela to the piano or trumpet in order to merge, only to soon seek - and find - their own expression again. Although jazz is at the heart of Nojakîn's music, there is also room for influences from folk, pop and poetry. The sound is lyrical, dreamy, but never rapturous.

Nojakîn take the listener into a world of sound in which improvisation and virtuosity are writ large and the chords are increasingly interwoven. This results in playfully changing colors and layers of sound that sometimes meet in a lively, sometimes melancholy way. Despite the musical cornucopia that the band Silent Smile the record never seems overloaded, but rather fine, fresh and spun.

When I learned 40 years ago from Milan Škampa himself, the violist of the world-famous Smetana Quartet, that he had to take antidepressants before every concert, and had been doing so for 20 years, I was deeply shocked. Then I found out about hearing loss among musicians here in Switzerland, which led to some of them giving up their profession - and there was hardly any institution that was committed to such occupational illnesses, even the SUVA hardly offered any help at the time. Today, music training institutions have recognized the problem areas and offer direct assistance and courses, and a wealth of literature is available to raise awareness of the dangers of intensive music practice.

Or so one might think: In the informative concluding observations of this book, however, it must be noted that much is still in its infancy at the conservatoires, that the efforts to bring music physiology and musician's medicine together are based on personal initiatives that are still trying to build networks. Individual universities, including Zurich and Basel, appear to be at the forefront of developments in some areas.

All of the contributions in this book are the results of an interdisciplinary symposium held in Graz in 2013, which focused on music-making by both amateurs and professionals. Practicing techniques, dealing with "stage fright", problems of posture, liberation from rigid rules and many other problem areas are discussed. It should come as no surprise that some contributions are burdened by scientific jargon, as fundamentally new findings had to be linguistically named and systematized in order to be open to interdisciplinary discourse. Only in passing is a comparison drawn with elite sport, because "just like athletes, musicians often push themselves to the limits of their individual sensorimotor and biomechanical capabilities". The "overall physical demands of instrumental playing and singing are generally significantly underestimated. The cardiovascular system shows distinctly 'sporty' reactions when making music ... which is why good physical condition is of great importance".

Young people aiming for a career in music will no longer stumble unsuspectingly into these problem areas, but middle-aged musicians might be shocked to realize how many situations they have somehow "muddled through" themselves.

This anthology Practicing & making music - Texts on instrumental pedagogy offers a wide range of guidance on the current state of research, all possible risks, as well as suggestions for self-monitoring and self-help. However, the recorded round table discussion on the current situation reveals that many places are still a long way from being able to offer sufficient professional advice.

Healthy and motivated music-making. For a lifetime. Musicians' health between dream and reality, edited by Barbara Borovnjak and Silke Kruse-Weber, 297 p., € 16.95, Schott, Mainz 2015, ISBN 978-3-7957-0867-2