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A dandy, a flâneur
Rolf Urs Ringger lets his music take a stroll

Randonnée et musique
Les stages Musique-Montagne offer the following two activities

Walkman - la mia musica, sempre con me
My music always with me (translation of the article in German)

Marching music
A conversation with Colonel Philipp Wagner about military music
 

RESONANCE

Swiss presence at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Interview with Jürg Frey, Composer in Residence at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2015
Interview Graham with McKenzie, Director of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 

Universal artist and source of inspiration - Pierre Boulez is dead

Victims of overpowering mothers - "Macula Matris" by Thomas K. J. Mejer

Freedom - a new look at the pluralt - Patrick Frank's theory opera

The LP Collection - Laurent et Patrick critiquent des albums imaginaires

Opening of the renovated farmhouse in Ebnat-Kappel

A music information center for Switzerland?

Carte Blanche with William Blank

Reviews - New releases
 

CAMPUS

Une étude sur les orchestres en classe de Genève

New funding for class music projects 

Successful in the training market - Symposium at the HKB

Reviews of study and teaching literature - New releases

klaxon Children's page
 

SERVICE

A movie about the eastern Swiss band Swing Kids
 

FINAL

Riddle - Pia Schwab is looking for
 

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Here we continue to the Order.

It all began in Switzerland, in the forests around St. Moritz to be precise. It is February 1972 and Andreas Pavel is walking through the woods surrounding the Engadine village with his fiancée. It is snowing, they are surrounded by nature and decide to start their experiment. They put on their headphones, Pavel presses the play button on the stereo belt he has recently constructed, and it starts playing Push Push by Herbie Mann and Duane Allman, their favorite piece at the time. "Suddenly it was as if we were flying," he would say decades later, "an incredible feeling. I had a device with which I could multiply the aesthetic potential of any situation."

The Stereobelt was a modified dictation machine with a hi-fi reading head and two outputs for the headphones, attached to a belt with compartments for the batteries and a supply of audio cassettes. Andreas Pavel, a cosmopolitan philosopher and designer of German origin who grew up in Brazil, had developed it in a Milan laboratory for his own entertainment. When he had the device patented and wanted to offer it to the big electronics companies, he received a clear rejection. They asked, almost scornfully, who would ever want to shut themselves off from the world in order to listen to music?
 

In 1979, Sony launched the Walkman onto the market. Masaru Ibuka, co-founder of the Japanese company, had grown tired of packing a large device in his suitcase for his countless business trips in order to listen to his favorite tracks. He therefore commissioned the company to develop a compact version of it that could be carried around, with "playback" as its only function and optimized for use with headphones. The idea of listening to music while walking appealed to the other Sony founder, Akio Morita. And so the Walkman was born, which owed its name to the popularity of Superman at the time and the portable recording device Pressman, of which it was a logical development. 

Photo: Flickr

Girls in sportswear

It shows a Walkman and a cassette - which look tiny. The image from the advertising of the time perfectly summarizes both the idea of youthful zest for action and freedom of movement.

Interestingly, the first Walkman, at Akio Morita's express request and just like the Stereobelt, also had a double output for the headphones so that two people could listen at the same time. It was also equipped with microphones and a "hotline" button. This turned down the volume and the two people could talk to each other without taking off the earbuds. Morita's fear was the same that had already prevented the Stereobelt from emerging, and was confirmed by the skepticism of the first resellers: They were wary of an alienating technology that urged people to rudely segregate themselves to listen to their own music. But the success of the Walkman swept any fears aside: 30,000 units were sold in the first two months of marketing, and it soon lost the double output as well as the "hotline" function,because people obviously preferred to own the fashionable gadget on its own. Over time, the Walkman brand was able to develop the technology further and continued to create its own new portable CD and MP3 readers. To date, more than 200 million units have been sold, while Andreas Pavel finally won the legal battle against the Japanese colossus Sony for recognition of his patent just a few years ago.

The Walkman - or the stereo belt, if you like - can be considered one of the great inventions that changed our way of life in the 20th century, just like radio or television. At the press conference to present their product in June 1979, Sony brought the journalists to Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. They were given Walkmans to walk around freely and listen to a recording that took them to various demonstrations by young people. They rode bicycles or skated and used a Walkman themselves. The whole advertising campaign revolved around independence in movement and youthful drive, to which the name of the product also refers. Portable transistor radios had already been around for a good twenty years, which were - not too conveniently - tucked away in a shirt pocket and could be used with headphones. The Walkman, on the other hand, was revolutionary because it not only gave its owners freedom of movement, but also and above all the freedom to choose what they wanted to listen to and when they wanted to listen to it. It was the answer to the desire for music consumption tailored to personal needs, changing and nomadic in comparison to listening to the radio, which by its very nature creates an external community. It can be said that radio and television brought the world inside the home, but that with the Walkman, people began to bring some of their own domestic intimacy - the inward intensity of the secluded enjoyment of their favorite music and the emotions it evoked - to the outside world. This radically changed the perception of the outside world.

Photo: Sony

The first Walkman models had two outputs for headphones and a "hotline" button for communication between the two handsets. There was a fear that a device that encouraged too much isolation could be unsuccessful.

When you put on a pair of headphones, you can not only choose what you want to listen to, but also what you don't want to listen to. These days, it's rare to meet someone in an urban environment without earbuds or giant branded headphones. This is the pandemic spread of the very first sociological effect of the Walkman, which Shuhei Hosokawa observed back in 1984 and called the "Walkman effect" in one of the first studies. He described the use of this device as a protective strategy against everything that is unpleasant in a city: the noise, the forced interaction with other people, the overstimulation of all the senses. With the technological equivalents that have been developed since then, it has obviously become essential to be deaf to the noisy invasion of our culture. In the beginning, however, when it was even rarer, the Walkman was perceived by many people as disturbing (as Akio Morita had predicted) because it created an isolation that unbalanced the relationship with others. Those who use such a device amplify their own experience through a soundtrack that they select themselves and that alters their perception of reality, while those who come into contact with them feel excluded and irritated. Communication is impaired by the acoustic isolation that favors other perceptions.

The attitude towards the Walkman was therefore ambivalent at the beginning. It would have been easy to demonize the device: it would have been enough to draw attention to the spiritual impoverishment of the individual who conforms to the masses by using a fashionable product to ultimately alleviate their own discomfort through music instead of fighting against a world that does not suit them. Nevertheless, its commercial success and technological development, from the music cassette to the smartphone with its infinite musical libraries, also oblige us to take note of the positive aspects and the real need: The Walkman and its successors have become a means of affirming one's identity by defining and controlling the experience of reality.

Photo: Sony

The Walkman, launched in 1979: 30,000 copies were sold within the first two months.

This happens first and foremost by "adding a soundtrack to reality". Both Andreas Pavel and many people interviewed about the early days of the Walkman used this expression literally. The daily experience of enjoying music in the inner space of your own headphones takes on a cinematic dimension. The observer becomes the director and the observed becomes the unsuspecting actor. It is a kind of voyeurism in the contradiction between the real world and that sensitively heightened world of the observer. Passivity and non-transferability enhance the pure beauty of the moment. But this is only the first factor in an artistic colonization of reality, through which the listener adapts to the surrounding world and takes control of many of its dimensions. The young man listening to music from his iPod and running controls his spatial movement through the rhythm of the music tracks; the commuter who has to travel long distances on public transport tries to make time pass more quickly by distracting himself with music; the employee suppresses his thoughts and stabilizes his own mood while listening to his favourite CD until the moment he sets foot in the office, while the boy cheers himself on the slopes of the skate park by playing the playlist of his favourite slammers. And apparently everyone, both those on a crowded train and those on the street, too beautiful or too shy or those who are not in the right mood, control their social interactions and decide on their own accessibility. They immerse themselves in a bubble of sound, in a world they love because it is totally private and hedonistic, created from the music they have chosen and with which they can form a close relationship.

Whether during the limited minutes of an audio cassette or in the virtual infinity of streaming portals: this music that we often enjoy is not a specific album, but a compilation, a playlist, made to personalize reality and adapted to certain recurring situations. It is precisely the music we need for a certain route, a certain place, in a certain weather, to fall asleep, to study, to evoke memories of people or situations. And essentially, to express one's own identity and define one's own private world in which one is free to be oneself.
 

If you visit Patrick Frank's website (www.patrickfrank.de), you get first impressions: It's obviously not just about a composer, but also about a cultural scientist. Frank's medium is music, and he also runs the only analog photo booth in Switzerland in Zurich, gives lectures on social issues, makes ironic advertising clips, but also conceives comprehensive music theater and concert installations such as Freedom - the eutopian society.

The complex is subtitled "Curatorial composition and theoretical opera". Patrick Frank says that it is a "conception of different disciplines under one roof", and also something like a "cultural diagnosis in the form of a happening, a performance, a concert symposium". Terms do not always get to the heart of the matter. Especially not today, when it is no longer clear what left-wing or right-wing attitudes are or what is meant by "freedom". Can the eloquent composer and cultural scientist help? For Frank, freedom is initially a rather ambivalent category - and obviously a very topical one: see the influx of refugees, see the rise of right-wing populism, see the perversion of the supposed panacea of democracy into anti-democracy in Switzerland.

The fall of the Berlin Wall as a high point
Frank is not naive. He knows that his art can neither trigger revolutions nor encourage resistance. But it can do one thing: It can diagnose social conditions. In the first act, says Frank, "we assume that freedom was a utopia and that people fought for freedom. There were numerous freedom revolutions in the 19th century. Freedom was not yet a social reality. We therefore examined the question of how Western culture interpreted and gradually realized the value of 'freedom'. The big event that finally made the supposed realization of freedom effective in the mass media was the fall of the Berlin Wall and the fall of the ideological opponent 'communism'."

Such theses are reminiscent of the book The end of the story by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama. Frank, however, creates particularly memorable constellations in his theory-heavy art. David Hasselhoff sings in the video Looking for Freedom at the fallen Berlin Wall, with a speaker recapitulating the events of September 11, preceded by reflections on the nature of postmodernism. The complexity and contradictory nature of the theme is reflected in the character of a collective work with contributions from other composers and philosophers. "It was important to me," says Frank, "to confront different minds with the subject of freedom. What ultimately resulted was a surprise for me and a world premiere. That's exactly what I intended, as the subject of 'freedom' is far from over for me too."

With psychoanalysis and cultural criticism
Consequently, Frank's project is not yet finished. With a predominantly positive response Freedom - the eutopian society was performed in a first version as part of the Donaueschingen Music Days in October 2015. The complex will be performed in a second version with a different cast and dramaturgy at the Gessnerallee Zurich on February 13. In addition to the composers Martin Schüttler and Trond Reinholdtsen, Slavoj Žižek was also invited to take part. He is regarded as a controversial philosopher who can be classified as either a psychoanalyst or a cultural critic. Žižek is a good fit for this eventful evening, which should definitely have one effect: He softens many a too-often knotted brain coil.
 

Did the English scene appeal to you more than the American one?
I have the feeling that this was indeed the case. Sure - Christian Wolff, an American, but above all Cornelius Cardew, an Englishman. But of course I heard a lot of things. Also Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono. But there are always things that you hear and things that electrify you. And that was Cardew, the Scratch Orchestra and Christian Wolff. I was also very interested in the album that the rock band Deep Purple recorded with an orchestra. I remember thinking it was incredible. I listened to it again two years ago. It wasn't as interesting musically. But socially it was certainly an interesting experiment.

What went through your mind during yesterday's performance of the two quartets at St. Paul's Hall?
I have been working with the Quatuor Bozzini ensemble for a long time. Isabelle Bozzini, the cellist, told me yesterday that the first performance of the two pieces took place in 2001. Since then we have always been in contact. It was certainly one of the best performances I have experienced of the two pieces, very concentrated. The other thing was that a hall like that, with so many people, was unusual for me. It was a nice experience to see that it is possible for a whole auditorium to stay concentrated for so long. It was good to experience that the music can carry a hall for a whole hour. On the one hand, this depends on the interpretation, but it can also be attributed to the piece. The piece can do that.

Can you describe the process of composing?
I start with a cloud where nothing is clear at all. I just write things down. The process of writing is important, just writing, I love that. Sometimes there are things that aren't even in the piece I want to create. It's not like I say to myself: this comes at the beginning, this in the middle, this at the end. I work a lot with sketchbooks, I write and draw by hand. So I fly upwards in the cloud until I see that certain things solidify in certain places, that there might be something there. That's the moment when you go down two floors in the house and sit down at the piano. Of course, you already know what it will sound like. But the contact with the making of the sound is important. And it's actually also good to have some movement in between. It's like when the cloud condenses into material.

Like writing poetry. One sentence comes to mind, then another, then another, suddenly you see an atmospheric connection and push the sentences together.
Exactly. You can imagine it like this. Some things are intuitive decisions, but there are also very rational decisions.

That sounds quite playful. Does chance play an important role?
It may sound a bit playful when you say it like that. But it's not a game. I don't work with chance like Cage did. You ask certain questions and then look for answers.

Can you describe how you discovered silence?
Even my very first pieces from the 70s are very quiet. There was not one discovery in that sense. There are colleagues who started out making heavy music and then suddenly went quiet. For me, it was already quiet at the beginning, but then there was an intensification to silence. That was at the beginning of the 90s. That also has to do with Wandelweiser. The group was just emerging at the time. That was the initial spark that brought these people together. It resulted in the radicalization of possibilities. You can be silent for ten minutes in a piece! Not in the sense of Cage, where you then hear everything else, but in the sense of a decision in the piece, where you ascribe silence to one block as you do sounds to another block. It's not a pause in that sense. It's like a statement. The piece is 30 minutes, but you have silence between the 12th and 22nd minute. I perceived it very architecturally.

For me, your music has an almost physical aura in the sense that it creates spaces that almost force thoughts to flow. You yourself often talk about architecture and space. Silence, like the inner courtyard of a building? The walkway?
That's exactly what I was thinking earlier but didn't say, and now you're saying it. I often have the image of a square, an inner courtyard. The important thing about the square is the place where the houses are not. This idea is in there - how the silence is influenced by what came before. You can't control anything in the reception of silence. One person thinks one thing, another thinks something completely different ... And then suddenly the music is back and - poof - concentration is back.

Does the preoccupation with silence and the absence of sound have a socio-critical component? Is it a conscious attempt to fight against the chaos of today's information overload?
That's a bit of a side effect. It's not my motivation. I don't want to say: so much noise all around, we at least need a calming influence in the music. That's not what interests me. I also don't have the feeling that I'm creating a kind of counter-world. Chaos and noise inside has nothing to do with the fact that it's noisy outside. It would also restrict me too much. Sometimes I have had the thought that the very reduced nature of my work was perhaps a reaction to the economy in the 90s, to the accumulation of money and to the excessive "bigger, louder, higher". But that wasn't a conscious thought process either.

With the repetitions, the slow changes that create such tension in your music, it seems to have a lot in common with the work of certain electronic musicians. Do you listen to anything like that, Aphex Twin for example?
I have to say, no. Brian Eno, yes. I know him, of course. When he came into my field of vision in the 80s, I was still looking for him myself. But it's not like I follow the scene closely.

What does Composer in Residence in Huddersfield mean for you specifically?
I was allowed to be here for the whole festival. I was able to decide what of my music would be played. I was able to send a wish list, and many of the wishes have been fulfilled, with the people I wanted to do it with. In the morning I lead a master class on composition with a few students. I was able to set up the installations. Overall, it gave me the opportunity to put together the essence of my work from the last ten years and give it a focus. It's a real privilege.

What criteria did you use to select the installation locations?
A month ago, I came here for two days and looked at a dozen locations together with the sound engineer. A number of rooms were eliminated because they were too loud. At the time, I was able to decide which rooms we wanted to use. For example, the museum for the Landscape with words for three loudspeakers, sounds and individual words. For me, it's a text piece on the one hand, and a bit of a still life on the other - grapes, chickens, dried fruit and now it's just words: stone. Black water. Another installation was set up in the Byron Arcade. An old building, three floors around an inner courtyard with all kinds of small stores and a café. Small whistles and beeps can be heard there, like the sounds of birds. It's more like a composition. A spatial story. The individual beeps are distributed throughout the room like dabs of light. Acoustic light.

How did you meet the Wandelweiser people back then?
I was one of the first. The friendship that existed before that was with Antoine Beuger. We met at the Künstlerhaus Boswil in Switzerland, where there was a composition seminar in 1991 called "Silent Music". It wasn't actually silent music, but from then on we had contact. Then he started with the Wandelweiser idea. I joined in 1993, it was a completely natural process.

Did you previously work in isolation in a quiet little room?
That's right, yes.

Frustrated?
No, not frustrated at all. I had the idea at the time that that's just the way it is for a composer. I didn't have many performances, but that didn't bother me at all. It was an image I had formed from reading about artists. I thought it was normal to work and nobody was interested. That has now changed.

How often does the Wandelweiser group meet?
More often in the first ten years than today. It was incredibly exciting back then, suddenly you realized that there were a few other people who also thought they were the only ones doing such radically quiet things. So it became primarily an artistic discussion group. That's actually still the most interesting thing about it. Writing a play, performing it together and discussing it. We always came together in Austria for a week. Everyone brought one or two scores with them. On Monday morning, we all sat around the table and unwrapped things like presents. And we looked at what possibilities there were for bringing it all together within a week and making something of it. These discussions were unique for me. The joy of the super pieces you had in front of you and it was great that others were interested in your things. We did that for ten or twelve years. Another example. There was no fixed seating at a concert and we could put the chairs wherever we wanted. This resulted in a four-hour discussion of principles, which was actually a discussion about composing. Now we are 20 years older. The essential artistic questions have been clarified. At 60, it's no longer so urgent. From that point of view, it's a normal development. There are always a few changes in membership. One of the difficulties when you get older is the danger of becoming encrusted. Now something nice is happening with Wandelweiser, it's called Wandelweiser and so on. A new generation. Simon Reynell, for example, runs the record label Another Timbre for freely improvised music. He noticed that Wandelweiser music is also played by the improvising scene. He scoured our catalog for pieces that this scene could play and has made recordings, six CDs so far.

What are your plans after Huddersfield?
I'm going to compose. When it's my turn again, I'll do it every day for three or four hours. The time is simply set aside for it, regardless of whether I'm actually putting characters on the page or reading a bit or doing something else. It's a period of time that I always give myself, where everything is dedicated to composing. That is very important. It's a simple strategy that works.

Is there a concrete new project?
A choral piece is to be completed. It will be premiered in London on April 2. Exaudi is the name of the choir, with eight solo voices.