Cultural statistics provide an insight into the cultural landscape and highlight changes. They provide a basis for political decisions and highlight the social and economic importance of culture.

With its pocket statistics on culture, the Federal Office of Culture provides concise and clear statistical information on culture and the cultural industries in Switzerland. The brochure is available in the four national languages. It will be published for the second time in 2015 and will be continuously updated.

The FOC presents new statistical data on cultural funding by the communes, cantons and federal government as well as on cultural offerings and audiences in the areas of film and cinema, museums, theaters and libraries.

Download the statistics: www.bak.admin.ch/themen/04110/index.html?lang=de

Ott has been Professor of Composition and Experimental Music Theater at the Berlin University of the Arts since 2005. In 2016, he took over the artistic direction of the Munich Biennale - International Festival for New Music Theater together with Manos Tsangaris.

The Academy of Arts has accepted a total of 13 new members. In the Music Section, these are Philippe Manoury and Helmut Zapf alongside Ott. The following were elected to the Literature Section: Jenny Erpenbeck, Günter Kunert, Reiner Kunze, Marie-Luise Scherer and Kathrin Schmidt. New members of the Performing Arts Section are Boris Charmatz, Mark Lammert, Eva Mattes, Thomas Quasthoff and Krzysztof Warlikowski. The Academy of Arts now has a total of 414 members in its six art sections.

The joint cultural commission was responsible for cultural policy in the region and over the past ten years has, in particular, awarded training grants to French-speaking artists from the region. The commission will cease its activities at the end of August 2015. Its tasks will be taken over by the special interjurassic cultural commissions.

The commission was founded in 2005 by the cantons of Bern and Jura to "promote cultural activities with an interjurassic dimension". In particular, the commission dealt with issues submitted to it by both cantons following resolutions of the Interjurassic Assembly. It also evaluated the development and support of the joint cultural institutions, examined possibilities for the construction of new cultural infrastructures and awarded training grants to artists from the region. Finally, the commission served as an advisory body to the political authorities.

For the governments of the cantons of Bern and Jura, the Interjurassic Cultural Commission has contributed to bringing the two regions closer together culturally. They are grateful for the commitment of the commission members. In 2013 and 2014, the cantons of Bern and Jura jointly sought new tasks for the Commission. However, as a result of political decisions in both cantons, specific projects could not be implemented.

The result of the regional vote on November 24, 2013 in the Bernese Jura to initiate a procedure to create a new canton consisting of the Bernese Jura and the Canton of Jura prompted the Jura cantonal government to dispense with the joint cultural commission. On June 16, 2015, the cantonal government of the Canton of Jura terminated the agreement on the joint cultural commission. The cantonal government of Bern took the corresponding decision on July 1, 2015.

The Intercantonal Commission for the Performing Arts and the Intercantonal Literature Commission are not affected by this decision. They will continue to be available to both cantons with their expert knowledge. The ongoing business will be taken over by the cultural offices of both cantons.
 

The Culture Division of the Department of Education and Culture (DBK) is responsible for culture at cantonal level. Numerous cultural institutions with and without financial participation from the canton or the municipalities contribute to the diversity of cultural life in the canton of Glarus. However, the organizational anchoring of the topic of culture is different in the three municipalities, writes the cantonal government.

As part of an efficiency analysis of the cantonal administration, it was determined that the topic of culture is barely anchored at a strategic level and that the legislation gives the canton and the municipalities a great deal of room for maneuver, the government council continues. The development of a cultural concept has therefore been included as a departmental objective in the current legislative program.

The cultural concept is to be developed with the involvement of an external expert in a broad-based process - together with the municipalities, the political parties, those responsible for tourism and those involved in cultural life. It should clarify the socio-political and economic significance of culture in the canton, anchor the topic of culture more firmly at a strategic and legal level, clarify the roles and cooperation of the numerous players in the field of culture and highlight the operational implementation at cantonal level.

In return for their work, the volunteers can attend the concerts free of charge and will be invited to the closing dinner on Sunday, September 6. Information on the program and the numerous volunteer opportunities can be found on the official website www.schubertiade.chwhere volunteers can register.

The Schubertiade, organized by the public radio station Espace 2, took place for the first time in 1978. It is a festive, popular classical music festival that is organized every two years in a different Swiss city. The city of Biel was chosen for the 19th edition on September 5 and 6, 2015.

In Switzerland's largest bilingual city, 1500 musicians and 150 concerts will be performed at around 15 locations in the heart of the city.

The researchers noticed that the red-crowned babbler, which lives in the Australian outback, uses two different sounds "A" and "B" in different orders for certain behavioral patterns. When flying, the bird produces a flight call "AB", whereas when feeding its young in the nest, it makes the request call "BAB".

When the researchers played back the sounds, the birds were able to distinguish between the different types of call. They looked into the nests when they heard the feeding call and looked for incoming birds when they heard a flight call.

According to Sabrina Engesser, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Zurich, these observations indicate that the two calls were generated from a rearrangement of the same sounds. They assume that in the red-crowned babbler, the first sound element "B" obviously distinguishes the meaning between flight and request vocalization, similar to "mein" and "ein" in German, where the "m" is the meaning-distinguishing element or phoneme.

Previous studies have indicated that birds can string together different sounds as part of a complex song. However, these songs generally lack a specific meaning and changing the arrangement of sounds in a song does not seem to change the overall message. Unlike most songbirds, red-crowned babblers do not sing. Instead, their extensive vocal repertoire is characterized by individual calls consisting of smaller, acoustically separated individual sounds.

Original article: Engesser S, Crane JMS, Savage JL, Russell AF, Townsend SW. Experimental Evidence for Phonemic Contrasts in a Nonhuman Vocal System. PLoS Biol 13(6). Doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002171
 

Mathias Zogg has dedicated himself to yodelling for over 50 years - as a singer, conductor, teacher and, from 1968, also as a composer, writes the canton of Thurgau. He now has around one hundred compositions that are very popular with yodelling choirs throughout Switzerland.

Zogg's breakthrough came in 1980 with his yodelling song "Kamerade", which is one of the best-known Swiss yodelling songs and was one of the most sung yodelling songs in Switzerland for many years. Mathias Zogg made an important contribution to the yodelling scene in the canton of Thurgau and throughout Switzerland with his commitment as conductor of various choirs in Eastern Switzerland and as a juror at regional and national yodelling festivals, the canton added.

Mathias Zogg was born on January 12, 1939 in Chur and spent his youth in Tamins. After living in the Basel region for a short time, where he also practised yodelling, he moved to St. Pelagiberg with his wife Heidi in 1967, where he still lives today. In 1980, he surprised everyone at the yodelling festival in Gossau with his yodelling song "Kamerade". The composition was nominated by Suisa as the most sung yodelling song for twelve consecutive years. On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Northeast Swiss Yodelling Association, he won the corresponding composition competition in 2007. Together with his wife, he publishes his works in his own publishing house "Bärgröseli".

Bolton became chief conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg in 2004, which he will leave at the end of the coming season after 14 years of successful collaboration. From September 2015, he will take up the position of Music Director at the Teatro Real in Madrid. He is also regularly invited to festivals such as the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, the BBC Proms and the Festival d' Aix-en-Provence.

Polish conductor Michał Nesterowicz - who won the Cadaqués Orchestra's European Conducting Competition in 2008 - is to become the orchestra's 1st guest conductor. According to the orchestra's announcement, he will devote more time to the Eastern European repertoire and modern music in Basel.
 

Physicist Alex von Bohlen, who works at the ISAS (Leibniz Institute for Analytical Sciences) in Dortmund, is known for analyzing works of art, for which he prefers to use X-ray spectroscopy. He has been called in as an expert to examine three portraits of Johann Sebastian Bach. One of them belongs to a collector from Dortmund, the other two were contributed by the Bachhaus Eisenach.

The owners wanted to know whether their paintings were genuine and whether the dating was correct. The portraits were therefore examined to determine whether the pigments in their dyes matched the respective eras. The result: the color composition of the two Eisenach paintings indicates that they were painted in the 18th and 19th centuries respectively. In the painting of the Dortmund collector, however, von Bohlen and his colleagues found larger proportions of pigments that do not really match 18th century colors.

However, the scientists warn against jumping to conclusions: The portrait could simply have been restored in some places. For this reason, it is now to be analyzed on a large scale. The pigment lithopone, a compound of barium sulphate and zinc sulphide, which was not yet used in the 18th century, plays a decisive role here. Further investigations should now provide more clarity.

The anthology takes the form of a box with three audio CDs: Swiss film music starting with Arthur Honegger's compositions for Pacific 231 (1924), La roue (1923), Napoleon (1927) on excerpts from the sound tracks of Romeo and Juliet in the village (Jack Trommer, 1941), Uli the farmhand (Robert Blum, 1954), Jean Luc persécuté (Guy Bovet, 1966), Steppenwolf (George Gruntz, 1974), Bonfire (Mario Beretta, 1985), The Congress of the Penguins (Bruno Spörri, 1993) up to The boy to be hunted (Ben Jeger, 2011) and Hunkeler and the eyes of Oedipus (Christine Aufderhaar, 2012).

A DVD with musically remarkable short films, including commercials, from 1934-2011 and a book that tells the story of Swiss film music from its beginnings in silent film to current examples round off the publication.

The anthology, published by the Fondation Suisa under the artistic direction of music and media scientist Mathias Spohr, bears witness to the enormous wealth of high-quality film music in Switzerland.

The Swiss Film Music Anthology 1923-2012 is available in book and CD shops or via: www.swissfilmmusic.ch

Box with three audio CDs, a DVD and a book, edited by Mathias Spohr, in German, French, Italian and English, hardcover, 400 p., Fr. 69.00, Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2015,
ISBN 978-3-0340-1265-2
 

Music is often characterized as a universal language. So far, however, it has not been possible to identify clear universals in music, i.e. characteristics that are common to every musical expression. The team has put this to the test again - with a statistical analysis of 304 music recordings from all over the world.

As the authors write, no absolute universals could be identified. However, statistical generalities can be specified that are consistent in all examples from a total of nine world regions considered. In total, the authors identify 18 individual characteristics and 10 characteristics that are generally associated with each other.

The characteristics include features of pitch organization and rhythmic structure, but also performance characteristics and social characteristics. The functions of music as a means of coordination and strengthening the cohesion of groups proved to be the most similar.

The authors of the study see their results as a good starting point for further research into understanding the phenomenon of music, taking global cultures into account.

Original article:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/06/23/1414495112.abstract?sid=67c8f410-732c-4448-9502-f7b3db999d0a

For a good rehearsal and concert experience, choir singers need to practise their voices. The "carus music" app now offers a new approach to getting to know, learning and practising choral music - with and without knowledge of sheet music. 

The great works of choral literature, which are available from Carus-Verlag both as recordings and as sheet music editions, have been optimized for mobile devices: The prepared Urtext scores of the Carus piano reductions are synchronized with the recordings.

Navigation is intuitive: each bar can be selected directly, a marker that runs synchronously with the music facilitates orientation, and the pages can be turned either automatically or manually as required. As a special feature, "carus music" offers a coach for learning your own choral voice: When the coach is activated, the respective choir part is played along by a piano and clearly highlighted - just like in a choir rehearsal. At the same time, the singers practise their voice in the overall sound of the choir and instruments - just like in a concert. In slow mode, the coach is also available at a reduced tempo, making it easier to practise fast and difficult passages.

carus music" is now available with an initial selection of important works of choral literature. The list of works will be continuously expanded. The app is free, the works are purchased via in-app purchase and are available offline after downloading. One choral movement per work is available free of charge for testing purposes. 

List of works, tutorial and download options: www.carus-music.com/

Due to great demand, Carus is now also offering the concept on CD. The list of works is also being continuously expanded.

Bohuslav Martinů, who spent the last years of his life in Switzerland and died in Liestal, was one of the most prolific and versatile composers of the 20th century. His broad oeuvre, encompassing many genres, includes around thirty operas and ballets, songs, choral works, cantatas, an oratorio, symphonies, numerous orchestral works for large and small ensembles, more than thirty solo concertos, around one hundred chamber music works in a variety of instrumentations and a series of works for solo instruments.

From Prague in the early 20th century, which was still strongly influenced by Austro-German late Romanticism, Martinů moved to Paris in 1923 and studied composition with Albert Roussel. With his symphonic Rondo Halftime (1924), he decidedly joined the neoclassical avant-garde of his time; the works from the second half of the 1920s are increasingly influenced by jazz. In the 1930s, Martinů enriched his compositions with lyrical elements, particularly from Czech and Moravian folk songs, and further developed his concertante style, which culminated in his double concerto for two string orchestras, piano and timpani (1938).

After the German troops invaded France, Martinů emigrated to America. The new environment enabled the composer to fully develop as a symphonist. The five symphonies written between 1942 and 1946 are impressive for their uninhibited melodic inventiveness, rhythmic freshness and well-formed concepts. In the 1950s, Martinů achieved an original synthesis of the various styles of his compositional development. Especially after his return to Europe in 1953, his works were increasingly influenced by Neo-Impressionism.

The Bohuslav Martinů Complete Edition is a large-scale musicological project. Under the auspices of the Bohuslav Martinů Institute, the works in all versions and arrangements as well as newly discovered and previously unpublished compositions will be made available in scholarly-critical editions.  

The first volumes:

Series VI/2/1: The Epic of Gilgamesh, H 351, edited by Aleš Březina, BA 10571, € 390.00, Bärenreiter, 2015

Series II/1/4: Symphony No. 4, H 305, edited by Sharon Andrea Choa, BA 10572, € 335.00, Bärenreiter 2015

 

The program structure of this year's Bern Music Festival under the motto "Big Bang" plays with today's common cosmological images of the Big Bang and Cosmic Expansion: After the concentrated energy explodes in various programs on the first three days of the festival, the concerts and performances of the second week of the festival behave like the formation of individual galaxies and stars. 

Artists in residence are percussionist Brian Archinal and the ensemble This I Ensemble That. Archinal, who comes from Denver, Colorado (USA), has established himself as a soloist and lecturer since graduating from the Basel University of Music. He has been teaching percussion at Bern University of the Arts since 2014. A training program for experimental forms of interpretation is being developed there under his direction. 

Part of the "Big Bang" concert series is also the Mad Scientist Festival - an international festival for new show formats and art projects relating to science and research. Based on the giant particle accelerator at the Cern nuclear research center in Geneva, a local club will be converted into a "collider" for ten days, where big bang research will be made tangible in a playful way, with talks and installations, a special bar and a "Scientific Arcade".

More info: www.musikfestivalbern.ch
 

The Beat Baumli & Jürg Morgenthaler Trio and the group Piri Piri also performed in the final. The three bands performed one after the other in half-hour sets. The decision was made by the audience and the jury, which this year included Pepe Lienhard for the first time. Raphael Jost and his fellow musicians impressed with their excellent ensemble playing, strong stage presence and varied program, according to the jazz festival's press release.

In addition to the award, the winners will have the opportunity to perform at Swiss festivals and jazz clubs, including the Festival da Jazz in St. Moritz on 9 August 2015 and Jazz Ascona 2016. These are made possible by the organizers of the Swiss Jazz Awards, the SRF broadcaster Radio Swiss Jazz and the Festival Jazz Ascona, with the support of Migros Culture Percentage and the participating jazz clubs.

The Swiss Jazz Award has been presented annually for nine years. Information on the winners of recent years and on the award in general can be found at www.swissjazzaward.ch.