The northern Bernese association of municipalities serves as a decision-making platform for the municipalities to conclude service contracts with cultural institutions of regional importance. According to the canton, the organizational regulations "take into account the special circumstances of this part of the canton and its bilingualism" and specifically provide for sub-regions.

As the regulations were not issued by the municipalities within the statutory period, the canton has taken over in accordance with the Cultural Promotion Act. The regulations will come into force on June 20, 2015 and the constituent meeting of the municipal association for the promotion of culture will take place on June 23, 2015.

As a musician and mediator, Gerhard Pawlica has shaped cultural life in Lucerne through his sustained and tireless commitment to chamber music, writes the city. He pursues his artistic activities as a solo cellist in various formations (21st Century Orchestra, Lucerne Chamber Musicians etc.), as a music mediator and also as a music teacher with passion and in many different ways. Pawlica is considered a pioneer of chamber music concerts in Lucerne. In 1996, he founded the Society for Chamber Music, which has since organized an annual concert cycle of ten concerts.

Pink Spider (aka Valerie Koloszar) has been dedicating herself to her musical career for years and released her second album in 2014. According to the city, the young multi-instrumentalist's songs "captivate with their unheard depth and perfect arrangements".

Further recognition prizes for 2015 go to filmmaker Ursula Brunner and performing artist Nina Langensand. The Art and Culture Prize is endowed with CHF 25,000 and the recognition prizes with CHF 10,000 each.

Rölli, co-owner of the advertising agency c & h konzepte and President of the Solothurn City and Trade Association, is familiar with Solothurn's culture as co-organizer of the Solothurn Culture Night, organizer of the "Acoustic Nights" in the Old Hospital and co-author of the "LiteraturPanorama".

The Board of Trustees for the Promotion of Culture of the Canton of Solothurn acts as an expert advisory body on behalf of the Government Council. It supports artists and cultural practitioners by advising the cantonal government on cultural policy and helping to fulfill the tasks and objectives of the cultural articles formulated in the Solothurn Constitution and the Cultural Promotion Act. The position of president of the committee was advertised publicly for the first time in March.

According to a Bertelsmann Stiftung press release, 95 percent of teachers and 93 percent of parents at the 90 or so schools participating in the project said that learning with music improves the quality of teaching and has a positive effect on children's development.

96% of teachers and 76% of parents stated that musical elementary school support children individually according to their interests, abilities and strengths. As early as 2011, a study of musical elementary school in Hesse found that cooperation between teachers and interaction between pupils improved significantly after the start of the project.

Around 60,000 pupils currently take part in the music education programs at 350 primary music schools (an average of 175 pupils per school): In Lower Saxony and Hesse at around 100 schools each, in Bavaria at 60 schools, in Thuringia and Berlin at 35 and 37 schools respectively and in North Rhine-Westphalia at 20 schools.

The project started in 2005 in Hesse in cooperation with the local Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs. Over the years, five other federal states have joined as partners. As an important part of school development, the project also supports inclusion and the design of all-day schools.

For the second time, the Institute of Financial Services Zug IFZ at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts has taken a close look at the crowdfunding market in Switzerland. The research team analyzed the data of all platforms active in Switzerland last year - 15 in total. However, numerous market participants have been added in recent months. At the end of April 2015, 30 platforms were active with a branch in Switzerland, including the Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank, the first traditional bank since the end of 2014.

15.8 million francs were raised through crowdfunding in Switzerland in 2014 - 36% more than in the previous year and a fivefold increase compared to 2011. The money raised is attributable to 1078 campaigns, as the fundraising phase is known. However, the absolute amounts are still very low in an international comparison. The crowdfunding market in Switzerland is still in its infancy compared to the USA or the UK, explains finance professor Andreas Dietrich, who wrote the study together with Simon Amrein and with the support of Swisscom.

Crowdfunding is increasingly establishing itself as an alternative form of financing, particularly in the cultural sector. Almost 1.5 million francs were raised for 216 music, concert and festival campaigns in 2014, an average of around 6,850 francs.

On www.hslu.ch/crowdfunding the current study can be downloaded free of charge.
 

The "panpipe" - that's the instrument that Peruvian Indians play in the station underpass. El condor pasa play? Sometimes that is true. However, this gives a very one-sided picture of the panpipe. After all, there are variations of this instrument all over the world. The South American panpipe, however, is not represented at the festival. The Romanian panpipe can do much more: the repertoire of this ancient instrument ranges from virtuoso baroque music to wistful romanticism and modern classical music. The fact that it is related to the organ is best realized when an entire panpipe ensemble plays. Of course, folk music from Eastern Europe is also a must. It is well known that the great panpipe players come from Romania.

The panpipe in Switzerland
Given such a wide range of styles, it was quite a success to get the various panpipe groups together at all. The planning phase for the first festival in Winterthur in 2012 took over five years, and on September 5, 2015, they will come together from all over Switzerland and Liechtenstein for the second time. Most of the events are open to the public.

The community of panpipe players has existed in Switzerland for around forty years. The current movie Balkan melody tells how this came about. Back then, Marcel Cellier, an ethnomusicologist from Geneva, traveled to Romania and brought Gheorghe Zamfir's music back to Western Europe. Zamfir's first record formed the basis for the scene, which soon spread throughout Switzerland.

In addition to the many Swiss schools that already offer panflute lessons in individual and group classes, for almost 15 years now it has been possible to graduate with a teaching and concert diploma from the SAMP/SMPV. In Lucerne, it is now also possible to obtain a university degree in panpipes. The Panflute Podium Switzerland works hard to promote the interests of professional training.

Musicians and singers from ten nations will raise their voices against TTIP in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The German Publishers and Booksellers Association has also launched the nationwide campaign "Book trade instead of free trade". A handbook (TTIP, CETA & CO: On the effects of free trade agreements on culture and the media, 270 pages, ISBN 978-3-934868-34-2) on the effects of free trade agreements on culture and the media will also be published to coincide with the day of action. 34 authors shed light on the planned agreements and their effects on the cultural sector.

TTIP is intended to improve trade in goods and services between the USA and the European Union by removing existing trade barriers. Such trade barriers for potential US companies in Germany include fixed book prices, European copyright law, public cultural funding and the financing of public broadcasting through the household levy.

German politicians such as the President of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert, see TTIP not only as an opportunity for the EU to "set the highest possible global standards together with the USA and to ensure that our Western standards, for example in the areas of environmental, consumer and employee protection and public institutions, are applied worldwide".
 

More info: www.tag-gegen-ttip.de

As Cohrs writes, a handwritten set of parts of Bruckner's Sixth Symphony was copied, which was used both for a novelty rehearsal by the Vienna Philharmonic in 1882 and for the first performance of the Adagio and Scherzo under Wilhelm Jahn in 1883. It had previously been assumed that this set of parts had been lost. This was also noted by Leopold Nowak in the revision report for the Sixth.

Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs initially discovered a remnant of the set in the archives of St. Florian Abbey - a part for bassoon I in a copyist's hand, with autograph entries and the anonymous pencil note "Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien" (GdM) on the title page. Cohrs' further search in the archives of the GdM in Vienna then revealed the complete set of parts; only the bassoon part in St. Florian is missing.

According to Cohrs, earlier researchers may have overlooked this because the set of parts is indexed under the same call number as the dedication score copy, but is kept in the archive magazine at a different location. The set of parts consists of all the wind parts, timpani and one string part each (with the exception of the viola, of which six copies survive). The copyist has yet to be identified. Most of the parts contain some autograph corrections as well as pencil annotations by players.

More info: www.benjamingunnarcohrs.com

The problem of bringing proximity and distance into a healthy relationship is a profoundly human one - and therefore also one of historiography. Anyone who wants to find out something about recent musical practice usually encounters distanced, abstract theories, cultural-historical constellations or observations from a bird's eye view, as befits a scientific approach. Bálint András Varga, long-time head of the promotions department at Editio Musica Budapest, takes a different approach: he takes the shortcut and lets the participants have the floor. Varga asked 73 composers from Gilbert Amy to Hans Zender three questions: Did you have an experience that changed your musical thinking? Are they influenced by the sounds of their surroundings? To what extent can one speak of a personal style and where does self-repetition begin?

Not all composers are able to deal with such questions - either because they prefer to compose or have to compose, or because they have heard the questions too often and have often answered them. Those who did get involved gave a huge range of answers. While the American Elliott Carter, for example, interprets self-repetition as a sign of fatigue, the Italian Sylvano Bussotti apparently considers it unavoidable: "Self-repetition (Vivaldi, Rossini, Webern etc. etc. etc. etc.) is first and foremost a biological constant of man, not of the composer in particular. It does not arise, it is already there. Style is a retrospective category that is usually defined a posteriori by critics, often without considering the deep meaning of musical creation."

Many antitheses paint a very heterogeneous picture of music after 1945. A large part of the lively diversity of opinions is due to the selection of composers, which shows no signs of blinkers. Through his many contacts, Varga has reached well-known representatives of the American school (Earle Brown, John Cage, Morton Feldman), many greats of the European avant-garde (Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Helmut Lachenmann), younger composers such as Mark André, older ones such as Klaus Huber or Krzysztof Penderecki. Only female composers are largely absent; unfortunately only Unsuk Chin, Sofia Gubaidulina and Rebecca Saunders have their say.

Nevertheless, the collection, which is certainly very elaborate, remains fascinating. You won't read it all in one go. The more than 400-page tome probably serves more as a reference work that allows initial approaches to a selected composer. However, much of it also throws an illuminating light on the music of past centuries. When the Swiss Klaus Huber talks about the pressure of production, including time pressure, then one can also think of the working conditions of Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi or Joseph Haydn. In the eyes of most composers, the individual, subjectively saturated "opus perfectum et absolutum" is nothing more than a romantic invention. They are right.

Bálint András Varga, Three questions to 73 composers, translated from the English by Barbara Eckle, 416 p., € 29.90, ConBrio Verlagsgesellschaft, Regensburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-940768-42-1

"The cabaret is dead . Mause-miese-ratze-fiese-dead?" - No, not anymore. Georg Kreisler's chansons have been revived in the new edition, which was awarded the 2015 German Music Edition Prize and is the result of a collaboration between Thomas A. Schneider and Barbara Kreisler-Peters and published by Schott-Verlag. Volumes 1 to 3 have already been published, volume 4 is almost finished and will be published soon. Volume 5 is in the pipeline. Each volume contains 24 to 30 songs and chansons.

If cabaret had not already existed, it would have had to be invented for this important, great, witty, bitterly evil, clairvoyant, deeply black and humorous artist, pianist, poet and singer, who, based on the conviction that people are not born stupid, but made stupid, declared war on the stupid talkers with slogans that were as clever as they were aggressive. "I don't know what I'm supposed to mean," Georg Kreisler once said about himself, presenting himself to posterity as a personality torn between the desire to entertain and the desire to provoke. We experience him as multifaceted. "He grabbed the truth, as he perceived it, by the scruff of its neck and dragged it behind him until it spoke and even sang," writes editor Thomas A. Schneider about him.

Georg Kreisler was born in Vienna in 1922. In 1938, the Kreisler family had to flee from the Nazis and Georg, as a Jewish exile, took American citizenship in 1943. Until his death in 2011, he declared: "There is no way I am Austrian." As he was too far ahead of his time in America and his sarcastic humor was too much for the Americans (e.g. Please, shoot your husband), he returned to Europe in the 1950s and gave us an oeuvre of over 300 chansons, most of which are unfortunately only documented in fragments, notes and sketches and some of which have apparently been lost. Although there was always a great demand for sheet music to Kreisler's chansons, most of the pieces were only available as audio documents. Georg Kreisler had everything in his head, there was no need for him to write them down. Kreisler answered every request for sheet music with the succinct sentence: "Anyone can write them down from my audio recordings."

The publisher Thomas A. Schneider has done pioneering work. After he, an organist, pianist, actor and singer, had been waiting for around 20 years for "someone to come along and write down the chansons", but nothing happened, he started himself: For over two years now, he has been working on the transcriptions, which are based almost exclusively on recordings by Kreisler himself. He is also still working his way through sketches of many chansons, which unfortunately only rarely have the quality of the notes of the one-woman musical Lola Blue achieved. He usually only finds a singing voice and chord symbols, almost never underlaid with text. In addition, the notes often do not correspond to the known sound documents. Kreisler liked to improvise and create from the moment, and Thomas A. Schneider consequently sees his notes as "... a solid trampoline for Kreisler interpreters. But they have to jump themselves."

The present scores are oriented towards playability and clarity, and there are also certain simplifications which are intended to encourage the performer to deal with the models as freely as their creator himself.

The chansons have been arranged according to themes. "Everyday life and how to cope with it", "Man and woman", "Politics and public order" are the names of these chapters, for example. And so, depending on our life situation and mood, we can look up, read and sing about what kind of "ticker" a politician actually is; we can be inspired by the variety of Austrian-Czech name variants with the telephone book polka, we can watch two old aunts dancing the tango and finally, finally poison pigeons on a grand scale. Just as the mood takes us.

Georg Kreisler is dead.
Long live Georg Kreisler.

Georg Kreisler, Lieder und Chansons, for voice and piano, edited by Thomas A. Schneider and Barbara Kreisler-Peters, Volumes 1-3, ED 21831-21833, € 29.50 each, Schott, Mainz

Probably no other composition would have been better suited for the opening of a new representative facsimile series published by the Bibliothèque nationale de France than Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune - the symphonic poem from 1894 which, from today's perspective, seems like the beginning of modern music. At any rate, this is a quite rightly formulated bon mot by Pierre Boulez.

Contrary to what one might assume from the by no means straightforward history of its creation - the first sketches date from 1890/91, the plan for a three-part suite remained unrealized - the autograph score now available as a facsimile in the best print quality is a fair copy, which served as an engraver's model. The oversized edition is thus impressive in two ways; in addition, Brepols' usual lavish, first-class graphic and publishing design is also present.

However, it is a little surprising that the introduction by Denis Herlin, written in French and covering several aspects in an instructive manner, has not been translated (into English, for example), as is not only customary for such editions of foreseeably outstanding importance, but also seems necessary for a wider reception. This would hardly do any harm to a "grande nation culturelle"; on the contrary, it could demonstrate true greatness.

Claude Debussy, Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune. Fac-similé du manuscrit autographe de la partition d'orchestre (= de Main de maître 1), 80 p., 320 x 430 mm, € 150.00, Brepols Publishers, Turnhout/Belgium 2014, ISBN 978-2-503-55134-0

Let's get straight to the point: The collection of around 90 monophonic melodies that Christoph Greuter has compiled from manuscripts and prints of the 16th and 17th centuries of Swiss provenance or with a connection to Switzerland and arranged for practical use is a stroke of luck. The author, a lutenist who graduated from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and a specialist in historical plucked instruments, is also well versed in various guitar styles. In his extensive studies, including the electric guitar with slide technique, he realized that older Swiss folk music is not only suitable for historical instruments, but for all melody instruments.

The researcher and professional musician has carried out extensive research into 20 manuscripts from Switzerland, primarily from the Basel University Library and the Fundaziun Planta in Samedan, as well as several printed lute and organ tablatures (fingerings) from neighboring countries for secular Swiss melodies (e.g. Schweyzer dantz, Zürich Tantz, Marche suisse, Solothurner danz, Pretigauwer Dantz) and transcribed them in the original keys. In addition, there are chord sequences notated in letters for accompanying instruments, so that the edition is suitable for historically oriented instrumentalists, for amateur music-making and especially for music education needs. Christoph Greuter's professionally arranged treasure trove of melodies will also inspire minstrels and folkies who have had to prepare their own material up to now and who have had to translate pieces handed down in tablature into modern notation rather badly. The Swiss Renaissance and Baroque melodies, which are now so easily accessible, are also likely to inspire composers and experimental folk musicians to develop them further.

The 60-page music book concentrates on dances and songs that the editor has found and arranged over 15 years of work. For a second volume, one would like to see melodies that are referred to in Swiss flyer songs and that can usually be found. It is also advisable to examine the historical Basel carnival marches that can be traced back to the field play of the old Swiss Confederates.

Christoph Greuter has thankfully sifted through individual works by Arnold Geering, Hans in der Gand, Martin Staehelin, Joachim Marx, Robert Grossmann and other musicologists and ethnologists, added further finds and harmonized all the melodies for practical use. He has thus filled a gap in Switzerland's musical monuments and made a significant contribution to the intangible cultural heritage.

Radix. The earliest Swiss music in the popular idiom. Music in the old Swiss Confederation from music manuscripts and prints of the 16th and 17th centuries, edited by Christoph Greuter, order no. 1068, Fr. 29.00, Mülirad Verlag, Altdorf 2014

Boredom is known to be the mortal enemy of learning, while our brain is dependent on constant repetition. Carl Czerny's solution to this conflict of objectives is the trick of incessant repackaging. In his 160 short (8-bar) exercises, for example, we find the dominant fourth sixth chord with rule-compliant resolution over and over again. The harmonic cliché is sometimes so well packaged that we no longer even notice the cliché.

Mike Cornick, the successful prolific author of pianistic teaching literature, seems to have internalized the recipe of his predecessor. Both in the collection In the Groove and More as well as in the three volumes published in 2014/15 of his Style CollectionJazz, Afro-Caribbean and evergreens, he constantly repackages pianistic challenges in new and sophisticated ways.

In the volume Jazz we find eleven standards and two original compositions based on traditional jazz. Mainly swing in its variants and a ragtime to be phrased in binary serve to train the insidious shifting of the bar's center of gravity to beats 2 and 4 and the bringing forward of individual style-typical bar parts by a ternary eighth note. Unfortunately, the chord ciphers, which must always be included in jazz, have slipped graphically far below the bass system. Following the lead sheet notation, it would make more sense to print them directly above the melody. In contrast to the basso continuo, in jazz we harmonize "songs", i.e. the melodies. In addition, the precise notation in the arrangement should be internalized as quickly as possible in jazz lessons as one of many variants of how the chord symbol can be implemented, but by no means has to be. For example, no jazz pianist will play the repeated A section of a piece the same way twice. The student should always be aware that in jazz practice, improvisation is the result of what is printed here as binding. Unfortunately, he is not explicitly asked to improvise in the volume itself.

In the Afro-Caribbean pieces and their arrangements, it is astonishing in the above context how often Cornick allows himself to be tempted by the frowned-upon copy-paste. The typical key changes alone do not make the style. Printing the same thing again in green may at best serve as transposition training, but otherwise merely increases the number of pages in the publication. A dramaturgically condensed movement following the course of the key, partially reharmonized or extended by octaves, would be more pianistically challenging.

Those who have become accustomed to Cornick's writing will find in the volume Evergreens the hits that come after working with the school Piano Coach 1 and 2 (also by Cornick) will complement and expand his repertoire. However, whether we will have to wait for another simplified version of the Entertainersthe Maple Leaf Rags, from La Cucaracha or Summertime the writer dares to doubt that they have waited.

Cornick's strength remains the didactically solidly written original compositions. Here, the obviously experienced pedagogue can draw from the full without having to measure himself against previous arrangers. The 14 pieces from In the Groove and More are a great all-around hit for the intermediate level, especially for classically trained students. As they should also be confronted with the chord symbols, especially the seventh chords typical of jazz at all harmonic levels, from this level at the latest, it is inexplicable, almost annoying, that not a single symbol denotes the characteristic voicings and has found its way into print. Equally annoying are the gimmick CDs that are so common today. The chosen synthetic sounds are so cheap and poorly mixed that the recordings can hardly be said to be of any use. The good old metronome is almost the more solid play-along.

Cornick Mike, In the Groove and More, 14 entertaining pieces of medium difficulty for piano, UE 21669, € 13,95, Universal Edition, Vienna 2014

Mike Cornick, Style Collection - Jazz, Popular jazz standards, blues and spirituals in intermediate arrangements for piano, UE 21650each with CD, € 17.95

id., Afro-Caribbean Style Collection, UE 21651

id., Style Collection - Evergreens, UE 21652