Many earlier generations of choir conductors are still familiar with the three-volume choral conducting school by Kurt Thomas (1904-1973). His equally important work as a composer is only being rediscovered today. And anyone reflecting on the development of sacred choral music in the 20th century cannot ignore the central importance of his work. Advised by Reger interpreter Karl Straube, he composed his most important works at an age when composers were still searching for their way, and his success spread far beyond Germany. After teaching in Berlin, Frankfurt/Main and Detmold, he was appointed Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1957.

Breitkopf & Härtel recently published his Short sacred choral music op. 25, a collection of 20 motets covering the entire church year including some special church occasions. Most of the motets are composed for four-part a cappella choir, but some also include organ, violin, flute or a soprano soloist. The exact instrumentation is usually left open, as Kurt Thomas as cantor was aware of the different local conditions. However, frequent double and even triple divisions in the choir require a corresponding number of singers. The frequently quoted Luther chorales appear in the form of a cantus firmus or in unison, which can also be used as an opportunity for congregational participation in the liturgical setting. Performance in concert is also conceivable in order to emphasize the variety and exciting contrasts of this music. The new edition brings together the previous individual editions in an easy-to-read, beautifully set score and is a really worthwhile addition to the repertoire.

Kurt Thomas: Kleine Geistliche Chormusik for soprano, baritone ad lib. and four- to eight-part choir a cappella or with two violins, flute and organ, CHB 5344, €19.50, Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden

Some famous composers - Brahms, Stravinsky, Wagner and Liszt come to mind - were inspired to write important works by longer or shorter stays in Switzerland. Not so the Paris-based American composer Swan Hennessy, who lived in Veytaux on Lake Geneva from 1915 to 1919 due to the war. For unknown reasons, he did not compose a single work during these five years.

Hennessy's work has only been increasingly recognized in recent years. Born in Illinois in the USA in 1866 as the son of an Irish emigrant, he studied in Stuttgart. It is no wonder that his early compositions were influenced by German music, especially Schumann. His move to Paris coincided with a turn towards musical impressionism and the music of Debussy and Ravel, and from 1900 onwards he also developed an interest in Irish and Celtic music.

Works "in the Irish style" make up an important part of Hennessy's oeuvre, which grew to over 80 works with opus numbers by the time of his death in 1929. His oeuvre is devoted exclusively to piano, vocal and chamber music. His compositions were very well received throughout Europe, but especially in Ireland. Unlike other composers, Hennessy did not work with quotations from Irish folk music, but rather appropriated its melodic and rhythmic characteristics.

The initiative to record a CD of Swan Hennessy's complete string quartets and string trio is highly commendable. Released under the label of the Irish radio station RTÉ and performed by the excellent RTÉ Contempo Quartet, this recording helps to arouse interest in a completely forgotten composer. The members of the string quartet, who are a joy to listen to, have known each other since their school days in Bucharest. The ensemble has been based in Galway, Ireland, for many years and has made a name for itself with performances of traditional repertoire as well as world premieres of contemporary Irish music.

Particularly moving is Hennessy's second quartet op. 49 from 1920, which is intended to commemorate Terence MacSwiney, the Lord Mayor of Cork, who died in an English prison in the same year after a hunger strike and thus became a martyr of the Irish independence movement.

The fact that Hennessy was no friend of atonal music and the avant-garde in general can be heard in his compositions. His aim was to create pan-Celtic music that drew on the traditions of Ireland, Scotland and Brittany. His string quartets, which are imbued with a mild melancholy and lack extreme dynamic contrasts and exaggerated emotions, are good examples of this. The RTÉ Contempo Quartet captures their tone perfectly and convinces with nuanced and beautiful interpretations.

Swan Hennessy: Complete String Quartets 1-4, Sérénade & String Trio. RTÉ Contempo Quartet (Bogdan Sofei and Ingrid Nicola, violins ; Andreea Banciu, viola; Adrian Mantu, cello). RTÉ lyric fm CD 159

As chief conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra for many years, Michael Sanderling has made a name for himself internationally. Sanderling has also enjoyed success in recent years as a guest conductor with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic. Born in Berlin in 1967, he was unanimously elected by the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra Association.

Sanderling first conducted the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra in 2010 in a program with works by Schubert and Brahms; in 2014, he conducted another project with scores by Weill and Shostakovich. In March 2019, he conducted two programs in Lucerne as well as the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra's "residency" at the Tongyeong Festival (South Korea). In May 2019, Sanderling took over the direction of subscription concerts with Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 in Lucerne at short notice.

The future Principal Conductor of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra will not only cover the existing core repertoire of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, he also stands for the further development of the orchestra in the direction of late romantic repertoire such as Bruckner, Mahler and Strauss, according to the press release.

The top three winners will receive prizes of 5000, 3000 and 2000 francs. In addition, they can each commission a composition from a young composer of their choice, funded by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. The three works will be premiered at the festival in Adelboden (September 11-20, 2020).

The Orpheus Competition is held at all Swiss music academies with the aim of supporting young ensembles at the start of their chamber music careers. This year, the audition for all twenty ensembles entered took place at the Zurich University of the Arts.

The five-member jury, headed by cellist and composer Thomas Demenga, selected the ensembles to perform at the 10th Swiss Chamber Music Festival Adelboden and the Festival Musikdorf Ernen 2020. Other ensembles nominated for the Swiss Chamber Music Festival in Adelboden are the Berchtold Piano Trio and the Trio Ernest.

Erismann will also accompany and support the eight-member ensemble in its artistic development and especially in interdisciplinary projects. Proton has been known for ten years for premieres (including as Ensemble in Residence at the Dampfzentrale Bern) in the field of contemporary classical music and was awarded the Music Prize of the Canton of Bern this year.

Peter Erismann, 58, comes from a family of musicians and worked for many years as an exhibition manager, curator and editor at the Swiss National Library/Swiss Literary Archives. He is well connected in Bern and is involved in the board of the Cinéville/Kino Rex association, for whose renovation he was responsible. Most recently, he worked for four years as managing director of the Aargauer Kuratorium in Aarau.

Keam (ISCM New Zealand) succeeds the retiring Peter Swinnen (ISCM Flanders). The new Vice President is Frank J. Oteri (New Music USA) from the USA. Irina Hasnaş (ISCM Romania) was newly elected to the Board. The other board members are Tomoko Fukui (ISCM Japan), George Kentros (ISCM Sweden) and Olga Smetanova (Secretary General, ISCM Slovakia).

Glenda Keam will be responsible for the organization of the ISCM World Music Days 2020 in New Zealand. The first female ISCM President comes from the country that was the first to introduce women's suffrage in the modern era, and her election in 2019 means that the ISCM will have a female president when it celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2022.

The International Society for Contemporary Music ISCM goes back to an initiative of the Second Viennese School during the Salzburg Festival in 1922. Its founding members included the composers Bartok, Hindemith, Honegger, Milhaud, Ravel, Berg, Schönberg, Stravinsky and Webern. It organizes the World Music Days (WMD), which take place every year in a different country.

Dieter Kaegi has been the artistic director of TOBS Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn since 2012 and a member of the Swiss Stage Association (SBV) committee since 2016. He was born in Zurich and studied English and musicology in Zurich, Paris and London. He began his theater career at the Zurich Opera House, followed by stints at the English National Opera, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf, the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the Salzburg Festival and the Festival in Aix-en-Provençe.

He was director of Opera Ireland in Dublin for 12 years and has been artistic director of Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn since 2012. As a director, Dieter Kaegi has worked on well over 100 productions at the most important opera houses and festivals in Europe, America and Asia.

The SBV is the umbrella organization of the most important professional theaters in Switzerland. It unites 74 theaters in German-speaking Switzerland, French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino. 17 companies are located in German-speaking Switzerland, 1 theater is in Ticino and 56 theaters are in the French-speaking part of the country and form their own association in the Fédération Romande des Arts de la Scène (FRAS). The FRAS is itself a member of the SBC.

The bandella can still sometimes be heard at festivals and patron saints' ceremonies in Italian-speaking Switzerland. In the past, these small brass bands could be found practically everywhere and were firmly anchored in people's everyday lives. They were omnipresent at carnivals, village festivals, political gatherings and sporting events, and were even indispensable at weddings. They also entertained people on many excursions. Wherever the bandella appeared, it contributed to the general merriment and became an important part of the common cultural heritage of Italian-speaking Switzerland.

But until now, little was known about the origins of this musical tradition. How many bandelle were there in earlier times, who were the most important protagonists and what repertoire did they play? There was also little knowledge of what comparable musical ensembles existed in earlier times in the Alpine region and northern Italy.

A new publication by the Center for Dialectology and Ethnography (CDE) in Bellinzona is now shedding light on this little-researched cultural phenomenon in Ticino and the Italian-speaking Grisons. It deals with the topic from three perspectives: historical, cultural-anthropological and musical. The project was realized in collaboration with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts - Music and brought to light surprising results about the history but also the current reality of the bandella. The tradition of the small brass band is still alive in Italian-speaking Switzerland and has the potential for renewal.

The researchers discovered that the bandella has been shaped by many different impulses throughout its long history. In the beginning, there was and still is a solid training of the music-making protagonists. This was once provided by the military, but today it is mainly in courses in brass band music. Tourism has greatly promoted the bandella as an identity-forming musical practice and thus contributed to its survival. In addition, the Bandella has been able to maintain its position by constantly adapting its repertoire to the needs of the present, with the intention of offering the audience contemporary and good entertainment. The Bandella is still so lively today because it has never given up the principle of spontaneous music-making in a cheerful atmosphere, despite the various fashions.
 

The publication will be presented on Saturday, November 23, 2019, 4:30 pm
in the Palazzo Civico, Piazza Nosetto 5, Bellinzona

Greetings from:
- Carlo Piccardi, musicologist
- Paolo Ostinelli, Director of the Centro di dialettologia e di etnografia
- the authors of the book: Aldo Sandmeier, Emanuele Delucchi and Johannes Rühl (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts - Music)

The aperitif that follows will be accompanied by the legendary Bandella di Tremona and spontaneous musicians.
 

Caption

Photo of the "Maggiolata" in Caslano, 1986, with the Malcantonesi costume group and the Bandella di Banco

According to a report in the bz - Zeitung für die Region Basel, the IG takes the view that there is a systemic imbalance in the city's promotion of music that puts pop, rock, jazz and related genres at a disadvantage. In a letter to the Basel Presidential Department, the IG is also reacting to the city's planned cultural mission statement for 2020-2025.

The IG, which believes that Basel has some catching up to do in terms of music promotion compared to other cantons, is planning a cantonal popular initiative to initiate binding music promotion in the city from below.

Original article:
https://www.bzbasel.ch/basel/basel-stadt/grundlegende-veraenderung-in-der-basler-musikfoerderung-ig-will-gleichbehandlung-aller-musikgenres-135956025
 

This is how time travel works: On Friday, I'm still deep in the East of Germany, in the old royal seat of Dresden with the affable and tradition-conscious Saxons, who refuse to adapt to "Wessi-speak" at all costs, and who put away the verdict of the distant Western media that they are susceptible to fascism with a friendly smile. Then, on Saturday, the flight with Swiss from the former valley of the clueless (no Western television) directly to today's island of the blissful (unprecedented prosperity). But here I am immediately beamed back thirty years to that very valley and the neighboring areas, which were not yet flourishing landscapes back then. Someone can still find their way around.

The destination of the journey through time was the Zurich radio studio with the six-hour series of events organized by the Collegium Novum Zurich (CNZ) "... and turned towards the future ..." (a line from the GDR national anthem). The theme was what was called "GDR music" or "GDR culture" in general until 1989 and is now only the subject of memories - associated with relief or nostalgic feelings, depending on your point of view. Both resonated in the extensive program with two concert blocks, two films and a panel discussion. The evening bore the signature of Jens Schubbe, who was born in the GDR and is now handing over the management of the CNZ to Johannes Knapp after nine years and returning to Germany to work as a dramaturge at the Dresden Philharmonic Orchestra. The concert has since been repeated in Dresden with the Zurich line-up - on the symbolically charged date of November 9th.

With this project, he wants to create an awareness of historicity, says Schubbe. His idea: a cultural landscape that has grown over decades should not simply disappear into the orcus of history, despite its glaring problems and contradictions. In fact, contemporary music in the GDR was wound up in a similar way to the economy after the fall of communism in 1989; the financially strong West German cultural sector integrated some of it, but pushed most of it aside and thus consigned it to oblivion.

Much of what was produced under German socialism rightly perished. Many GDR citizens were fed up with state art with populist maxims and stupid, albeit progressively disguised, educational slogans as once practiced by Hitler and Stalin. The more awake among the composers felt that they were constantly being bullied anyway. In principle, this did not change even when a party official authority like Paul Dessau used his prestige to defend the dissatisfied young generation against stubborn cultural functionaries from time to time.

When, in the 1970s, the Socialist Unity Party (SED) relaxed the guidelines for artists somewhat, the result was what attracted attention in the West as the "GDR avant-garde": works in which the limited freedom to develop individual creativity was used and even expanded. They manifest the dialectic of forced conformity and coded resistance that was characteristic of art in a dictatorship. Among the protagonists of this development were the rebellious composers Friedrich Goldmann and Friedrich Schenker, who were associated with the Leipzig ensemble "Neue Musik Hanns Eisler", the Berlin composers Georg Katzer, Paul-Heinz Dittrich and Reiner Bredemeyer and, with a more conservative touch, Udo Zimmermann in Dresden.

The Collegium Novum under Jonathan Stockhammer has now performed three important works that are representative of the work of this generation. The Chamber Music II by Paul-Heinz Dittrich from 1973, an energetic, contentious dialog between tape and a small ensemble, contains everything that was still considered Western decadence in the GDR at the time, with denatured sounds, microtones and an unconditionally subjective tone. La fabbrica abbandonata III by Georg Katzer from 2010 is a postmodern response to Luigi Nono's revolutionary composition La fabbrica illuminata and at the same time a highly symbolic swan song to a bankrupt social system. The play is based on a text by Wolfgang Hilbig from the 1970s, which packs the industrial decay in the GDR into a ghostly vision of doom. The long first part is a descriptive monodrama (narrator: Peter Schweiger), the end with its exposed soprano part is a piece of surreal poetry (with acrobatic precision: Catriona Bühler).

The third work was the Sonata a quattrocomposed in 1989 by Friedrich Goldmann. The piece for four times four instruments exposes the instrumental families of woodwinds, brass, strings and percussion in their specific sonorities and gradually mixes them into ever new constellations. The latent formalism of this arrangement is counteracted by a multitude of colors and an orgiastic moment of tutti. With its expansive gesture, the work clearly and audibly bids farewell to the narrowness of the past.

Wilfried Jentzsch was one person for whom the little freedom he had in the GDR was not enough. In 1973, he took advantage of a stay at the Künstlerhaus Boswil, at the time one of the few venues for GDR avant-gardists in the West that was accepted by the SED cultural superiors, to say goodbye to the workers' and farmers' paradise. He was now a guest in Zurich and, in conversation with Jens Schubbe and Johannes Knapp, vividly described the situation at the time and the reasons for his escape.

Jentzsch renounced the cooperation with so-called cultural brigades from the factories to secure his livelihood - the party had made this a cultural policy guideline under the name "Bitterfeld Way" - and preferred to make a living on the free market in the West. In Paris, he came into contact with Xenakis and began composing electronic music. Then, after reunification, he returned home to a foreign country that had somehow remained the same: the Dresden University of Music appointed him head of the Electronic Studio. In Zurich, Jentzsch wrote the composition Tamblingan for electronic sounds and video projection, in which digital sound signals and abstract pixel images correlate.

Two films by GDR filmmaker Frank Schleinstein, who died in 2017, rounded off the program. Earth game (1990) is an oppressive look back at a joyless society. Post-war misery, dilapidated industrial landscapes, a sterile public sphere and the ego's search for a social place worth living in are condensed into surreal sequences of images. A portrait film about Friedrich Goldmann provides a good insight into the cultural scene of the time, despite some shortcomings - tape interviews were often simply underlaid with images. Celebrities also have their say. Director Ruth Berghaus says, for example, that Goldmann was often frequented by musicians who "did not feel comfortable" in their country. She mentions Henze and Nono but, like a nomenclature artist, omits the composers in her own country. "We up there, you down there": This was not unknown under socialism.

A strange text, strange music, strange staging, altogether a strange construct full of breaks. That could be interesting! This musical theater with the title Farewell, have a good trip.

At first, however, you are at a loss as to what to expect. First of all, there is this dramatic poem by Gertrud Leutenegger from 1980, which speaks of a self that awakens in a coffin and apparently exists in several doubles, as an undead woman (Leila Pfister), mother and whore (Meret Roth), faun monkey and Great Queen (Eveline Inès Bill). Alongside them appear a trio of elders (Madeleine Merz, Florian Glaus, Arion Rudari), who perish one after the other, and finally the pair of friends from the Sumerian epic, Gilgamesh (Flurin Caduff) and Enkidu (Daniel Camille Bentz) from the city of Uruk. However, the roles are not always so clearly assigned to the actors. All in all, it is rather raw and archaic material, but the ancient Mesopotamian story is interspersed with anachronisms. Gilgamesh survives a car accident, for example. A complex, layered story. How do you set that to music?

Martin Derungs' composition is not so mirrored, but rather sparse and broken up in its flow. After a short phrase, the voices often switch back to speaking, which in turn remains graded in color between call, chant and recitation. A strong emphasis is definitely perceptible, but it can constantly break off. Sometimes the voices are completely alone, then they are only followed by thinned-out monophonic tone sequences: A few flute notes, a mandolin tremolo, some viola, accordion or glass harmonica, as the case may be. These are selected sounds that fit together. As a result, the text remains fairly easy to understand. On the other hand, it is not always easy for the eleven-piece ensemble under the direction of Marc Kissóczy to immediately hit the right note between the long pauses and create stable lines.

There are few violent tempo fluctuations, everything follows a similarly calm course. Derungs has never been a composer of too many notes, and he has often made do with the fewest. Characteristic elements hardly emerge, this music is not made, not theatrical. Only two or three times does it swing up into a parodistic dance, and even then only just. Otherwise, allusions have to suffice: The bass drum mentioned in the text appears in the ensemble with a mallet on the snare drum. In this respect, the sparseness is consistent and stylish. A veritable opera povera. What kind of staging would suit this?

The stage and stage direction (both by Giulio Bernardi) are not simple, despite the necessarily limited resources, but rather convoluted and disguised: there is a high seat for the ego, next to it a wide sofa. As in the text and music, there is only occasional continuity in this performance. Like the text, the narrative seems mirrored, somewhat muddled, constantly broken up into several levels. Is this an epic or stage reality? It is a play with several faces. The elders appear behind large rod puppets, the singers put on masks and make-up, and passages are sung and spoken from the score in a quasi-concertante manner. They are joined by a mime who silently comments on their actions and occasionally directs them. The characters and constellations change without any recognizable pattern. Here, too, you are left somewhat alone. It was a fortunate idea that the narrator Dorothee Roth briefly introduces the individual scenes beforehand.

Why all this in this strange and enigmatic combination? How did the three artists communicate with each other? Do they feel understood? Or is it perhaps this heterogeneity that wants to "communicate"? I didn't really warm to it, rather impatiently, but I kept at it because someone was daring to do something different. But what?

It's also about love: "He who does not fear love is immortal", is one of the lines. And then there are these fade-ins, which gave the play its title: Farewell, have a good tripa song, one of the last of the Comedian Harmonists, who disbanded shortly afterwards in 1935 during the Third Reich. "Think back to me", it continues. As the program booklet announces, the song is the prelude to a journey into the underworld. Of course, reading the story in the context of National Socialism seems inconclusive. But a basic flavor is perhaps still perceptible, somehow gothic ...

Despite the importance of hearing for our perception, relatively little is known about how our brain processes acoustic signals and gives them meaning. What is clear is that the more precisely we can distinguish sound patterns, the better our hearing is. But how does the brain manage to distinguish between relevant and less relevant information - especially in an environment with a lot of background noise?

Researchers led by Tania Rinaldi Barkat from the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel have investigated the neuronal basis of sound perception and sound discrimination under complex acoustic conditions. The focus was on researching the auditory cortex - the "auditory brain" The respective activity patterns in the brain of a mouse were measured.

It is well known that it becomes more difficult to distinguish sounds the closer they are to each other in the frequency spectrum. Initially, the researchers assumed that additional noise could make such a hearing task even more difficult. However, it actually turned out to be the other way around: The team was able to prove that the ability of the auditory system to distinguish subtle sound differences improved when white noise was added to the background. Compared to a quiet environment, the noise thus facilitated auditory perception.

The research group's measurement data showed that the noise significantly inhibited the activity of the nerve cells in the test animals. Paradoxically, this suppression of the neuronal excitation pattern led to a more precise perception of the pure tones.

To confirm that only the auditory cortex and not other areas of the brain were responsible for neuronal activity and sound perception in the experiments, the researchers used the light-controlled technique of optogenetics. Their findings could potentially be used to improve auditory perception in situations where sounds are difficult to distinguish.

Original article:
Rasmus Kordt Christensen, Henrik Lindén, Mari Nakamura, Tania Rinaldi Barkat: "White noise background improves tone discrimination by suppressing cortical tuning curves", Cell Reports (2019), doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2019.10.049
 

Egidius Streiff coordinated the submissions of the Swiss Society for New Music (ISCM Switzerland). This year, works by Heidi Baader-Nobs, Regina Irman, Karl Alfons Zwicker, Blaise Ubaldini, Carlo Ciceri and Esther Flückiger were submitted. After Helena Winkelman (2015), Iris Szeghy (2016) and Junghae Lee (2019), Flückiger is the fourth Swiss composer to present a composition at the ISCM World Music Days.

Esther Flückiger, born in Bern in 1959, works as a pianist, improviser and composer. She also draws on a rich foundation in the multimedia field, which demonstrates her familiarity with both the classical repertoire and jazz idioms. Her works have been performed in Europe, the USA, Russia, Asia and South America and are documented on numerous CD, TV and radio recordings.

The ISCM World Music Days is the annual festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), founded in 1922, and will take place in Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand, from April 22 to 30 in 2020. It will be hosted by the Composers Association of New Zealand (CANZ) together with the Asian Composers League.

Under the name UE now, the Austrian music publisher is launching real-time availability of its globally distributed sheet music for amateur musicians through to professional players. UE now sheet music can be purchased via Universal Edition, followed by a connection to the app from technology partner Newzik. The purchased sheet music can be found in this app.

The advantages of digital sheet music include the ability to turn the pages of sheet music using a footswitch or fingertip, the digital entry of markings and notes - collaboratively and visible in real time - and the import of music files in any format using open interfaces, including your own sheet music material. Own and purchased sheet music are thus united in a library on the end device using stable and secure technology.

Something extraordinary has happened in Zurich. With Helmut Lachenmann's music theater The girl with the sulfur sticks the opera house brought a work of the most advanced contemporary music to the stage as a ballet - and all nine performances were sold out! A unique success, which seems all the more astonishing when you consider the composer's personality and, in particular, his life's work. Lachenmann, who celebrates his 84th birthday on November 27, was perceived for decades as a refusenik, as someone who rejected all bourgeois convention and was accordingly treated with hostility. And now his music is celebrating such a triumph in the temple of bourgeois high culture of all places.

The carefully choreographed supporting program certainly contributed to this success. There were portrait concerts, a discussion concert and a symposium at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), with and about Helmut Lachenmann. The symposium served less as an introduction to the opera than as an in-depth exploration of the "Lachenmann event", as Dieter Mersch, philosopher and lecturer at the ZHdK, titled his lecture. Starting from the Girl with the sulfur sticks the participants explored fundamental questions about the composer's life's work under the direction of musicologist Jörn Peter Hiekel. The audience was delighted with Hiekel's ability to accurately summarize the various lectures and place them in a wider context.

There was a wide variety of topics covered in the lectures. For example, the musicologist Ulrich Mosch, who teaches in Geneva, addressed the question of how Lachenmann's music theater approaches differ from those of his teacher Luigi Nono. Central to this was the problem of how (politically) committed music-making was possible, because both teacher and pupil agreed that music had to be committed. But while the communist Nono saw his (especially his earlier) music theater works as a contribution to the class struggle and wanted to move people directly, Lachenmann was skeptical of such actions, once calling it "hypocrisy or - more sympathetically - quixotry". According to Mosch, he would rather try to use art to teach people "to use their thinking senses".

And this is precisely the aim of Lachenmann's music of scraping, blowing and scratching noises. The physical production of the sounds is no longer hidden, but turned outwards and is thus intended to expand our patterns of perception. This would move us, also politically. Or, as Mersch put it, in Lachenmann's work the political occurs "behind the music", so to speak.

Despite the diversity of the contributions, such as Christian Utz's comparison of Schubert's Winter journey with the Girls or Stephanie Schroedter's tour d'horizon through different approaches to choreographing Lachenmann's music, one thing emerged. The image of this composer is changing. Formerly viewed primarily from the perspective of negation, as a denier, today he is increasingly focusing on the aspect of perception. Lachenmann deals with the phenomenon of grasping music itself and, in doing so, achieves a degree of sensuality that is rarely found in New Music.

Perhaps the Zurich success of the Girl with the sulfur sticksIn general, the popularity that Lachenmann's music has recently enjoyed can be explained by this very sensuality. At the symposium, however, something else stood out. It was the person of the composer himself that was fascinating. For example, how he took the various contributions to his compositional personality seriously, apparently understanding them in such a way that he could learn something about himself from them. How he made an effort to respond to every contribution.

But above all when his passion for music burst out of him and led him to make statements of incredible plasticity. For example, when he justified his interest in Schubert by saying that he was a "thumb-sucker" who clung to certain elements, such as a particular chord, like a desperate, lonely child in the musical landscape left behind by Beethoven. Or when he described the founding fathers of serial music as gold diggers who, with the exception of the eternal desperado Nono, had mutated into jewelers.

However, Lachenmann's personality came across most clearly in the final discussion moderated by Claus Spahn, the chief dramaturge of the Zurich Opera House. While choreographer Christian Spuck offered interesting insights into the creation process of the Zurich production and composer Isabel Mundry commented on it with her usual wit, Lachenmann seemed like a child on the sidelines. A child who was genuinely happy about what he thought was a successful production and still marveled at how the dancers managed to move so synchronously.