Shortly after the end of the Early Music Festival, the Gaudeamus Music Week, the Mecca of cutting-edge notes for seventy years. Five nominated composers under 30 compete for the coveted Gaudeamus Award, previously won by now established composers such as Unsuk Chin, Yannis Kyriakides and Michel van der Aa.
For the second year, Music Week also organises a prestigious Academy, where creators and performers meet during workshops, reading sessions, master classes and presentations. A new feature is a two-day symposium ('music and politics'), replacing the previous seminars. The public is explicitly - and mostly free of charge - invited to attend these meetings. Five questions to programmer Martijn Buser.
Who is the Academy for?
'Last year, we started a Gaudeamus Music Week Academy for the five nominated composers. The working week should help the young artists on their way in daily music practice. Together with the performers, they rehearse their piece and get valuable feedback on what works and what doesn't work. Previously, it still remained mainly a paper affair: the selected and nominated scores were performed by the ensemble on duty, but there was no interaction with the creator.
The formula proved enormously successful, but because we only offered the working week to the five nominees, other interested parties fell by the wayside. So this year, we have broadened the Academy: now the workshops, reading sessions, master classes, a presentation and the two-day symposium on Music and Politics are open to everyone. Those who are not nominated have to bear the costs themselves, but there is huge interest - there are also many foreign participants.
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What do the workshops entail?
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This varies by subject and by teacher. There are four workshops: for cello, double bass, harp and live electronics. The aim is to challenge participants to start writing for the respective instrument - or medium in the latter case. Importantly, there is early contact between the composer and performer, allowing for more collaboration and interaction. That is much more inspiring than submitting a piece that is then performed by a musician or group unknown to you.
In her workshop, cellist Katharina Gross presents the long-running project Cellomondo, in which she asks composers from all over the world to write new works for her instrument. Last summer, we issued a call to send in score sketches and, based on this, a number of composers were invited to participate. Gross will elaborate on their compositions while showing how to write well for cello. In 2016, we hope to present the results of her workshop.
A similar approach is adopted by the double bass player Dario Calderone. A selection was also made for his workshop from sketches sent by applicants. Calderone will discuss them while highlighting all the possibilities of his instrument. He will use works composed especially for him as well as existing pieces that are now considered classics for his instrument.
The harp workshop has a slightly different format. Harpists Miriam Overlach and Sabien Canton demonstrate various playing techniques and discuss the notation of all kinds of sounds. For example: what does a staccato sound like on the harp and how do you achieve it? Participants will bring a four-measure sketch, which will be worked out together with the musicians, thus creating a direct exchange between creator and performer.
Sound artist's live electronics workshop Jorrit Tamminga has more the character of a lesson. He will demonstrate how to make autonomous electronic music, and how to use electronics in electroacoustic music [music in which the sounds of acoustic instruments, e.g. flute, oboe, or violin, are processed by electronics and reflected back TD]. He works with the software programme Super Collider.
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What should we imagine in reading sessions?
'Those reading sessions follow the workshops cello and double bass. The composers set to work with the notes and suggestions they received from Gross and Calderone, polishing their composition over a few days. Each composer is given half an hour to play through the result. This is a real interaction, because while playing, both the musician and the composer discover whether it is going to be something special or not. Whoever gets through this selection will receive a commission for a new work in next year's Music Week.'
Yannis Kyriakides gives a master class, about what and for whom?
'For everything, everyone is welcome, both the public and young composers, but the emphasis is naturally on the latter. We aim to have the master classes given by a former winner. This year Yannis Kyriakides, who won the Gaudeamus Award in 2000 with a conSPIracy cantata for two singers, piano and electronics. In his oeuvre, live electronics and video play a prominent role. He will demonstrate how to use multimedia in compositions and will discuss the relationship between multimedia and music. His own work will serve as illustration material. One of the participants is someone from the theatre world who has no background in music at all. Nice, because we are also aiming at the interested layman.'
Last but not least, a two-day symposium, entitled For Crying Out Loud: Music and Politics
‘ Yes, we wanted to move away from the rather short seminars we used to organise. You can't really explore a subject in one afternoon or morning, so this time we opted for a two-day conference. We will organise this every year from now on, together with the Musicology department of Utrecht University. Robert Adlington, author of Composing Dissent: Avant-garde Music in 1960s Amsterdam we have invited as keynote speaker.
Besides Adlington, there are about 20 other speakers. We recruited them through a call to submit articles on the theme of music and politics. It didn't necessarily have to be classical, it could be pop or jazz. The topic is enormously broad, ranging from how opera embodies Czech identity after 1989 to a lecture on Apartheid in music journalism.
One lecture really appeals to me personally: Rebekka Meyer from the University of Bern will talk about German composer Johannes Kreidler, who was an earlier guest at Music Week. He used 70,200 samples in a 33-second piece and wondered whether he had to report them all to GEMA, the German copyright association. And yes, for every sample, however minute, it turned out he had to fill in an extensive form.
Kreidler decided to turn this into a performance. He used a truck to transport the 70,200 accompanying forms to the GEMA in order to expose how outdated the prevailing views on composing are. He has been called the 'Che Guevara of copyright' and with his political stance he embodies for me the essence of Gaudeamus: always looking for the music of tomorrow.'
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