Event

6:45 p.m.: Introduction with Ekkehard Windrich and Gottfried Michael Koenig.

The first concert in the oenm’s cycle focuses on four 20th-century masters who, each in their own distinctive way, have revitalized and expanded the central compositional principle of European music history: counterpoint.

Gottfried Michael Koenig, one of the most significant pioneers of electroacoustic and algorithmic music, is represented twice: first with the world premiere of "Einwürfe," an instrumental ensemble piece, and second with a pioneering electroacoustic work from the 1960s.

Thinking in terms of musical algorithms – a far cry from the clumsy first steps of today’s artificial intelligence – is rooted in musical principles that have endured through all historical upheavals. Thus, despite his independence, Koenig is part of a lineage pioneered by Edgard Varèse and exemplified by Iannis Xenakis.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann likely owes his role as a great and tragic loner of the postwar era to the fact that, while his music pointed far into the future, it remained committed to history with extraordinary intensity. Medieval vocal polyphony stands at the starting point of this history. Johannes Ockeghem’s 15th-century "Missa Prolationum," with its highly complex canons, can also be regarded as an early precursor of algorithmic music. The second world premiere of the evening, Ekkehard Windrich’s "Vermächtnis und Unvermögen," takes up this idea in an electroacoustic adaptation of Ockeghem’s Mass for an analog modular system.

Works by Gottfried Michael Koenig, Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Johannes Ockeghem, and Ekkehard Windrich.

œnm (Austrian Ensemble for New Music)
SCHOLA HEIDELBERG
Juliane Dennert / Peyee Chen / Jörg Deutschewitz / Luciano Lodi
Conductor of SCHOLA HEIDELBERG: Walter Nußbaum