Wolke Blog

The Wolke Blog features essays, interviews, short video and audio presentations, and behind-the-scenes glimpses into the publishing house: On the blog, you’ll find our book recommendation of the month, additional information about our titles, and much more. Here, authors, artists, and the Wolke team write about books, projects, events, and topics that interest us—sometimes directly related to our catalog, and sometimes far beyond it. 

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Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf: The Voice of Music

Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf attempts to understand music as a language sui generis. The starting point is not language, but the voice: as a physical organ and as sound, as the primordial form of human expression. From there, the study explores the origins of speech and music, early childhood, and the functioning of our brains—linking the philosophy of music with linguistics, semantics, semiotics, and neuroscience.

At the heart of the matter is the question of how musical understanding is even possible: How do we recognize a familiar piece in a matter of seconds, and how can we follow a musical form even though music does not “say” anything in the conventional sense? To address this, Mahnkopf develops a philosophy of music that shifts the focus from language to the voice and unfolds music as an independent system of signs and as a unique form of human communication.
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Johannes pp. Sistermanns: SOUND SCULPTURE. Works 1985–2025

What a photograph of a sound sculpture can show—and what it cannot: This blog post describes the paradox. The book explores it. SOUND SCULPTURE. Works 1985–2025 brings together over 45 works spanning forty years in large-format photographs that engage precisely with this contradiction. Also included are texts such as the full text of Sistermanns’ KLANGPLASTIK manifesto, interviews, and an afterword that grapples with the impossibility of photographing sound art. Bilingual German/English. To be published in October 2026.
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Bettina Zimmermann – con tutta forza: Bernd Alois Zimmermann – A Personal Portrait

Bettina Zimmermann, the daughter of composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, published the book*con tutta forza: Bernd Alois Zimmermann* in 2018—marking the 100th anniversary of her father’s birth—after more than ten years of research. A Personal Portrait. In it, she draws on eyewitness accounts, documents, and personal memories to paint a multifaceted portrait of the composer and seeks to broaden the previously dominant, one-sided understanding of his personality and his work.
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Wolke Mid-Year Outlook 2/2026

Our second half-year preview for 2026 is here: featuring Esther Abrami’s *Musik ist (auch) Frauensache*, the Iris ter Schiphorst portrait in the catalog format *Eigensinn und Gegenüber*, three new volumes in the essay series *SYNKOPEN*—and the launch of our new imprint, Edition Otzvuk.
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Jonas Reichert – Microtonality in Mexico

The book paints a portrait of Julián Carrillo, who sought to break the boundaries of the Western tonal system with his concept of “Sonido 13” in the early 20th century. Includes a video by the author accompanying the book.
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Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka – “I hear the stones, see the sound, and read the water.”

Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka explores audio-musical theater as an experimental art form in which sound, space, and stage design merge. Includes a personal essay by the author about her book.
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Lauren Newton – Vocal Adventures. Free Improvisation in Sound, Space, Spirit, and Song

With *Vocal Adventures*, Lauren Newton—one of the great pioneers of vocal improvisation—presents a book about the voice that is as personal as it is practical.
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Magdalena Zorn – This Is Not Music: Acoustheology in Late Modernism

In late modernity, sound has become a central concept: music and acoustics promise connection, meaning, and immersion. Magdalena Zorn explores this development through the lens of “acoustheology.” Includes a video about her book.
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Nikolaus Gerszewski – The Objective mind

Nikolaus mind Objective mind is less a commentary than a statement—an uncompromising attempt to reveal art as a form of thought that exists beyond taste and opinion. Includes a short video accompanying his book.
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Peter Kraut – Where Does the Music End?

In *Where Does the Music End?*, Peter Kraut explores the boundaries of music and its internal contradictions through 100 paired reflections. Drawing on music history, pop culture, and the philosophy of sound, he develops a line of thought that questions music.
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Eloain Lovis Hübner – Structuring the World in a Queer Way [?]

The essay conceives of compositional thinking as a practice of opening up, queering, and rearranging the world—beyond traditional notions of authorship and control. With personal remarks by Eloain Lovis Hübner on the book.
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New release: the SYNKOPEN series

SYNKOPEN marks the launch of a new series that tackles the radical contemporary issues facing music in the 21st century. Fast-paced, edgy, and fragmentary in its approach, it brings together voices from the fields of composition, philosophy, theory, and art.

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