Welcome to the Wolke Verlag blog! Here, we regularly share insights into our books and projects—including recommendations, author contributions, background information, and stories from our day-to-day publishing life.
With 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.
Somewhere between an essay and a manifesto, a space emerges for the unfinished and the contentious—a place where thought is set in motion and music is renegotiated as a social practice.
SYNKOPEN is aimed at anyone who wants to understand what is happening right now and what might happen next.
The essay conceives of compositional thinking as a practice of opening up, queering, and rearranging the world—beyond traditional notions of authorship and control. In this context, scores appear as invitations to cooperation, ambivalence, and new forms of collaboration. In this way, composition becomes a transdisciplinary strategy that challenges normative orders and places collective processes at the center.
Below are a few personal words from Eloain Lovis Hübner about her book:
“The text is based on a lecture I gave in 2025 at Campus Gegenwart in Stuttgart, and has evolved from that into an experimental essay form in which—inspired by the polyphonic approaches of figures such as McKenzie Wark and Paul Preciado—I bring in voices, borrow voices, from thinkersand artists who are important to me and whom I have accompany various stages of my life here. Building on these episodes, I explore a concept or an idea of compositional thinking —tracing how I have situated and shaped this concept for myself over the years, what theater has to do with it, and what other points of intersection and connection it offers to the wider world. I also reflect on educational pathways and concepts, and with this text I aim to attempt an answer to the question of where, how, and why art and life in the field of New Music actually converge, and where exactly the importance of continually inventing ever-new music lies for life in the present.”
In Where Does the Music End? examines Peter Kraut 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 way of thinking that questions music.
Based on concrete listening experiences and theoretical shifts, music is understood here not as an object of knowledge, but as an interlocutor. Questions themselves constitute an aesthetic practice.
Kraut is interested in the open-ended and indefinable aspects of musical thought—in that which eludes unambiguous meaning. Between analysis and reflection, a space emerges in which certainties about form, meaning, and authorship are deliberately called into question.
A book for anyone who lets music challenge and inspire them.
With The Objective mind presents Nikolaus Gerszewski presents an extraordinary work: one hundred stanzas that rethink art. In a precise, aphoristic form, a text unfolds that deliberately eludes any psychological interpretation, any consensus, and any relativization.
Here, art appears as a self-contained system—with its own rules, its own logic, and a radical autonomy. The text does not judge, it does not interpret, it does not convey. It observes.
At its core is an attitude of pure attention: art as a practice of perception, form, and indecision. In this way, the book consistently challenges the expectation that art must be understandable, useful, or immediately relevant.
The objective mind is thus less a commentary than a proposition—an uncompromising attempt to make art visible as a form of thought that exists beyond taste and opinion.
Here, the author presents his book in a short video:
Video: Ágnes and Péter Grúz
In late modernity, sound has become a central concept: from ASMR and data sonification to ecological and social-theoretical models, the world is increasingly being “heard” rather than merely observed. Music and acoustics promise connection, meaning, and immersion.
In This is not music , Magdalena Zorn examines this development through the lens of “acoustheology”—a way of thinking in which sound takes on almost religious functions and shapes worldviews. Music thus becomes a universal explanatory model, often linked to the celebration of resonance and sonic unity.
Zorn takes a critical look at this euphoria: where sound promises closeness and harmony, it can also give rise to conformity, exclusion, and the loss of distance. The book therefore calls for a thoughtful examination of the power of listening in contemporary culture.
Video: Magdalena Zorn
Our bestseller of the week: a title from our catalog that is currently reaching a particularly large audience. Every week, we feature a book here that is currently in high demand.
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.
Newton – for decades a defining figure on the international scene at the intersection of jazz, new music, and performance — shares her experiences with the voice as an instrument of expression and insight. In an accessible yet profound style, she guides participants through breath awareness, multiphonics, solo and collective improvisation, as well as the social and spiritual dimensions of vocal practice.
The book serves equally as an introduction to deep listening, a handbook for experimental voice work, and a reflection on imagination, physicality, and community in improvised sound.
Born in Oregon and living in Stuttgart since 1974, Newton has collaborated with, among others, Anthony Braxton, Phil Minton, Joëlle Léandre, Fritz Hauser, and Ernst Jandl. Her discography includes more than 85 releases; in 2020, she was awarded the Baden-Württemberg Jazz Prize for her life’s work.
Here’s a quick mention of a book we’re currently finding particularly interesting or that was recently published. It’s definitely worth a look.
Margarethe Maierhofer-Lischka explores audio-musical theater as an experimental art form in which sound, space, and stage design merge. At its core is the idea that listening itself becomes a physical and spatial experience, and that the performance space actively participates in the musical event.
Based on key works by Luigi Nono, Beat Furrer, Adriana Hölszky, Klaus Lang and Chaya Czernowin , she demonstrates how traditional boundaries between stage and audience, music and theater dissolve. Space becomes an instrument, the voice a moving sound body, and architectural structures also influence compositional processes.
The studies make it clear that audio-musical theater relies on immersive, multisensory experiences and replaces linear narrative structures with fragmented, open forms. This gives rise to a hybrid art form that fundamentally rethinks the relationship between perception, music, and theater.
Here, the author describes what inspired her to write the book:
“In our media-saturated society, attention is a valuable commodity. Listening, as a form of auditory attention, has not only personal but also social and political dimensions. Experiencing a performance of Beat Furrer’s *FAMA* motivated me to explore the topic of listening in greater depth. In my book, I demonstrate how composers use the act of listening as a theatrical device to create a new form of auditory music theater. Through acoustically and electronically designed sound, spaces, situations, and narratives are shaped, and inner images emerge—we literally learn what it is like to “hear the stones” (Luigi Nono) or to “see with the ears of the skin” (Juhani Pallasmaa). Through insights into composition and performance, readers can immerse themselves in selected pieces. An invitation to listen!”
The book paints a portrait of a pioneer in music history who is as fascinating as he is controversial: Julián Carrillo, who sought to break the boundaries of the Western tonal system with his concept of “Sonido 13” in the early 20th century. His idea of microtonal music, which goes beyond the classical twelve semitones, was intended to secure Mexico a place in the musical avant-garde—yet it also met with skepticism early on.
The study shows that this skepticism was not unfounded. Newly uncovered sources reveal that Carrillo’s project oscillated between innovation and overconfidence. In particular, the years 1921 through 1925 are reconstructed in detail for the first time, including transcriptions of his early compositions. This brings to light a complex web of experiments, misunderstandings, and cultural fault lines.
At the same time, the study highlights the true innovative power of “Sonido 13” and identifies it as Latin America’s first microtonal compositional system. Carrillo emerges as an ambivalent figure: internationally acclaimed yet long marginalized, caught between recognition and oblivion.
Overall, the picture that emerges is that of a microhistorical journey of discovery that critically examines not only musical ideas but also how they are received—navigating the terrain between fascination, myth, and scholarly reevaluation.
Video: Jonas Reichert
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