Vorzeitbelebung

Composed music has always dealt with the past, even if these references were sometimes downplayed or became the impetus for a decisive break with tradition. In 20th-century music in particular, however, as in all other areas of art, there are a multitude of compositional strategies in which reflection on the music of earlier times is elevated to an integral conceptual element. It goes without saying that neither a nostalgic view of the past, aimed at the comfortable omnipresence of the old, nor a romanticized or monumentalized view of the past is decisive. However, this is sometimes overlooked—or obscured by the museum-like attitude toward the music of earlier centuries that dominates large parts of the music industry.

This volume of lectures by composers and musicologists shows that encounters with the past in musical works can provide impetus for mutual listening and understanding, enlightenment, or perhaps even questioning and mystification.

The contributions:
Jörn Peter Hiekel: Prehistoric Revivals in Music Today
Isabel Mundry: Fluctuating Time
Manos Tsangaris: Man Lights a Light in the Night
Hans Zender: Based on Hölderlin
Hans Thomalla: "To the Edge of the Moment." Composing as the Creation of the Present
Rolf Riehm: Misreading. Notes on my composition Double Distant Counterpoint
Martin Zenck: Prehistoric Revival in Ludwig van Beethoven's Hammerklavier Sonata and in Pierre Boulez's Second Piano Sonata
Ralph Paland: Myths of the Electroacoustic "Revolution": Current Historical Constructions of a Music without a Past

contents