Werner Heider & Hans Zender

Werner Heider
born 1930.
Composer. pianist, conductor.
Compositions:
Glimpses (F. M. Davis) for soprano, piano and orchestra (1958), Modi for piano (1959), Dialog for clarinet and piano (1960). Inventio I for violin solo (1961), Inventio II for clarinet solo (1962). Konflikte for percussion ensemble and orchestra (1963) Modelle for dancers, instruments. words (W. L. Fischer) and pictures (1964), Inventio III for harpsichord (1964), Konturen for violin and orchestra (1962-64), Katalog for a recorder player (1965), Katalog for a vibraphone player (1965) Strophen for clarinet and chamber orchestra (1965) PicassoMusik for voice and 3 instruments (1965-66), -da sein-music for 20 winds (1966). Plan for strings (1966), Passatempo for 7 soloists (1967). Inneres for organ (1967), Landschaftspartitur for piano (1968), Programm I for harpsichord and tape (1969) Edition, multiple music for variable ensembles (basic model 1969), Bezirk for piano and orchestra (1969), FauststOck for piano (1970), Musik im Diskant for sopranino recorder, harpsichord and percussion (1970), -einander for trombone and orchestra (1970), pyramide for Igor Strawlnsky, for ensemble (1971). Kunst-Stoff for electro-clarinet, prepared piano and tape (1971), Stundenbuch (Eugen Gomringer) for 12 voices and 12 winds (1972). Commission (Ezra Pound) for voice and chamber ensemble (1972).

Heider has conducted approx. 60 pieces by contemporary composers in concert, radio and records. He is the artistic director, pianist or conductor of the following ensembles: Colloquium musicale; Kammermusik + Jazz; Ars Nova ensemble Nurnberg. He is the recipient of numerous awards and scholarships including the composers prize from the city of Stuttgart. the Rome prize granting Heider a two year scholarship at the Villa Massimo in Rome. a scholarship from the city of Berlin and prizes from Nurnberg, Erlangen, Furth.

Werner Heider about his Konturen, Bezirk, -einander.

Between the years 1962 and 11370 I composed five "concertos": Konturen for violin and orchestra; Konflikte for percussion ensemble and orchestra (commissioned by the southwest radio station for Donaueschingen); Strophen for clarinet and chamber orchestra; Bezirk for piano and orchestra; -einander for trombone and orchestra (commissioned by the city of Nurnberg for the Durer year 1971).

Actually the title "concerto" is inappropriate for these works since the orchestra is by no means simply an accompaniment for the soloist. The solo instrument merges and blends with the orchestra, as a main artery embedded in the orchestral sound. The contours become clearly defined, then become covered and unclear and then again emerge in clear profile for a shorter or longer period of time.

Konturen: The arrangement of the five movements as well as their formal structure are symetrically formed. Ensemble J: Start -Allegro -AllegrettoPresto I Andante I Presto -Allegretto -Allegro finish. Monologue I: Violin solo-Orchestra cadenza-Violin solo. Revue: various artistic and humorous numbers-Reminiscences and anticipations as the supporting axis of the entire work and again, various numbers. Monologue II: Orchestra solo. Ensemble II: quasi Rondo.

-einander: The solo instrument engages in a 13-phase dialogue with the entire orchestra in which various forms of musical expression and contrast convey the idea of relationship as follows: in front of each other -round each other -away from each other towards each other and beside each other -over each other and through each other -into each other -for each other and beside each other with each other -under each other and on each other -from each other and after each other -to each other -alongside each other -behind each. other. Each division supersedes the preceding one either· abruptly of by merging into it imperceptibly. The opening, middle and final sections of the composition form stationary "monument like" triads in the keys A-D, conceived symbolically.
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HANS ZENDER
ELEMENTE (1976) 24'18
Radiophone Komposition fur zwei lautsprechergruppen aus MODELLE fur variable Besetzung (1971/73) und CANTO V (Kontinuum und Fragmente) fur Stimmen (1972/74)

-Anni und Gustav Stein herzlich zugeeignet -

Ausfuhrende der fur die Bandmontage verwendeten Stucke: MODELLE: Radio-Sinfonie-Drchester Frankfurt Dirigenten: Hans Zender, Lothar Zagrosek und Burkhard Rempe CANTO V: Vocalensemble Kassel, Dirigent: Klaus Martin Ziegler

Mischung und Realisation: Hans Zender, Richard Hauck und Detiev Kittler
Aufnahme: Juni 1977,
HESSISCHER RUNDFUNK

People more clever than I have already established the fact that there con no longer be a 'style' in the tradinonal sense of the word, and for this reason it should also prove impossible to coin a definition of the general criteria regarding the musico 'language' of today. It would seem to make more sense to search in a pluralistlc manner for various diametrically opposed forms of language. Certain points of extremety have been reached in composition and our experience moves and takes place between these points.

On the one hand we have the concentration on the experience of the "surprising moment" -here the form turns into a series of, as it were, dot·like events, and this seems to me to be the essence of the development in music. at least since Beethoven, on other hand there is the new discovery of continuity, of periodicity, of extended static planes representng the "asiatic" approach to music.

Like many others today, I am fascinated by the intoxicating effects and the magical potentials of "static" music. However, mainly because of my own experiences with the preliminary structures of my "Models for Variable Instrumentation", but also because of the occasions when Earle Brown was conducting, it has become clear to me that an absolute static, or 'endless" and uncontrolled static state is, in music, an impossibility. In order to render the experience of a "state of rest" feasible, the static planes must be endowed with minimal variations which are accurately perceived by the 'inner ear". I also believe it would be mistaken to surrender completely to a tendency towards static music in composition. This can lead only too easily to music which has a saturating and "drug-like" effect. I have no objection to "trips" in music, but the composer must continually "fetch back' the listener.

I advocate the integration into musical thinking of various techniques on various levels. Because of its consistent and closed system, serialism developped a tendency towards sterility, and this seemed to be one of its weaknesses. But all the other techniques working with accidental occurrences are, if used consistently, also 'closed systems" even when are 'open' as regards their form: contain no integrated contradiction. I believe it makes sense If radically opposed systems are forced together. If serialism were to be overcome to the very roots, one would have to do without thinking in terms of quantites altogether, without the even-tempered tone for instance, or any kind of rhythm, etc. It would be better break up the closed rationalism with integrated 'undefined forms of thought".

Apart from all notations which are not expressed n quantities one might. for instance, investigate a method of thought consistenty based on overtones. It seems that the opportunities for with 'pure" intervals have so far hardly been exploited in a new manner. The coupling of several systems of overtones opens up new possibilities in the field of listening because of the many resulting micro-intervals. What seems to me to be of particular significance in the development of recent is listening on different levels, in the of using tone colours, the of extended planes, and the micro-intervals. I believe that in contrast to differentiations of this kind much is out of date today: the assembly en masse of the media employed, the orgies Of noise, the noncommittal use of accidental occurrences, and the reverence for electronic technology.
Hans Zender
(tronsoted by Stefan de Hoon)

Hans Zender, "Canto II"

Canto II

Few composers of the avant-garde have divided their work as evenly over two areas as has the composer and conductor Hans Zender. Not only does his conducting guarantee him a basic income which allows him complete independence in his creative work; it is also a means for presenting his own works and those of other composers to the public in competent performances - a goal to which he attaches great importance. As he once wrote in a programme essay, "The Responsibility of the Performer": "The performer's task is, first and foremost, to give the audience access to its own times. There is only one way to accomplish this: by doing everything in our power to present the most convincing performances possible. Not by speaking about music, but by letting 'the musik speak for itself.'

Hans Zender was born in Wiesbaden in 1936. From 1956- 1959 he studied in Frankfurt and Freiburg, where he attended 'Wolfgang Fortner's composition class. He worked briefly in the theatres in Freiburg and Bonn before, in 1968, being appointed general music director in Gel. Since 1971 he has held this same position at Saarland Broadcasting. Like his friend Bernd Alois Zimmermann - whose works in particular Zender has always championed - Zender's thought as a composer hinges on the notion of time: the creation of musical continuity in time, its articulation and formation.

In his works, he seeks to subject the ineluctable progress of time to a rigorous logic, and - as is particularly apparent in his "Schachspiel" (Chess Game) of 1969 for double orchestra - to sublimate the undefined teleological goal of the passage of time by means of a well-grounded process based on causal connections. In his compositions with voice - which make up a sizable part of his oeuvre - he has experimented with the text in many and varied ways, making a significant contribution to the subject of music and language.

"Canto II'' is one of a group of four works all bearing the name "Canto". Zender intends this word to be understood in the sense used by Ezra Pound, whose "Cantos" also provide the texts for these compositions. "Canto I", for instance, combines a Latin hymn and an excerpt from the Greek version of St Matthew; "Canto 111'' uses the first part of "Don Quixote" and a poem in Spanish by Cervantes, while "Canto IV" draws on passages from the Old and New Testament, selections from the writings of Thomas Muenzer and Martin Luther, and the "Hymne la matiere" by Teilhard de Chardin.

"Canto 11" consists of five distinct sections:

Introduction, to rehearsal number 7, lines 1-9
Main Section I, rehearsal numbers 7-18, lines 1-26
Main Section 11, rehearsal numbers 18-28, lines 27-61
Main Section 111, rehearsal nulmbers 28-5 I, lines 62-96
Coda, from rehearsal number 5 I, lines 97-101

Thus the music follows as a whole the course of the text, rearrangement being required solely in the 2nd and 3rd Main Sections where several non-contiguous lines of text are heard simultaneously.

Zender hiimself has spoken of "Canto II" in relatively explicit terms. His comments - which appeared in the programme notes accompanying the premiere on 26 January 1968 at West German Radio in Cologne - are worth repeating as they point out the main features of his compositional approach. We shall reprint them here, at least in excerpt, merely noting that they invite further comment and continuing discussion.

When I set Pound's "Canto XXXIX" I had two principal ideas in mind: first. the absolute structural unity of voice parts and instruments - the chorus and orchestra act in a sort of "mirror image" of each other, and even the slightest separation of these two groups is impossible. Zender does not illuminate the point any further, and it remains in this cryptic form. The reason why he stresses the inseparability of the instrumental and vocal groups (i.e. chorus and soloists) is thast their interaction is one of the key features of the formal design. In the Introduction, the orchestral writing and the choral parts are practically unrelated, while in Main Section I they combine as closely as possible, forming rhythmically and melodically similar lines or even sounding in unison. In Main Section I1 the two groups are made to contrast by the fact that the chorus almost exclusively speaks. Main Section I11 strikes a balance between connection and separation, with partial congruence being realized by means of heterophony, ornamentation by the instruments of sung pitches, or by rhythmically displaced borrowings. Finally, in the Coda, all these modes of interaction are briefly recapitulated.

Second, the declamation of the poem in a clearly defined "tempo": each line (or couplet) is declaimed within a fixed time span, namely I I seconds - the text is swept forward in a fixed, wave-like macrorhythm (as Pound put it, "to the rest of the measure", "with one measure, unceasing").

The link which Zender draws between the contents of lines 76 and 84 of the poem and the macrorhythm of his piece, being a mere superficial analogy, is hardly convincing. Yet there exists a further correspondence with the work's form: as a poem made up of lines of equal length, the text is brought into immediate relation with the music, which likewise falls into sections of equal magnitude. In Its second version the work has 53 of these sections (three less than in the first version).
The 11 seconds mentioned by the composer represent an average duration; as can be determined from the metronome markings, the length of the sections varies between 9 1/3 secs (Section 9) and 13.6 secs (Section I I). Length, "metrical" grouping and the type of agogic modifioation employed are the distinguishing features of the sections. The use of these features to shape the sections, as well as the linking of similar sections, provide an additional formal device in the aforementioned five divisions of the work.

The possibilities for structuring this sort of "time-wave are, of course, limitless. Adjoining waves may be simi1ar or dissimilar in form. This fact alone leads to three possible formal processes: adjoining waves of similar structure will create a continuum (either static or evolving toward a goal); adjoining waves of conflicting structure will highlight the individual wave form by their discontinuity; or, when both types are combined. i.e. when two inwardly continuous but outwardly conflicting series of waves overlap, the result is a sort of collage technique.

This addresses the key issue of che work, and at the same time an essential aspect of the poem: the relation of the part to the whole, in regard both to content and to progress in time - in other words, the question whether the parts combine to form a unified process or convey the impression of a disiunct series. Ezra Pound's detailed elaboration of this question is one of the outstanding features of his poetry, which incorporates, as is well known, items of disparate provenance (in "Canto XXXIX" rhese are taken primarily from "Canto I" of the "Odyssey", Ovid's "Metamorphoses", Catullus's "Carmina", Vergiil's "Aeneid" and Dante's "Paradise").

In "Canto II" Zender has turned these three "possible formal processes" into distinguishing features of the five major divisions of his work. The decisive point - or so it seems at first - is not so much the form of ,the individual sections but rather the relation between neighbouring sections. This imparts continuity to the relatively loose-structured and hence similar sections of the Introduction. and discontinuity to the series of self-contained but contrasting parts of Main Section I. If, in the Introduction, the continuum takes the form of static immobility, in Main Section I11 it becomes a continuous evolution, above all because of the gradual increase in motion.

Nevertheless, with the "collage technique" that governs Main Section 11, the shape of the sections themselves is clearly a determining factor in the choice of 'the formal processes. Loose-structured sections in free motion will not constitute a discontinuous process even in combination: instead they produce a static surface - or, when combined, a multi layered texture - and fuse into an indissoluble whole. For this reason Zender also draws the ape of the se~tionsin to his account and speaks entirely of continuous series of waves. The layers they produce - which overlap in Main Section 111 - are the orchestral writing on the one hand and, on the other, the choral parts supported by a few percussion instruments and electric guitar. The choral writing is likewise divided into levels which contrast in 'the metre and language of their respective lines of text. -- Christian Martin Schmidt
(Translation: J. Bradford Robinson)