Ulrich Stranz, "Scene 2"
-- LINER NOTES --
Scene 2 from "Szenen fur Orchester"
Some young composers of the 1970s found it easier to make their way outside the "official" avant-garde, performing their works in lesser circles rather than in the bastions of ultra-modern music, Darmstadt and Donaueschingen. Nevertheless, even these basions took note of these composers in the belated but inextricable realization that the heavily funded and widely propagated avant-garde had apparently reached a dead end and lacked new talent. True, "traditionalists" remained ostracized; yet overtures were made to those young composers who chose to strike out on a different path from serial or post-serial mu~ict,h ereby receiving kudos from the public rather than the press. The old avant-garde made no concessions: it was a question of style and point of view, an attempt to keep from vegetating in the ivory tower.
Suddenly composers came to public notice who had till then been virtually unknown. Non-tonal compositions were heard which claimed to be tonal in their impact. We realized that there were ways of composing which differ utterly from those hitherto championed by the avant garde establishment, and yet were not disconnected from or irresponsible toward the current state of the art. With ever-increasing frequency the opinion was heard that this "New Simplicity'' or "Anti-Serialism", or whatever labels (none of them apt) one chose to apply, could help modern music out of the rut in which it seemed to be stuck.
One sign of this phenomenon was the appearance in 1974 at the Third Allgemeines Deutsches Musikfest, Stuttgart, of a number of composers who, though no longer particularly young, were celebrated as new discoveries. They had simply made no obeisances to the main fashions of the avant-garde, preferring to work outside the established pattern. One of these composers was Ulrich Stranz, who attracted attention with his orchestral work "Tachys". This work, whose title means "velocity", was intended to represent "tension as generated by music" and to "derive from a comparison of the individual sense of time with sounds measurable in terms of velocity", where pitch and timbre, though independent of time, represent rhe function of velocity. The result was a curiously fractured reminiscence of Richard Strauss which intimated new beauty by summoning up and criticizing the old. The piece was convincing, and found immediate favour with the audience.
Ulrich Stranz was born on 10 May 1946 in Neumarkt St. Veit in the vicinity of Muhldorf in Upper Bavaria. He grew up in Munich, learning to play the violin in high school and first studying composition with Fritz Buchtger. Later he studied musicology at Munich University and, principally, composition with Gunter Bialas at the Musikhochschule. He took his diploma in 1972, then received a grant to study in Utrecht, where for two years he worked in electronic music. In 1974 he moved to Zurich as an orchestral musician, teacher and composer. For a while he also taught musicianship at the Munich Musikhochschule. He has received many awards. the first from a composition competition of the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra in Pforzheim (1970), followed by the Richard Strauss Prize of Munich (1971), the young talent prices of Stuttgart (1974) and Munich (1976) and the Kranichstein Music Prize in Darmstadt (1976). Stranz's works were not numerous but always characteristic, particularly in their instrumentation.
His work include "Innenbilder" (Interior Images) for oboe and harpsichord, "C-Cis-Laute" (C-C# Sounds) for five cellos, "Zeitbiegung" (Time Warp) for full orchestra minus violins, violas and cellos, and his "Musik fur Klavier und Orchester" (Music for Piano and Orchestra) which was given its first performance in Donaueschingen in 1978. The reviews mirrored Stranz's own distinctive brand of thought: "At last," wrote K.R. Danler. "we finally heard a piece which does not immediately draw comparisons with 20 others. Stranz is one composer of his generation who has something to say". Or, to quote K. H. Ruppel: "The impression on the listener is one of immediate intelligibility, a piece which is completely comprehensible as a purely music process. Its colours are entirely grateful to the ear while avoiding commonplace euphonies. A score completely untroubled by fashionable pretension."
Scene 2 from "Szenen fur Orchester" was written in 1980. It was also intended to form the central pas de deux of a projected ballet "Erste Liebe" (First Love) after the likenamed novella by Turgenev. As Stranz remarked of this work: "One peculiarity of the piece which corresponds directly with the idea of the pas de deux as regards compositional technique is the multiple application of a two-part canon (at a major 3rd). Just like the main characters Vladimir and Sinaida, the two parts never come together even though both couples, the stage figures as well as the canonic parts, are bound to each orher and follow one another at an unbridgeable distance. Besides this concrete relation to the libretto there are also some less obvious qualities in the score which result from my 'awareness of writing for the dance theatre. Above all, I tried to attain the clearest and most transparent orchestral texture possible, avoiding the heterophony and overlapping sound layers which I had used so frequently hitherto. By concentrating": on clear lines I in turn was able to pursue avenues of orchestration I had never tried before, such as coupling instruments in the manner of organ stops, or forming narrow or broad bands of sharp colour contrasts, or treating the enuire piece under a more or less uniform timbral heading of 'weich/gedaempft' (softl/muted). Even if these new paths led me superficially in the vicinity of traditional solutions, I was nevertheless able to achieve a new and completely individual 'orchestral colour scheme'."
Three of the "Szenen fur Orchester" were given in a concert performance in Hamburg early in 1983. Later, others appeared which were intended as self-contained concert pieces irrespective of their function within the ballet. Their structural features and distinctive timbres unite in a work which is thoroughly grounded in tradition and yet continues that tradition in a meaningful way, belying simplistic definitions such as "New Impressionism". Vividness and subtlety combine in an immediately effective manner which is characteristic of this composer. -- Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski (Translation: J. Bradford Robinson)
Scene 2 from "Szenen fur Orchester"
Some young composers of the 1970s found it easier to make their way outside the "official" avant-garde, performing their works in lesser circles rather than in the bastions of ultra-modern music, Darmstadt and Donaueschingen. Nevertheless, even these basions took note of these composers in the belated but inextricable realization that the heavily funded and widely propagated avant-garde had apparently reached a dead end and lacked new talent. True, "traditionalists" remained ostracized; yet overtures were made to those young composers who chose to strike out on a different path from serial or post-serial mu~ict,h ereby receiving kudos from the public rather than the press. The old avant-garde made no concessions: it was a question of style and point of view, an attempt to keep from vegetating in the ivory tower.
Suddenly composers came to public notice who had till then been virtually unknown. Non-tonal compositions were heard which claimed to be tonal in their impact. We realized that there were ways of composing which differ utterly from those hitherto championed by the avant garde establishment, and yet were not disconnected from or irresponsible toward the current state of the art. With ever-increasing frequency the opinion was heard that this "New Simplicity'' or "Anti-Serialism", or whatever labels (none of them apt) one chose to apply, could help modern music out of the rut in which it seemed to be stuck.
One sign of this phenomenon was the appearance in 1974 at the Third Allgemeines Deutsches Musikfest, Stuttgart, of a number of composers who, though no longer particularly young, were celebrated as new discoveries. They had simply made no obeisances to the main fashions of the avant-garde, preferring to work outside the established pattern. One of these composers was Ulrich Stranz, who attracted attention with his orchestral work "Tachys". This work, whose title means "velocity", was intended to represent "tension as generated by music" and to "derive from a comparison of the individual sense of time with sounds measurable in terms of velocity", where pitch and timbre, though independent of time, represent rhe function of velocity. The result was a curiously fractured reminiscence of Richard Strauss which intimated new beauty by summoning up and criticizing the old. The piece was convincing, and found immediate favour with the audience.
Ulrich Stranz was born on 10 May 1946 in Neumarkt St. Veit in the vicinity of Muhldorf in Upper Bavaria. He grew up in Munich, learning to play the violin in high school and first studying composition with Fritz Buchtger. Later he studied musicology at Munich University and, principally, composition with Gunter Bialas at the Musikhochschule. He took his diploma in 1972, then received a grant to study in Utrecht, where for two years he worked in electronic music. In 1974 he moved to Zurich as an orchestral musician, teacher and composer. For a while he also taught musicianship at the Munich Musikhochschule. He has received many awards. the first from a composition competition of the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra in Pforzheim (1970), followed by the Richard Strauss Prize of Munich (1971), the young talent prices of Stuttgart (1974) and Munich (1976) and the Kranichstein Music Prize in Darmstadt (1976). Stranz's works were not numerous but always characteristic, particularly in their instrumentation.
His work include "Innenbilder" (Interior Images) for oboe and harpsichord, "C-Cis-Laute" (C-C# Sounds) for five cellos, "Zeitbiegung" (Time Warp) for full orchestra minus violins, violas and cellos, and his "Musik fur Klavier und Orchester" (Music for Piano and Orchestra) which was given its first performance in Donaueschingen in 1978. The reviews mirrored Stranz's own distinctive brand of thought: "At last," wrote K.R. Danler. "we finally heard a piece which does not immediately draw comparisons with 20 others. Stranz is one composer of his generation who has something to say". Or, to quote K. H. Ruppel: "The impression on the listener is one of immediate intelligibility, a piece which is completely comprehensible as a purely music process. Its colours are entirely grateful to the ear while avoiding commonplace euphonies. A score completely untroubled by fashionable pretension."
Scene 2 from "Szenen fur Orchester" was written in 1980. It was also intended to form the central pas de deux of a projected ballet "Erste Liebe" (First Love) after the likenamed novella by Turgenev. As Stranz remarked of this work: "One peculiarity of the piece which corresponds directly with the idea of the pas de deux as regards compositional technique is the multiple application of a two-part canon (at a major 3rd). Just like the main characters Vladimir and Sinaida, the two parts never come together even though both couples, the stage figures as well as the canonic parts, are bound to each orher and follow one another at an unbridgeable distance. Besides this concrete relation to the libretto there are also some less obvious qualities in the score which result from my 'awareness of writing for the dance theatre. Above all, I tried to attain the clearest and most transparent orchestral texture possible, avoiding the heterophony and overlapping sound layers which I had used so frequently hitherto. By concentrating": on clear lines I in turn was able to pursue avenues of orchestration I had never tried before, such as coupling instruments in the manner of organ stops, or forming narrow or broad bands of sharp colour contrasts, or treating the enuire piece under a more or less uniform timbral heading of 'weich/gedaempft' (softl/muted). Even if these new paths led me superficially in the vicinity of traditional solutions, I was nevertheless able to achieve a new and completely individual 'orchestral colour scheme'."
Three of the "Szenen fur Orchester" were given in a concert performance in Hamburg early in 1983. Later, others appeared which were intended as self-contained concert pieces irrespective of their function within the ballet. Their structural features and distinctive timbres unite in a work which is thoroughly grounded in tradition and yet continues that tradition in a meaningful way, belying simplistic definitions such as "New Impressionism". Vividness and subtlety combine in an immediately effective manner which is characteristic of this composer. -- Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski (Translation: J. Bradford Robinson)
Labels: Avant Garde Project, jodru, Ulrich Stranz
posted by jodru at 17:05
0 comments
links to this post
