Werner Heider

"Stendenbuch" (Book of hours) for 12 vocal parts and 12 windplayers
Text: Eugen Gomringer
Solisten des Chores und des Symphonieorchesters des Suddeutschen Rundfunks Stuttgart. Leitung: Werner Heider

One could refer to meditative constellations; perhaps the sacral form of the spoken litany is not so very remote, In correspondance with the number of hours per day the text is limited to 24 words (12 voices are therefore in proportion 3 sopranos, 3 altos, 3 tenors, 3 basses -and 12 wind instruments-2 flutes, oboe, english horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, trumpet and trombone), which are varied by the addition of "my" and "your".

The medium of style of the "Stundenbuch" could be designated as a reduction to essential material. All words are interrelated in their meaning, which is made plain by variations and combinations. So permanently new constellations are created by these words (and sounds), according to the arrangement of the connections. Thus a dialogue of many differenciated parts is created, a dialogue between and of interrelating subjects.

The clear and simple text of Eugen Gomringer was a factor which determined the rhythmical architecture of the musical constellations, the gesture of the whole, and the style altogether.

The composition consists of nine interconnecting parts, each of which modulates into the next part; these are preface and epilogue (both vocal only), four parts with texts and three "stations" which interrupt them (a - spreads of sound, b - mosaic of the windplayers, c - meditation).

There is one central tone which rises continuously, determining and interweaving the whole piece: D'.

The composition was written in 1972 on behalf of the St. Matthews congregation, Erlangen, and was played for the first time that same year.

"Plakat" (poster) for orchestra
Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Saarbrucken. Leitung: Werner Heider

We are living in a world of posters. Everywhere we go our attention is diverted through optical, verbal or acoustical means. Good posters have always attracted me - I have a large collection myself. So the idea came about to compose a musical poster for orchestra. The following sentence is placed in front as a guide:

This piece is a poster,
A musical placard,
A notice, an advertisement,
A public announcement.
The composition canvasses for orchestra.

The one large poster consists of 13 small posters (notices, placards, announcements), which are all linked together. The whole orchestra is playing (tutti) for the most part, but with occasional smaller or larger groups. Single instruments rarely emerge in a soloistic character. The whole orchestra is meant to conjur up the effect of a poster. I intend to surprise, to arouse attention. A poster which, through its sinews of music, invites and compels. For, after all, this is a piece of musical propoganda for the orchestra.

With interruptions I worked on the score during a period of one and a half years, completing it on August the 1 st, 1974. "Plakat" was written on behalf of the city of Bonn, and was played there, for the first time, in December 1974.

"Commission" for vocal part and chamber orchestra
Text: Ezra Pound
ars nova ensemble nurnberg; William Pearson, Bariton. Leitung: Werner Heider

I have arranged several poems written by the american poet EZRA POUND (1885-1972) around the main poem "commission". It is sung in English but occasionally spoken in German, wherever necessary. At several points I took words from the poems and used them as connective phrases between the complete poems, thus a definite structure was formed.

Attendance: vocal part (baritone) and chamber ensemble (flute, clarinet, trombone, violin, violoncello, double bass, piano, electric organ, and two percussionists).

"Commission" was arranged in 1972 on behalf of the Suddeutscher Rundfunk and was played for the first time in December 1972 in Stuttgart. It was completely by chance that the news of the death of Ezra Pound was commonly known at the same time as the completion of the score.

1st Symphony for Orchestra
Bamberger Symphoniker. Leitung: Werner Heider

Monophone - polyphone - stagnation - animation I - resolution - animation II

1. Monophone (approx. 5') The whole orchestra is constantly playing in unison, sometimes in duplication of up to five octaves. Except for a few passages, the instruments play without vibrato, resulting in a colourless, morbid expression. Dissension of rhythm and dramatical gesture give the impression of a 19th to 20th century musical style.

2. Polyphone (approx. 4')
100 different polyphone episodes for the four instrument groups, woodwind, brass, strings, and piano and percussion, which superimpose each other into a kind of polyphony, detach, and doretail: "universal concerto".

3. Stagnation (approx. 3')
This "horizontal" part is formed by various harmonies, sometimes crescending and decrescending, which originate from all kinds of tonal, polytonal and atonal harmonies.

4. Animation I (approx. 1')
A decisive breaking down of tonal heights, under a predetermined rhythm, and a dynamic crescendo above.

5. Resolution (approx. 2')
A systematical delay appears in four different structures on four different levels (a concertating sextet, a tonal melody, a rhythm-group, and harmonic beats); they create a character of wane and dissolution.

6. Animation II (approx. 1')
Twelve different instrumental groups move together in one dynamic predescribed way: a ficticious union. The romantic and enthusiastic attempt of a reanimation is set in motion. A three-tone motif appears in six different variations at six different places like a sign post.

This composition was written in 1975 on behalf of the "Gemeinnutziger Verein Erlangen" for its 100th birthday, and was played for the first time in January 1976. -- Werner Heider (Translation by Elizabeth Upton)

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)

Werner Heider, "Bezirk"

Werner Heider is a composer who has never considered his activities as both pianist and conductor to be mere drudgery and after many years he still pursues both with ardour. At the age of seventeen he already made recordings with the Bayerischer Rundfunk in their Nuremberg studio - Heider was born on the 1st January 1930 in Furth (adjoining Nuremberg) - and on occasion was able to record his own compositions: "Typen fur Saxophon und Klavier" for instance, an early work written in 1948.

After completing his studies in Nuremberg (1945-5 I) with Willy Spilling and Richard Lauer (violin) he attended the Musikhochschule in Munich where he studied with Karl Holler (composition), Maria Landes-Hindemitch (piano) and Heinrich Kappe (conducting). Since that time Heider has played more than 80 works by contemporary composers in concerts and on the radio and he works as pianist, conductor or as artistic director in and for a whole series of musical ensembles who devote themselves to the performance of contemporary music: "Colloquium musicale", "Confronto" (chamber music and Jazz), "ars nova ensemble nurnberg", as well duets and trios with Deinzer and Colbentson-Deinzer.

Heider considers the cultivation of a "personal style" to be uncreative and inartistic and prefers to find an appropriate formative process for each new work. Accordingly Heider does not cultivate in his compositions any stylistic orthodoxy or reject techniques which have developed in the past. Twelve-tone technique, serial, post-serial or aleatoric methods are thus to be found in Heider's works just as much as Klangfarbenkomposition or tonal structures. Each new work springs from a real new beginning, and is "a product/project complete in itself, whose 'problem' has to be solved or dealt with each time. The next. new work" as Heider writes in a commentary, "has nothing whatever to do with the preceding one. Each of my pieces is the encountering and dealing with a special 'situation' and consequently is an original/individual. A 'unique event' so to speak. There are no continuations - a region which has been explored is checked off and the journey is continued in new territories.''

This unprejudiced treatment of the possibilities of composing at the present time, of new musical material, of stylistic and artistic attitudes allows Heider to play Jazz also and to this day he composes pieces for Jazz ensembles. "Rock-art fur Sinfonieorchester" (1981) is witness to the fact that Heider has remained faithful to this aspect of his work as composer.

Heider once characterized in notes the fields of interest to which the individual works belong. Here one finds "Geometrisches und Graphisches aus der Bildenden Icunst" with reference to pieces written between 1959 and 1974: "Plakat" for Orchestra. Heider speaks further of "Events in special, strict forms" and mentions works between 1963 and 1966: "Plan" for 12 string instruments. "Menschliche Verhaltensweisen" (types of human behaviour) is the name given by the composer to his next standpoint and he notes pieces written in the seventies, including "einander" (each other) for Trombone and Orchestra (1970). Works which were composed between 1967 and 1982 - "Musik-Geschichte" (musical history) for Piano and Orchestra amongst ochers - are characterized by the following: "Musik-Geschichten/Begegnunge /Gestalten/Erscheinungen: on no account programme music, always a musical programme, a compositional one." This is followed by the mention of "Preference: 'Concertos' = the individual in the masses / the solo instrument with the collective of the orchestra". To this belong such works as "Bezirk" (1969) and naturally "Musik Geschichte" for Piano and Orchestra (1982). Further notes by Heider refer to the instrumental scoring and finally there are works which the composer is unwilling to classify, which were "unique" concerns.

Heider often quotes Karl Valentin, and Valentin's subtle art of ingenuousness would seem to be an excellent perspective from which to approach Heider's oeuvre. For the purposes of this biographical sketch the composer made a few notes on the composer's metier which are given here.

Werner Heider - Thoughts

Who do I in fact compose for? For me - for you - for us - for some - for a few - for several - for many: for all!
I would like to write music without limits.
In art there is neither reason nor tolerance.
I like the strange, the unusual, the peculiar.
The density of events in a small space.
The best place to be is "between" the stools; at all events it is better than sitting firmly to the right or to the left.
I do not model my works on those of any one, but I picture things to myself. I imagine "pictures" of my music, of my ideas, my thoughts, I picture to myself the path I shall take in the future, the one that I would tread as a musician. I want always to gain more self-awareness, thus I am my own model.

Bezirk

On hearing Werner Heider's Piano Concerto - written in 1969 - for the first time, an analytic mind will soon become aware of a musical idiom whose spontaneity, and whose inclination for large orchestral outbursts as for chamber-musical lucid expressiveness or for monologue is unmistakable. And the whole work - of almost 13 minutes duration - seems on reflection to be a delicate balance between instrumental timbres and striking figures, of statistic and pointilliste structures, of precipitate orchestral structures ot vibrant orgiastic character and chamber-musical stretches or passages for piano monologues.

Werner Heider's musical idiom does not deny the tradition of serial music, its gestures of large intervals, an inclination for figuration, the significance of clearly perceptible caesuras and a structural disposition of the over-all compositional process in which the degrees of density become the criterion of composition. The composer has given the following plan as the formal basis of his Piano Concerto: "Four marginal districts' of equal size surround four 'main districts' of varying sizes, which differ from each other specifically in register (treble or bass or universal), dynamics, and instrumentation. The centre of the piece is the 'cadenza' with a kind of orchestral 'obelisk' as the culminating point."
The concerto is grouped around a central axis and is symmetrical. The positioning of the instruments in the orchestra corresponds to this formal idea where the piano, the string quartet and the horn are placed in the middle. To the right and left of these are two groups, each consisting of a string quintet, a percussion group and a trumpet or respectively a tuba. This disposition must be kept to at all costs, "as the form and instrumentation of the piece is related to it". The resultant stereophonic effect belongs to the structure of the composition.



Werner Heider's "Bezirk" also is witness to the fact that not only is he an experienced pianist and jazz pianist but that he also is versed in the art of improvisation as well as in that of composition: be it in the company of chamber-music ensembles, or as a soloist or with other (jazz) musicians. This talent for quasi improvised events, for spontaneous instrumental ideas is revealed by many places in the score and in particular in the writing for piano. For instance, in the central structure of the concerto - the "cadenza".

Here several strata of sound are sustained on the principle of "near and far" which are then constantly broken up or resolved in figurations. But Werner Heider's Piano Concerto is also a work that fits in to a certain extent in the contemporary tendency for Klangfarbenkomposition" of the sixties which was inaugurated by Ligeti and Penderecki. Certainly, the orchestral clusters, the rotating or precipitate orchestral passages are often enriched with figurations and only seldom composed as pure "Klangfarben-passages. And the fact that Heider's composition attempts to mediate between figurative and "Klangfarben" structures and that its compositional point of departure is to be found there, is indicated by the directions in the score and a type of notation which alternates between precise notation in the traditional sense and vague notation or uses both forms simultaneously. And this is so in both dimensions of Heider's writing: in that of pitch and of the durations of notes.

In the directions for playing there can be found, both for the wind players and the strings, instructions such as: "note oscillation (upwards and downwards)", "glissandi up and down", "vibrato", "senza vitbrato, directions, that is to say, that have the tendency to obscure intervallic relations or give them the character of timbre changes or, as in the case of "vibrato" together with dynamic markings or bowing, also more suggest differences in timbre rather than clarity of intervals. On the other hand there are the composer's directions such as: "strict, angular", "burst in", "hard, dry", which give character to the musical figure and so define it precisely.

In a commentary the composer deals with the terminological question as to whether "Bezirk" for Piano and Orchestra in fact belongs to the genre of the piano concerto.

"Between 1962 and 1982 I composed seven 'concertos': Konturen for Violin and Orchestra, Strophen for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra, Bezirk for Piano and Orchestra, - einander for Trombone and Orchestra, nachdenken uber . . . for Trumpet and Orchestra, Musik-Geschichte for Piano and Orchestra.

I couldn't really call any of these pieces a 'concerto', as the orchestra does not have a subordinate, accompanying function in relation to the solo instrument. The main artery (the solo instrument) is dovetailed and intimately bound up with the orchestra - it is embedded in it. Contours are made clear, obscured, hidden, only to stand out again for a shorter or longer time in order to give it more character." -- Wolfgang Burde (Translation: John Bell