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Tone Motion: Wolfgang Mitterer’s Music for Checking E-mails
By Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky
I mean, if you decided to go out today and get you an instrument and do whatever it is that you do, no one can tell you how you’re going to do it but when you do it. Ornette Coleman
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860), the renowned german philosopher best known for his work “The World as Will and Representation” (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, 1818), wrote a phrase I really enjoy thinking about when I contemplate music. In his 1851 essay “Parerga (Studies in Pessimism)” he wrote: “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” It’s a great way to think about all aspects of perception, but has even more resonance in the world of music where issues of taste and style are hyper subjective. When I think about Wolfgang Mitterer’s compositions, I’m compelled to look at the history of music instruments in Europe, and how they expanded the field of composition as technology evolved. For example, can you imagine jazz without the saxophone? What would the sound of most of the 20th century have been without this signature instrument? Would you be able to make music with an instrument that doesn’t exist? Would we be able to think about, describe, and make compositions for materials and instruments that didn’t exist?
Schopenhauer wrote his “Studies in Pessimism” ten years after Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in 1841. It’s one of those strange coincidences that links not only developments in technology but how people create instruments which are tools that in turn allow people to create previously unknown tones and sounds. For Schopenhauer music was the only art form that did not merely copy ideas, but actually embodied the will itself. That’s exactly what Mitterer’s work explores – the interaction of sound, composition, and music interface. for him, music evokes a dynamic tension between context and content. After all, if you really think about it, that’s what music instruments are – a kind of tone interface. To me, music channels creative solutions to the problems of human experience – it’s an explication of the limits of human knowledge. To invoke Sun ra, i like to think of compositions as a metaphysical theory that combines the foundations of psychology, aesthetics, ethics, and politics – and their relationship to technology.
If Schopenhauer influenced Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Sigmund Freud and others with his new theories of concepts like “Wille zum Leben (Will to live)”, the creation of new music instruments – above all keyboards, software, tape and digital media editing systems – influences everyone. Imagine a world without ringtones, iPods, film soundtracks, and mp3 files. You’d probably have to get rid of computers, keyboards, and cellphones too. But what is central to Mitterer’s work is a will to create unique instruments that allow him to use music as a kind of plastic form.
Wolfgang Mitterer is an Austrian musician (organ, keyboards) and composer, primarily also in the fields of jazz and improvised music. With that in mind,let’s go back in time for a moment.[...] |
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| About |
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Mitterer studied organ, composition and electroacoustics in Vienna and Stockholm. He is not only one of the Austrian specialists for electronics as well as being equally brilliant on the keyboard and on the slide controls, but is also one of the most innovative composers. His work oscillates between composition and open form. Apart from music for organ and orchestra, operas and a piano concerto he has produced electronic pieces, conceptualized sound installations, and engaged in collective improvisation with diverse groups, developing a language of extremes, tension and complexity. Mitterer lives in Vienna. |
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| Lineup |
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All compositions by Wolfgang Mitterer |
2CD | Electronic | PRIME colors Edition |
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| Recommendation |
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A single (and singular) CD documents the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik 2004: Wolfgang Mitterer’s electrifying pieces for organ and electronics.  |
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| Wolfgang vs. Ludwig? Nine In One? Schicksal? Tristesse? All in one, the whole prgramme ... and yes, you really can listen to Beethoven! |
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| The exceptionally gifted organ-ist, composer and specialist in electronics Wolfgang Mitterer has been thinking about pop music: Sopop, featuring Birgit Minichmayr! |
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