Darmstadt New Music Summer School

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Initiated in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke, the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Darmstadt new music summer courses), held annually until 1970 and subsequently every two years, encompass both the teaching of composition and interpretation and include premières of new works. After Steinecke's death in 1961, the courses were run by Ernst Thomas (1962–81), Friedrich Hommel (1981–94) and Solf Schaefer (1995–). Thanks to these courses, Darmstadt is now a major centre of modern music, particularly for German composers.

Among the many distinguished lecturers to have appeared are Theodor Adorno, Ernst Krenek, René Leibowitz, Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varèse, Rudolf Kolisch, Eduard Steuermann, Milton Babbitt, Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Hans Werner Henze, Eckhard Unruh, György Ligeti, Bruno Maderna, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s the school gained a certain infamy for a perceived lack of interest on the part of some of its zealot followers in any music not matching the uncompromisingly modern views of Pierre Boulez. This led to the use of the phrase 'Darmstadt School' as a pejorative term, implying a stale, juiceless, rule-based music.

Richard Taruskin^{[citation needed]} believes that the Darmstadt New Music Summer Couses were started in order to maintain allied control over the intellectual elite in Germany at the end of World War II.

[edit] Reference

Boehmer, Konrad. 1987. “The Sanctification of Misapprehension into a Doctrine: Darmstadt Epigones and Xenophobes”. English translation by Sonia Prescod Jokel. Key Notes 24:43–47.