Darmstadt School

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This article is specifically about a loose group of compositional styles created by composers who attended the Darmstadt New Music Summer School from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, collectively called the Darmstadt School.

Coined by Luigi Nono in his 1957 lecture "Die Entwicklung der Reihentechnik" (Nono 1975, 30), 'Darmstadt School' describes the uncompromisingly serial music written by composers such as Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Franco Evangelisti, Luciano Berio, and Henri Pousseur from 1951 to 1961, by which time the 'Darmstadt School' had effectively dissolved due to musical differences and a sea change caused by the unexpected death of the director of the Darmstadt Summer Courses, Wolfgang Steinecke. Key influences on the 'Darmstadt School' were the works of Webern and Varèse, and Olivier Messiaen's "Mode de valeurs et d'intensites" (from the Quatre Etudes de rhythme). Examples of serial works from these composers are Boulez's Structures I, Stockhausen's Kontakte, and Nono's Incontri.

Many musicians, such as the composer Hans Werner Henze (whose music was regularly performed at Darmstadt in the 1950s) reacted against the 'Darmstadt School' ideologies, particularly the way in which (according to him) young composers were forced to either write in total dodecaphony or be ridiculed or ignored. In his collected writings, Henze recalls student composers rewriting their works on the train to Darmstadt in order to comply with Boulez's expectations (Henze, 1982, p. 155). One of the leading figures of the Darmstadt School itself, Franco Evangelisti, was also outspoken in his criticism of the dogmatic orthodoxy of certain zealot disciples, labelling them the 'Dodecaphonic police' (Fox 2006). Another member of the school, Konrad Boehmer, states

There never was, or has been anything like a 'serial doctrine', an iron law to which all who seek to enter that small chosen band of conspirators must of necessity submit. Nor am I, for one, familiar with one Ferienwoche schedule, let alone concert programme, which features seriality as the dominant doctrine of the early fifties. Besides, one might ask, what species of seriality is supposed to have reached such pre-eminence? It did, after all, vary from composer to composer and anyone with ears to hear with should still be able to deduce this from the compositions of that era. (Boehmer 1987, 45)

Almost from the outset, the phrase 'Darmstadt School' was used as a belittling term by commentators like Dr. Kurt Honolka (a 1962 article is quoted in Boehmer 1987, 43) to describe any music written in an uncompromising style.

Composers such as Boulez, Stockhausen, and Nono were writing their music in the aftermath of World War II, during which many composers, such as Richard Strauss, had their music politicised by the Third Reich. In order to avoid this happening again, and to keep art for art's sake, the 'Darmstadt School' attempted to create a new, anational style of music to which no false meaning could possibly be attached. Recent biographers of Boulez and Stockhausen in particular have interestingly tried to distance their composers from 'Darmstadt School' music, despite the tenable nature of the composers' original ideologies (Olivier 2005, [page reference need]; Kurtz 1992, [page reference needed]).

[edit] References

• 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.
• Borio, Gianmario, and Hermann Danuser (eds.). 1997. Im Zenit der Moderne: Die Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik Darmstadt 1946-1966. Vols. 1-4. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach.
• Evangelisti, Franco. 1991. Dal silenzio a un nuovo mondo sonoro. Prefazione di Enzo Restagno. Rome: [Semar][1].
• Fox, Christopher. 1999. "Luigi Nono and the Darmstadt School". Contemporary Music Review 18/2: 111–30.
• Fox, Christopher. 2006. "Darmstadt School." Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 20 August 2006).
• Henze, Hans Werner. 1998. Bohemian fifths: An Autobiography. Translated by Stewart Spencer. London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-17815-4. (German original: Reiselieder mit böhmischen Quinten: autobiographische Mitteilungen 1926-1995. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1996.)
• Henze, Hans Werner. 1982. "Music and Politics: : Collected writings, 1953-1981". Translated by Peter Labanyi. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-1545-4
• Kurtz, Michael. 1992. Stockhausen: A Biography. Translated by Richard Toop. London: Faber and Faber.
• Misch, Imke, and Markus Bandur. 2001. Karlheinz Stockhausen bei den Internationalen Ferienkursen für Neue Musik in Darmstadt 1951–1996: Dokumente und Briefe. Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag.
• Nono, Luigi. 1975. Texte, Studien zu seiner Musik Edited by J. Stenzl. Zürich and Freiburg m Breisgau: Atlantis Verlag.
• Olivier, Philippe. 2005. Pierre Boulez: Le maître et son marteau. Paris: Hermann.