New Simplicity

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New Simplicity (in German, die neue Einfachheit) was a stylistic tendency amongst some of the younger generation of German composers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, reacting against not only the European avant garde of the 1950s and 1960s, but also against the broader tendency toward objectivity found from the beginning of the twentieth century. Alternative terms sometimes used for this movement are “new subjectivity” (neue Subjektivität), “new inwardness” (Neue Innigkeit), “New Romanticism”, “New Sensuality”, “New Expressivity”, “New Classicism”, and “New Tonality”.

In general, these composers strove for an immediacy between the creative impulse and the musical result (in contrast to the elaborate precompositional planning characteristic of the avant garde), with the intention also of communicating more readily with audiences. In some cases this meant a return to the tonal language of the 19th century as well as to the traditional forms (symphony, sonata) and instrumental combinations (string quartet, piano trio) which had been avoided for the most part by the avant garde. For others it meant working with simpler textures or the employment of triadic harmonies in non-tonal contexts. Of the composers most closely identified with this movement, only Wolfgang Rihm has established a significant reputation outside of Germany. At least two writers have gone so far as to argue that one of the Darmstadt avant-garde composers against whom the New Simplicity was ostensibly rebelling, Karlheinz Stockhausen, had anticipated their position in the radical simplification of his style between 1966 and 1974 (Faltin 1979, 192; Andraschke 1981). Another writer finds Rihm's inclusive aesthetic better viewed as "an expansion of constructivist concerns . . . than as a negation of them" (Williams 2006, 384).

There is a quite distinct group of composers also active in Germany and elsewhere, to whom the term 'New Simplicity' is occasionally applied. These are particularly associated with the Cologne School and include such figures as Walter Zimmermann, Johannes Fritsch, Clarence Barlow, as well as others from different countries such as Christopher Fox, Gerald Barry, Kevin Volans and Matteo Fargion. Most of these composers tend to use quite sparse, pared-down musical material (sometimes showing the influence of the early 'naive' period of work from John Cage, and that of Morton Feldman, especially in the case of Zimmermann) to which are applied more intricate musical processes; in the latter respect, the influence of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel is clear, though some of the figures concerned believed their aesthetic to constitute a break with the avant-garde as represented in particular at Darmstadt.

Some other composers, older and/or of other nationalities such as Hans Abrahamsen, Alfred Janson, Aaron Jay Kernis, Wilhelm Killmayer, Ladislav Kupkovic, György Kurtág, Roland Moser, Arvo Pärt, Alfred Schnittke, Kurt Schwertsik, and Howard Skempton have also occasionally been mentioned in connection with the “New Simplicitists” - this term has also been used essentially synonymously with the related but distinct style of composers referred to as "Holy Minimalists", such as Arvo Pärt and John Tavener.

[edit] List of New Simplicity composers

  • Hans-Jürgen von Bose
  • Helmut Cromm
  • Hans-Christian von Dadelsen
  • Jury Everhartz
  • Peter Michael Hamel
  • Detlev Müller-Siemens
  • Jens-Peter Ostendorf
  • Wolfgang Rihm
  • Peter Ruzicka
  • Wolfgang von Schweinitz
  • Manfred Stahnke
  • Ulrich Stranz
  • Manfred Trojahn.

[edit] Sources

  • Andraschke, Peter. 1981. “Kompositorische Tendenzen bei Karlheinz Stockhausen seit 1965”. In Kolleritsch 1981, 126–43.
  • Dibelius, Ulrich. 1995. "Positions—Reactions—Confusions: The Second Wave of German Music After 1945." Contemporary Music Review 12:1, 13–24.
  • Faltin, Peter. 1979. “Über den Verlust des Subjekts in der neuen Musik: Anmerkungen zum komponieren am Ausgang der 70er Jahre.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 10, no. 2. (December): 181–98.
  • Kolleritsch, Otto (ed.). 1981. Zur Neuen Einfachheit in der Musik. Studien zur Wertungsforschung 14. Vienna and Graz: Universal Edition (for the Institut für Wertungsforschung an der Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Graz). ISBN 3-7024-0153-9.
  • Reimann, Aribert. 1979. "Salut für die junge Avantgarde." Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 140, no. 1:25.
  • Schweinitz, Wolfgang von. 1980. “Points of View” trans. Harriett Watts. Tempo new series, no. 132 (March): 12-14.
  • Volans, Kevin. 1984. Summer Gardens: Conversations with Composers. Newer Music Edition. ISBN 0-620-08530-5. Includes interviews with various composers associated with the 'Cologne School'.
  • Williams, Alastair. 2006. "Swaying with Schumann: Subjectivity and Tradition in Wolfgang Rihm's Fremde Szenen I–III and Related Scores". Music and Letters 87, no. 3:379–97.
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