c u r r e n t n e w s
Welcome to winter semester 2025
The Department of Composition Studies and Music Production wishes all staff and students a good start to the semester.
GORDON KAMPE
// guest lecture as part of the seminar w/ Oscar BIANCHI
@AW, D0251
(11.12., 15h)
Gordon KAMPE (*1976 in Herne) is a composer and professor of composition at the Hamburg University of Music and Theater. He studied composition with Hans-Joachim Hespos, Adriana Hölszky, and Nicolaus A. Huber, among others, and earned his doctorate with a thesis on fairy tale operas of the 20th century. His research and work focus on opera/music theater, 21st-century music, and popular music theory.
KAMPE is president of the Society for New Music (GNM) and, since 2024, artistic director of the national competition “Jugend komponiert” (Youth Composes). During his visit to the mdw, he will provide insights into his oeuvre—including his current family and children's opera for the Theater an der Wien, which will premiere on December 14.
BLOOPY BITS
// guest lecture with Carolin RATZINGER & Michelle ZIEGLER
@D0263
(11.12., 18h)
Composing in early electronic studios | Places – Actors – Interactions
In addition to the well-known electronic music studios in Cologne and Paris, various types of studios emerged in different locations from the 1950s onwards, ranging from small private home studios and subcultural initiatives to institutionally differentiated radio studios and centers at universities. Composers such as Delia Derbyshire and Edgard Varèse worked closely with technicians, with roles often overlapping. Precarious technical infrastructures and financing led to an exploratory approach to technology. The lecture interprets composing in electronic studios as an interaction between human and technical actors and discusses the associated shifts in authorship and creativity. In addition to a theoretical and historical introduction, case studies from the SNF project “Interactive Composing in Electronic Studios 1948–1971” will be presented.
IKT // ENSEMBLE FRACTALES (BE)
// workshop and concert
@Klangtheater
(12.12., 19h)
As part of a collaboration with the Belgian ensemble Fractales, students from the IKT – Department of Composition Studies and Music Production will present new works written especially for the ensemble. In addition, the pieces will be recorded and produced by sound engineering students specializing in classical music production under the supervision of Pauline HEISTER.
Works by: Marisa ALGARI, Oren BONEH, Stefan GRIMUS, Vlada LYSENKO, Armin SANAYEI, Timo WALLNA, Reina YOSHIOKA
SCHROTT & KORN
// memorial concert Dieter KAUFMANN
@Klangtheater
(14.12., 19h)
Dieter KAUFMANN, born in Vienna in 1941 and raised in Carinthia, passed away in September this year. He had been teaching at this university since 1970, was the long-standing director of the course in electroacoustic and experimental music, and founded the class for electroacoustic composition in 1997. He trained an entire generation of composers and was a unifying figure between different musical and social cultures.
In addition to vocal, instrumental, and orchestral works, he created a series of electroacoustic compositions. We would like to present a selection of these in this concert and pay tribute to his alert, musical spirit.
IKT christmas party
// internal only
(15.12., 17h)
We want to come together as a department and celebrate the end of the year with an interal party.
22h - JSX
DIETER KAUFMANN HAS PASSED AWAY
Our department mourns the loss of Univ.-Prof. Dieter Kaufmann, who passed away on September 23, 2025. Dieter Kaufmann's work at the department is closely associated with the course in electroacoustic music established by Friedrich Cerha in 1963/64. His appointment as professor of electroacoustic composition coincided with the establishment of the degree program of the same name. Our thoughts are with his family and all those who were close to him.
Dieter Kaufmann (born 1941) was one of the pioneers and trailblazers of electroacoustic music in Austria. After studying composition with Karl Schiske and studying in Paris (with Olivier Messiaen, René Leibowitz, Pierre Schaeffer, and François Bayle, Group de Recherches Musicales), he returned to Vienna in 1970 and became involved in the “Department for Electroacoustic and Experimental Music” at the then Vienna Academy of Music (now mdw). Together with his wife, actress Gunda König, and sound engineer Walter Stangl, Kaufmann founded the K & K Experimentalstudio in Vienna in 1975. From 1976 to 1980, he was vice president and from 1983 to 1988 president of the Austrian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. From 1988 to 1991, he was president of the Society for Electroacoustic Music, which he co-founded in 1984. From 1991 to 2006, he held a professorship in composition at the mdw, where he was head of the Department for Electroacoustics and Experimental Music. There he also served as dean of studies for composition, conducting, and sound engineering. In addition, he was president of the Society for the Protection of Mechanical Music Copyrights and, from 2001 to 2004, of the Austrian Composers' Association.
As a professor of composition at the mdw, he established the field of electroacoustic composition and taught a large number of students, not only in the techniques of electroacoustic composition, but also in advanced thinking and reflection on social issues, conceptual foundations, and music and art in a wide variety of contexts. Hartmut Krones characterizes Kaufmann's work as follows: "Kaufmann's aversion to paternalism of any kind is also reflected in his stylistic openness from the beginning of his creative activity, which is consciously directed against a dictatorship of taste, whether it comes from the ranks of reactionaries or the guardians of ‘progress’; This openness has sometimes (in general, not only in relation to Kaufmann) even been maliciously labeled “postmodern arbitrariness,” but in reality it represents an expansion of material and idiomatics that seems absolutely necessary for the incorporation of broad political and social fields of association."
The writer and theater critic Hans Weigel, feared for his harsh reviews, expresses his appreciation in a letter:
Verehrter Dieter Kaufmann,
vor allem: Sie sind ein großer Komponist.
Sie sind nicht mehr Avantgarde.
Sie sind Garde.
[Dear Dieter Kaufmann,
Above all, you are a great composer.
You are no longer avant-garde.
You are the guard.]
Source:
Hartmut Krones, Dieter Kaufmann: Allgemeine Erklärung der Menschenrechte. In: ÖMZ 11-12/2000, S.41-43
https://www.musicaustria.at/portraet-dieter-kaufmann
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dieter_Kaufmann_(Komponist)