{"id":10024,"date":"2024-04-26T16:56:48","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T14:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/?p=10024"},"modified":"2024-04-30T10:05:28","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T08:05:28","slug":"wolken-und-linien","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/2024\/04\/26\/wolken-und-linien\/?lang=en","title":{"rendered":"Trees, Bubbles, Clouds, and Lines"},"content":{"rendered":"

The transdisciplinary project KlangBildKlang mediates between visual and musical experiences.<\/h1>\n

\u201c[…]And the whole […] stands almost finished and complete in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance.\u201d When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart described the way in which he composed, it may not have been mere coincidence that he used the analogy of a painting. Mozart\u2019s enormously creative imagination still remains as unfathomable as ever. But human beings in general\u2014as creatures that hear and see\u2014have in fact always combined and compared their sensory impressions. Moreover, visual artists have attempted to depict the art of music ever since ancient times\u2014an endeavour that has played a role of no small importance throughout art history.\u00a0And even so, some have repeatedly attempted a more stringent delineation: when Ludwig van Beethoven said of his 6th Symphony (Pastorale<\/em>) that this music was \u201cmore the expression of feeling than tone painting\u201d, his intent was to emphasise its autonomy. On the other hand, it was especially during the 19th century that concrete works of visual art came to inspire musical compositions.<\/p>\n

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Great Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus \u00a9 Stephan Polzer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Modest Mussorgsky is by no means the only composer who took inspiration from paintings and drawings for his music, but his series of piano works Pictures at an Exhibition\u2014<\/em>particularly in the colourful orchestration by Maurice Ravel\u2014is indeed one of the most famous examples of such cross-genre pollination involving painting and musical art. The 20th-century avant-garde, for its part, effected a comprehensive \u201cfraying of the arts\u201d (Theodor W. Adorno) to begin with, while the upheavals of the modern era with its revolutions of expressive means proceeded to catalyse all manner of exchange between art forms. For Paul Klee, it was especially the music of Johann Sebastian Bach that provided impulses for abstract paintings, while Wassily Kandinsky\u2014a synaesthete (one who combines the perception of various senses)\u2014searched systematically for ways of expressing the colours of various sounds and engaged in intense exchange to this end with Arnold Sch\u00f6nberg, who himself exhibited periods of frenetic activity as a painter.<\/p>\n

It is thus that the festival KlangBildKlang, which will bundle over 50 projects at a wide array of Viennese venues<\/a> this May and June, can call upon a rich art- and musico-historical tradition. The question as to whether it is possible to render sounds visible and\u2014conversely\u2014render images, colours, and motion audible is to be pursued in a multitude of locations: these will include the House of Music, the K\u00fcnstlerhaus<\/a>, and Kunst Haus Wien as well as municipally run music schools and adult education centres, with some projects also being conducted in collaboration with the association Superar and the health and social centre Cape 10. In doing so, a broad variety of artistic approaches aim to address the largest-imaginable audience while contributing \u201cmulticoloured, diverse, and transdisciplinary accents to the urban realm.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the climaxes, to take place in late June at the Wiener Konzerthaus, will be an orchestral concert<\/a> with the Webern Symphonie Orchester led by Andr\u00e9s Orozco-Estrada\u2014which will include a public rehearsal and a music-making workshop. Annegret Huber, head of the Department of Composition Studies and Music Production<\/a>, initiated a composing competition in advance of the event. On this, deputy head Wolfgang Suppan says: \u201cWe\u2019re very pleased that our students, by participating in KlangBildKlang, will be given a chance at seeing their concepts for orchestra and video projection realised in such a prominent setting before an audience in the Great Hall, as part of which they\u2019ll be able to gather important practical experience in composing for a large orchestral ensemble. The teams they’ve formed together with students from the St. P\u00f6lten University of Applied Sciences (FH St. P\u00f6lten) will demonstrate individual approaches to how music and visual materials can penetrate and complement each other.\u201d This collaborative work with twelve Digital Design master\u2019s degree students from Markus Wintersberger\u2019s class at FH St. P\u00f6lten is intended to highlight and emphasise even more strongly how sounds can be interlaced with visual depictions.<\/p>\n

The welcome involvement of the creative potential of the mdw \u2013 University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna through the project KlangBildKlang thus represents a great joy and opportunity for everyone involved.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Matthias Naske, Intendant, Wiener Konzerthaus<\/p>\n

The project\u2019s overall concept<\/a> corresponds quite well to a central concern of the Wiener Konzerthaus, which is to make music accessible to the greatest possible number of people. And the Konzerthaus, for its part, will be offering school students, families, and interested individuals of all ages an opportunity to have synaesthetic experiences of their own on 21 and 22 June: \u201cOn both days, we invite our audience to give their individual creativity free rein and become familiar with our institution in all its diversity,\u201d the Konzerthaus has announced. Konzerthaus Intendant Matthias Naske elaborates: \u201cWith its programming, which is at once artistically open and excellence-oriented, the Wiener Konzerthaus makes a significant contribution to the liveliness of this city\u2019s cultural life while also eliciting echoes far beyond Austria\u2019s borders. The welcome involvement of the creative potential of the mdw \u2013 University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna through the project KlangBildKlang thus represents a great joy and opportunity for everyone involved. Let our doors be opened to the wonderful musicians of the mdw!\u201d This time around, it should be noted, the doors of the Wiener Konzerthaus are also being opened to brilliant visual impressions\u2014for the performance of Mussorgsky\u2019s suite will feature those paintings that Wassily Kandinsky created for a staged performance in 1928.<\/p>\n

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Andr\u00e9s Orozco-Estrada in his initial appearance with the Webern Symphonie Orchester in 2021. \u00a9 Stephan Polzer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The contributions that arose as part of the composing competition likewise hold in store quite a bit for the eyes: for his piece Das gr\u00fcne Wunder, <\/em>Yeison Buitrago took inspiration from the organic growth of seeds into trees and of individual trees into forests; Carl Tertio Druml refers in his Tempus Tempestatis <\/em>both to the visual art of Anselm Kiefer, which integrates numerous (natural) materials, and to Alpine meteorological phenomena ranging from peaceful skies to violent storms; Sang Hyun Hong\u2019s Reading Kandinsky <\/em>brings together dots, lines, and surfaces in complex structures; and Seoyoon Jang\u2019s pebbles, bubbles, rumbles <\/em>explores rounded shapes taken on by physical objects as well as \u201cround\u201d sonic phenomena. In an ongoing process of creative exchange, the students from the mdw and the St. P\u00f6lten University of Applied Sciences will decide both amongst themselves and collectively just which two compositions will be given their audio-visual premi\u00e8res. But regardless of which works they ultimately choose, the concluding concert promises to be a wholly unique experience for the eyes and the ears.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very much looking forward to this project with the Webern Symphonie Orchester, a project in which our young colleagues will be among those exploring new ways forward.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Andr\u00e9s Orozco-Estrada, conductor and professor at the Department of Conducting<\/p>\n

Conductor Andr\u00e9s Orozco-Estrada, himself an mdw graduate who is now an mdw professor of orchestral conducting as well as the RAI National Symphony Orchestra\u2019s head conductor and the City of Cologne\u2019s designated Generalmusikdirektor <\/em>and G\u00fcrzenich-Kapellmeister<\/em> (starting in the 2025\/26 season), has the following to say about this project and his rehearsal work: \u201cIt can happen that I\u2019ll have images in my mind that go with the music, but that\u2019s more in the context of preparation and rehearsing. In Mussorgsky\u2019s case, we\u2019re familiar with the pictures that inspired him\u2014or at least with those that have come down to us today. And Ravel, in his orchestration, gave Mussorgsky\u2019s music a new twist in terms of style, expanding its Russian sound by a French timbre. I\u2019m very much looking forward to this project with the Webern Symphonie Orchester, a project in which our young colleagues will be among those exploring new ways forward\u2014something of which I\u2019m glad to be part!\u201d<\/p>\n

event tip<\/strong>
\nConcertino: KlangBildKlang
\n<\/em><\/a>22 June, 3:30 p.m.
\nGreat Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The transdisciplinary project KlangBildKlang mediates between visual and musical experiences. \u201c[…]And the whole […] stands almost finished and complete in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance.\u201d When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart described the way in which he composed, it may not have been …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":10063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1484,1487,1486,854],"class_list":["post-10024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-special","tag-2024-2","tag-kbk","tag-klangbildklang","tag-special"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10024"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10594,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10024\/revisions\/10594"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mdw.ac.at\/magazin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}