The day before yesterday my dear friend and colleague Hans Peter Reutter (1966–2026), a composer, music theorist, and cabaret artist, has passed away after severe illness. Hans Peter was a dedicated teacher and mentor whose companionship, both personally and professionally, meant so much to me since I joined the faculty of Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf. With his kindness, supportiveness, and passion for music, he has been able to inspire students as well as colleagues and was always fun to be around. He also was an engaged and valuable member of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie who enriched the community with his lectures, blogposts, and a vast archive of syllabi and teaching materials that he was generous enough to provide on his website. Many of us who have experienced his advice and support will cherish his memory. May he rest in peace!
End of GMTH Board Membership
After three terms of office I resigned from the board of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie. I am grateful for six years of collaborating with a number of competent and dedicated colleagues with whom I had the chance to work on a number of issues and concerns relevant to the current state of academic music theory in Germany. Since 2020, I tried to provide impulses and put forth topics such as work ethics, employability and fair payment, public and international visibility of the association, methodology of digital teaching, and social media representation. Some of these will hopefully continue to shape the association’s work in the future.
The newly elected GMTH board, younger and more diverse than ever before, consists of the following people: Georg Thoma, Maren Wilhelm, Paula Kaiser, Theresa Carlsson, Jan Meßtorff, Meike Senker, and Tobias Hauser. All the best for your future work!
Call for Donations: Book Publication
Dear friends and colleagues! I have started a crowdfunding campaign to fund the publication of my new book at Georg Olms Verlag—a hybrid volume that compiles my recent research on Eastern European music and music theory, prospectively titled Tönende Architekturen des Ostens. It will include nine chapters focusing on Russian and Soviet composers and theorists, such as Sergei Taneyev, Alexander Scriabin, Sergei Rachmaninov, Nikolai Medtner, Igor Stravinsky, and Dmitri Shostakovich. More details can be found on the campaign page. If you would like to support this independent publication that will be realised outside any academic affiliation or series, please consider a decent contribution to the printing expenses, and also share this post in your networks and environments. Your help will be much appreciated!
Presentation on Caroline Shaw in Barcelona
I will have the pleasure of presenting a paper at this year’s European Music Analysis Conference, taking place during next week, 7–10 September, at Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona. My presentation is titled »Dots, Ovals, and Planes: Harmonic Strategies in Caroline Shaw’s Music for Strings and Vocal Ensembles«, and is scheduled for Wednesday, 9 September, 7 pm. In it, I will be examining pieces such as Entr’acte, Punctum, and Partita for Eight Voices with regard to characteristic chord progressions, sequential structures, and harmonic schemata. The music of the US-American performer and composer has been fascinating me since several years, and I am looking forward to the opportunity of speaking about it in front of an international expert audience. I will present the paper again in German language at the annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie at Halle (Saale) in October.
Candidacy at Landesmusikrat Berlin
Next week I will be running for a board membership in the executive committee of Landesmusikrat Berlin. In this position, I intend to advocate for the interests of freelance musicians, corresponding to my activities in cultural politics and my work at Tonkünstlerverband Berlin. Focal topics will be:
- Self-employed teaching at public and private music schools: fair payment, fee guidelines, legal security, perspectives in the aftermath of a 2022 court decision of the Bundessozialgericht
- Structural aspects of music-educational university studies: questions of qualification, employability, starting and sustaining a career, professional perspectives
Since people from the freelance music business are underrepresented so far on the Landesmusikrat board, I would be pleased if you decided to support my candidacy, given that you are eligible to vote for a member organisation!