Wendelin Bitzan

Wendelin Bitzan

Musician · Researcher · Content Creator

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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!

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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!

» Follow this link to the crowdfunding

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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.

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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!

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Statement of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie

With my colleagues Georg Thoma, Holger Müller-Hartmann, and Hans Aerts from the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie, I authored a statement on occupations and job profiles in the academic teaching of music theory and ear training. The paper ties in with a former GMTH memorandum of 2021, updates the claim for a maximum of 20 % adjunct lecturers compared to 80 % permanent positions, and adds some considerations on staffing policy at music universities in Germany. In particular, a significant increase in long-term employments will be needed in order to meet the current legal situation which will impede the secure assignment of teaching duties to freelancers as of 2028. Accordingly, the share of adjuncts should be reduced at many institutions, and the GMTH calls on the relevant administrations to provide the financial resources needed to implement a sustainable structural change in academic faculties.

» Read the statement here (in German language)