On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Medtner‘s death, the Nikolaj Medtner Gesellschaft organises a hybrid international symposium, taking place at Staatsbibliothek Berlin on 6 November, 10:00 to 13:30. I will be participating with a paper on Medtner’s stay in Berlin, 1921–1924, alongside presentations by Nicolò Rizzi, Benjamin Bertin, Robert Levinger, Werner Grünzweig, Pamela Freeman, and Peter Wyllie Johnston. Thanks go to Vasily Gvozdetsky and Simon Moser for making this event possible. Admission is free, and everybody interested is welcome! See this website for more details and information on registration.
In memory of Hans Peter Reutter
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.