Wendelin Bitzan

Wendelin Bitzan

Musician・Researcher・Digital Content Creator

DTKV Berlin in Deep Sleep

Since the last general assembly took place five weeks ago, Tonkünstlerverband Berlin, the professional body of Berlin-based musicians, has been inactive. The newly elected executive board and the new chairman Detlef Bensmann have not presented themselves to the public so far. The organisation’s social media accounts accounts are largely unmaintained or out of date, and the website still announces many former chairpersons who were not re-elected or have withdrawn from their posts. As the current board apparently fails to make the recent developments public, here is the most important information:

A Musical Valediction

Yesterday I attended the farewell party of the former Chamber Choir of the Berlin University of the Arts in which I participated and performed during the last fourteen years. It was an affectionate and communicative gathering of the most recent choir members. My contribution was to present Max Reger‘s Nachtlied, Op. 138 No. 3, in my own piano transcription (please find the sheet music of my version here, as well as the choir’s recording of the original piece). This composition, one of my all-time favourites in the choral repertoire, represents some unforgettable memories related to music-making which I am grateful to share with my dear colleagues.

Support for Freelance Teachers

Some news from two occupational groups in musicianship with whom I wish to express my solidarity and support. Please share and re-post if you feel the same.

(1) The Conference of Adjunct Lecturers at German Music Universities (BKLM) and the OrchesterlanD initiative have started a joint campaign, aiming at a significant improvement of working conditions for freelance academic teaching staff in music. The claim is to refrain from assigning fixed-term lectureships via administrative measures—which is current common practice—and turn these into private-law contracts instead. See also the BKLM statement on adjuncts’ dignity and work ethic.

(2) The Berlin Senate has agreed on a 40-percent increase of fees for freelance teachers at municipal music schools. Yet it seems as if the cultural administration would fail to provide the required assets in next year’s budget. There is an initiative of Die Berliner Musikschullehrer and the State Representation of Music School Teachers to protest against this incomprehensible neglect. Much support is needed.

Paradigm Shift at DTKV Berlin

Yesterday’s general assembly of Deutscher Tonkünstlerverband Berlin was a turbulent and partly chaotic session of four hours. In a strenuous procedure, most of the former chairpersons have resigned or were voted out of office, and a new executive board has been elected. Many changes in the ethics and self-conception of the professional body are to be expected, and future work will be essentially different from how it used to be. On another note, the assembly vindicated one of our most devoted members who had faced an illegitimate expellation threat. More details to follow as soon as the new board has constituted itself.

Thoughts on Academic Publishing

As a person involved in both artistic and scientific activity, I don’t sense a pressure to publish my writings to such an extent as somebody working in the humanities or the natural sciences. Yet I do feel the need to regularly contribute to the output of my academic environment by writing for journals, conference proceedings, and edited volumes in my fields of interest, and thus enhance my ›emerging scholar portfolio‹. In doing so, it appears to me that the best way to go public is full open access under a Creative Commons license, without any fees or restrictions posed to potential readers—and the more so since my occupation is a rather marginal discipline, measured by its overall relevance in society. Accessibility means a lot more to me than monetisation. In other words: I don’t see any point in commercial publishing in the current state of academic life.

Obviously, some partners in publishing do not share this view. While there are many convincing examples for gold and green open-access strategies throughout European and North-American academia, I have recently faced problems when I tried to self-archive or reuse my work after a period of closed access or conventional printed publication. For instance, some journals would not permit green open access of articles after an embargo period, or even charge the author for publishing in repositories other than his or her personal website. Despite platforms such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate enable researchers to share their work on a non-commercial basis, they are played off and dismissed for their alleged profit-oriented approach by some publishers who do not seem to have developed sustainable open-access policies themselves. At any rate, a topical handling of copyright issues and rights of use would demand for an attitude more sensitive towards authors’ interests. To cut a long story short: I believe that, if I am neither required to pay for publication nor do I get paid for it, my articles should be accessible to anybody free of charges. I will aim to live up to this principle from now on.