Using artificial intelligence methods, a possible version of the symphony was created from Beethoven's existing musical sketches. To do this, the available data from Beethoven - symphonies, music sketches and scores - first had to be analyzed and prepared in a machine-readable format. The appropriate machine learning method was then selected and its algorithms adapted to the task. Language processing algorithms were used.

Under the direction of Matthias Röder from the Karajan Institute and The Mindshift agency, the team consisted of musicologist and Beethoven expert Robert Levin, Ahmed Elgammal (AI expert at Rutgers University), Mark Gotham (composition theorist at Cornell University), Walter Werzowa (composer) and Christine Siegert (Head of Research at the Beethoven-Haus). The work is to be performed by the Bonn Beethoven Orchestra in April 2020.

Original article:
https://www.telekom.com/de/konzern/themenspecials/special-beethoven-jubilaeumsjahr/details/kuenstliche-intelligenz-soll-beethovens-zehnte-sinfonie-vollenden-587346

According to the organizers, the concerts will be curated for the second time by Stephen Johns, Artistic Director of London's Royal College of Music (RCM). This year's guest conductors are Mark Biggins from the English National Opera and Felix Bagge from Lund University. The three young soloists, Julieth Lozano (soprano), Theodor Uggla (tenor) and Emily Sun (violin), have close links with the RCM. Jonathan Radford, an internationally renowned saxophonist, the RCM Chamber Ensemble, the Lund Switzerland Singers and the Klosters Festival Singers will also be performing.

Interview with Stephen Johns

In an in-depth interview with Veronika Studer-Kovacs, the artistic director of the Klosters Music Festival talks about developments in the classical music business, interpretation, the role of music festivals and his personal taste in music.

Link to the interview

In June 2018, the government of the canton of St. Gallen issued an ordinance setting the school fees to be paid by the school authority if a schoolchild attends the recognized talent school of another school authority. The city of St.Gallen lodged an appeal against this with the Federal Supreme Court, citing municipal autonomy. The court has now dismissed the appeal and found that the government was right to regulate the school fees by ordinance and to assess the amount correctly. Talent school providers may neither demand higher school fees from the school provider nor a contribution towards tuition from the parents.

The City of St.Gallen had caused uncertainty with regard to the school fees owed by issuing invoices to the school authorities that deviated from the cantonal requirements. It had also demanded a contribution towards tuition from the parents of the talented pupils. The Federal Supreme Court has now clarified that neither is permissible. In view of the constitutional guarantee that primary school lessons are free of charge, parents cannot be asked to contribute to the cost of lessons. They can only be charged for expenses incurred for the promotion of specific talents, such as instrumental lessons.

Thomas Pauli-Gabi's tenure as Head of the Culture Department included various major projects. One of Thomas Pauli-Gabi's main concerns was to give cantonal cultural policy a broad-based, strategic direction with the development and implementation of a cantonal cultural concept.

With various projects, Thomas Pauli-Gabi and his team helped to strengthen the canton of Aargau's self-image as a cultural canton. In 2015, for example, the canton celebrated the cantonal commemoration of 600 years of Aargau in the Swiss Confederation with the participation of the regions, a "Double Door" mediation concept was developed for the Jewish-Christian cultural heritage in Surbtal, a cantonal theme year "IndustrieWelt Aargau" was initiated in 2019/2020 and several cultural construction projects, such as the new Stapferhaus in Lenzburg and the Alte Reithalle in Aarau, were actively promoted.
 

The project deals with cableways in the canton of Uri and consists of two parts. The first part examines from a historical perspective how the development of the Alpine region by cable cars has changed the lives of the population, the use of mountain goods and the landscape itself over the past hundred years or so. In the second part of the project, a composition will be created from typical cable car noises, which will ultimately be presented to the public as a sound installation.

Romed Aschwanden, Managing Director of the Uri Institute Cultures of the Alps at the University of Lucerne, is responsible for the historical research. The researcher not only wants to use historical sources, but also conduct interviews with contemporary witnesses.

The musical part will be performed by Michel Roth. The composer, who grew up in the canton of Uri, is Professor of Composition and Music Theory, Analysis and Composition at the FHNW School of Music. Boris Previšić from the University of Lucerne is also involved in the project. The Swiss National Science Foundation is supporting the interdisciplinary cable car project with a grant. The project will be launched at the beginning of February and will be completed within a year.
 

The new platform is intended to bring the Norient community of over 700 artists from 50 countries closer together, generate commissions, pay fair fees and present their ideas for the future to a broad public.

However, this is all dependent on a successful crowdfunding campaign, which Norient will launch on the Startnext platform, write those responsible. If Norient survives, the 10th edition of the Norient Film Festival (NFF) will take place in Bern and Lausanne in January and February 2021.

As an oboe virtuoso with a worldwide reputation, Holliger experimented with advanced playing techniques, writes the University of Basel. He also rediscovered some forgotten musicians of the 18th century and inspired important contemporary composers to write new works.

As a composer, the 80-year-old explores the boundaries of sound and language, and as a conductor and organizer, he is committed to Basel's musical culture through significant institutional and artistic impulses.

Other honorary doctorates from Basel went to the pastor Martin Stingelin, the entrepreneur Klaus Endress and three researchers from the USA: the lawyer Bryan A. Stevenson, the cell biologist Randy W. Schekman and the psychologist Jerome R. Busemeyer.

According to Samuel Mehr from Harvard University, dance music is fast and rhythmic, while lullabies are soft and slow - this applies worldwide. In addition, keys have been found in all cultures: the structure of small sequences of notes from a base note as in the Western diatonic scale. Compared to love songs, songs that are supposed to contribute to healing usually consist of a few closely spaced notes. These findings suggest that there are indeed universal characteristics to music that may have basic commonalities - a fundamental human musicality.

In a Science Perspective article in the same issue, Tecumseh Fitch and Tudor Popescu from the University of Vienna comment on the conclusions. Human musicality is fundamentally based on a small number of fixed pillars: hard-coded predispositions given to humans by the ancient physiological infrastructure of our shared biology. These musical pillars are then flavored with the idiosyncrasies of each individual culture, resulting in the kaleidoscopic assortment we find in world music.

Original article:
W. Tecumseh Fitch, Tudor Popescu; Science, 2019
Published in the magazine's 'Perspectives' article series.
DOI: 10.1126/science.aay2214
 

Even if I always feel a little uncomfortable with such formulations: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart must have been the most creative mind in his time. And not only in terms of his musical works, but also with regard to his wit and other amusing mischief that only a playful, eternally young at heart wit could come up with. This applies beyond the bizarre Bäsle letters or the quirky Musical fun KV 522 also for the Horn Concerto KV 495, written in 1786.

It was written for Joseph Leutgeb, who was employed as a court huntsman horn player in Salzburg between 1763 and 1773 and was a friend of the Mozart family, who later moved to Vienna where he ran a cheese dairy just outside the city. Leutgeb must have been in Mozart's ear with his request for concerts, as the autograph of the first work KV 417 (1783) already contains a mocking comment: "Wolfgang Amadé Mozart has taken pity on Leitgeb, donkey, ox and fool."

We do not know exactly what Mozart gave the horn player for the Concerto K. 495. Apart from two posthumous prints in parts, only parts of the manuscript have survived, in which Mozart designed the middle Andante cantabile with four different colored inks: black, blue, red and green. Since then, people have been puzzling over whether this is just a colorful whim or a musical code. Even though the surviving parts of the autograph have been put online by the Morgan Library (New York): The Urtext edition published by Breitkopf makes the music text available for the first time in an elaborate color print for practical use - not only for fun, but also for further puzzling.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Concerto for Horn and Orchestra in E flat major KV 495, edited by Henrik Wiese, score PB 15131, € 19.90, Breitkopf & Härtel in cooperation with G. Henle, Wiesbaden

For some time now, the Viennese Universal-Edition has been publishing the more or less demanding teaching literature of the British guitarist and composer Paul Coles with a certain regularity, most recently the volume 10 More Melodic Studies for Guitar. The "More" in the title refers to the 26 Melodic Studies; but the booklet also fits the three volumes Classical Guitar Album The latter are progressively structured, from simple monophonic melodies to moderately difficult pieces for more advanced players. They are suitable as teaching material for - even young - adults. The quiet, romantic miniatures in the second half of the third booklet are particularly appealing (Volume 1: UE 21675, first pieces; Volume 2: UE 21 676, easy pieces; Volume 3: UE 21 677, medium-difficulty pieces; € 12.50 each).

And this is precisely what the 10 More Melodic Studies a refreshing contrast. Faster tempi, longer musical texts, hearty melodies in the upper and lower voices and arpeggios that lie well in the hand, with the last piece as the climax: a furious, Spanish-influenced Vivace. Coles' tonal language is romantically colored, with modern echoes, the rhythm is attractive with syncopations and changes between numerous different time signatures, sometimes also somewhat unwieldy. Perhaps here and there a musical idea is packed into a piece more than necessary, so that a stringent musical arrangement is not always easy.

10 More Melodic Studies for Guitar like all Paul Coles' editions, is attractively presented and contains not only the English accompanying texts but also their German and French translations.

Paul Coles: 10 More Melodic Studies, for guitar, UE 21678, € 13.50, Universal Edition, Vienna

It is a bold and commendable goal that Graubünden musicologist Laura Decurtins has set herself: "I would like to research the 'musical DNA' of Romansh-speaking Graubünden and offer a musical perspective on Romansh-speaking Graubünden." Thanks to a research project at the University of Zurich and the Institute for Cultural Research Graubünden, she was given time and money for her project, and the results of her extensive research have recently been published as a book by Chronos-Verlag under the title Chantai rumantsch! - On the musical self-(in)discovery of the Romansh-speaking region available.

The book is thick and heavy, and the content was accepted as a dissertation by the University of Zurich in 2017: not the ingredients for a light read. And the reviewer's fears are confirmed. It takes discipline and time to do justice to Laura Decurtins' work, which is over 500 pages long. A somewhat bumpy language, many references - the list of sources alone takes up more than 40 pages - and repeated confusing references to names do not make the text any more accessible. But the work is rewarded.

Laura Decurtins links the history of Rhaeto-Romanic music-making with the identity of the Romansh-speaking population. "Musica rumantscha" therefore not only means "music to texts in Romansh", but rather "music by, through, with and for Romansh". Music as part of cultural identity and therefore formative for a society is not a new idea, but has long been neglected by musicology.

The author has divided her book into five main chapters. It begins with the early modern period and sacred singing, continues with patriotic singing and homeland consciousness in the 19th century, then on to choral singing and language consciousness in the first half of the 20th century and on to popular vocal music and new cultural consciousness in the second half of the 20th century. It ends with a chapter on the linguistic and cultural search for identity in contemporary vocal music. Reading the book, it becomes clear how fragmented and small-scale the cultural area of the Romansh-speaking population in Graubünden was and still is. As a representative of the German-speaking majority in Graubünden, it is easy to overlook this. The centuries-old dominance of German as the official language and the transformation of Romansh from a colloquial language to a written language and how this is linked to musical creation is also vividly described. The introduction, with its explanations of how, by whom and when sacred texts and songs were translated into Romansh and how they were disseminated, is extremely interesting. It is also a particular merit that Laura Decurtins deals with contemporary music. This highlights the existing links between Rhaeto-Romanic music from the early modern period to the present day.

Laura Decurtins has compiled a detailed and well-founded reference work on the development and history of Rhaeto-Romanic culture. This historiography has only just begun and will hopefully find imitators. While the first four chapters are notable for their care and analytical approach, the last chapter on the present is too much of a list of biographies of active musicians and institutions, which is neither complete nor reflected upon. This is a pity, as it leaves the question of how Rhaeto-Romanic music and its protagonists are asserting themselves and developing in an international environment unanswered. We are looking forward to the sequel.

Laura Decurtins: Chantai rumantsch! On the musical self(-)discovery of the Romansh-speaking region,
564 p., 57 ill., Fr. 58.00, Chronos, Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-0340-1501-1
E-Book (PDF) free of charge

Salome Zwicky - They stand for uncertainty, rejection, timeout, reorientation and existential fear. The question often arises not only as to whether the work was done incorrectly, but also as to whether self-blame and feelings of guilt can be the result. Young female singers in training or at the start of their career are usually affected. Men do not have nodules, longer vocal folds seem to be immune.

Nodules are caused by any unfavorable form of voice production - not just when singing. They are thickenings of the mucous membrane in the middle section of the vocal folds due to unfavorable phonation - hence the technical term phonation thickening.

The air flows through the closed vocal folds and creates a vibration at their edge. The air flow rubs and sucks on the mucous membrane, most noticeably in the middle of the vocal folds. To protect itself, the over-stressed mucous membrane thickens, similar to how the skin on the hands or feet develops calluses under pressure and friction. However, the thickening of the vocal folds worsens the vibration properties, so that even more unfavorable pressure is required for phonation - a vicious circle is created.

Not every nodular change is a phonation thickening. Genuine nodules are symmetrical, i.e. they are roughly the same on both vocal folds. Nodular findings on only one vocal fold are almost certainly another change, for example polyps or cysts. Unlike nodules, these do not disappear even if the voice is spared. Genuine nodules, on the other hand, can become smaller or disappear if the voice is rested for one to two weeks (only quiet, effortless speaking, no singing in full voice). However, this temporary caution does not solve the problem; the thickenings will reappear under increasing strain. It is important to tackle the actual cause.

If real nodules are found, the first question is therefore the cause, and the form of therapy is derived from this. The harmful "too much" on the vocal folds is made up of the mechanical force and a time factor. In other words, it depends on how you produce sounds (muscular balance, subglottic pressure), but also how often and for how long you sing in this way. If nodules are discovered by chance, it is important to know that they only need to be treated if there is a simultaneous voice disorder. Some singers sing without any problems with the beginnings of nodules.

The therapeutic approach is always similar. Put simply, you have to learn to make sounds - especially loud or high-pitched sounds - resonate instead of being forced. The power to sing must be drawn from good breathing and body technique and not generated by laryngeal muscles. The same principle applies to speaking in everyday life, in the classroom and on stage and is also followed in speech training, vocal pedagogy or voice therapy (speech therapy). Breathing control, support and marginal voice training relieve the larynx. Proven aids are LaxVox or - brand new - the Doctor Vox voice mask. For some singers, individual areas of the vocal technique need to be changed. This takes time, but is essential for continued professional success. Surgical removal of the nodules is only necessary in a few cases and only makes sense if the incorrect vocalization is corrected at the same time.

Phonation thickening is not a bad thing. They show that the type of vocal strain has led to a dead end and are a warning signal for those affected to rethink and optimize the way they handle their voice. It is worth the effort. The important interaction between therapy and pedagogy offers the opportunity to get to know one's own voice in greater depth and thereby acquire mindfulness and a healthy technical foundation. It will literally "untie the knot".

Salome Zwicky

... from the SingStimmZentrumZürich (www.sszz.ch) is a specialist in ORL with a specialty in phoniatrics.

Indeed, one thinks of battles when listening to this powerful and often brutal music. The CD released by Neos offers two major works: the ensemble piece with the same title Combat actions/trauma actions op. 11 (1995/98) and a Chamber symphony "A végső Tavasz" op. 23 (2009/2011). Both can hardly be reduced to a common denominator. A ritually serious tone is always present, but Jorge E. López cultivates an incredibly flexible compositional style.

The Chamber Symphony underlines López's aesthetic attitude: "I have never identified with the term 'new music'. Rather, from the very beginning I was driven by the idea of making the ancient present. I'm not looking for the new, but rather for the repressed." There are ludicrous references to Gustav Mahler, Beethoven and Gustav Holst. With mannerist artistry, López achieves a bizarre, even fantastic feat.

The Collegium Novum Zürich under the direction of Jonathan Stockhammer plays very accurately, with great attention to detail and at the same time powerfully in the right places. Leslie Leon sings the lines by the Hungarian poet Endre Ady in the Chamber Symphony expressive, but is also able to switch to an ironically distanced tone. A furious recording quality by Swiss radio SRF and an informative, easy-to-read booklet text by Jens Schubbe round off the outstanding impression.