On Music Day, which is celebrated every year on June 21, concerts will resume after months of standstill. The first concert with an audience is under the patronage of the Swiss Music Council and the German Music Council, which are also the sponsors of the day of action in Switzerland and Germany. The concert will be broadcast live by Deutschlandfunk Kultur and SRF 2 Kultur will broadcast it with a time delay.

"Variations on a waltz for Klawier alone (there are many)." These words almost seem to be an understatement, with which Beethoven described his 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli op. 120 is mentioned. He was inspired to write this truly monumental composition at the beginning of 1819, when the Viennese music publisher and composer Anton Diabelli (1781-1858) approached a whole series of composers and pianists working in Austria with the request to write a joint work for each of them. one variation on a waltz that he had designed for this purpose. Beethoven must also have received this invitation - however, his creative imagination, and presumably also his compositional ambition, was so stimulated by the given theme that a large number of variations were already sketched out after just a few months. Busy completing other works, however, Beethoven then left them lying around for almost four years; it was not until April 1823 that he finally completed the autograph. Nevertheless, he managed to catch up with Diabelli and his original plan: The 33 Changes op. 120 appeared in print in June 1823; the joint work consisting of 50 variations, on the other hand, only appeared a year later under the title Vaterländischer Künstlerverein. Changes for the pianoforte on a presented theme.

In contrast to this singular collective print, in which the individual contributions are arranged alphabetically according to the names of the composers as in an encyclopaedia, Beethoven based his composition on a well-calculated overall arrangement and thus created not just a series of variations, but a self-contained cycle. The complexity of its structure is shown by the variety of possible arrangements. Seen from the outside, the cycle appears to be an almost symmetrically ordered sequence of groups of four variations each (with the exception of the last, No. 33). Depending on the parameter or aspect, however, other classifications are also possible that go far beyond the standardized models of the time. Beethoven already makes a break with the theme in the first variation: it is headed alla Marcia maestoso it decisively ensures a proper distance. As the work progresses, it is often only individual motifs, harmonic progressions or rhythmic and melodic elements that make the reference back audibly comprehensible. The accumulated energy is finally released in a weighty double fugue in which Beethoven leaves the tonal framework of C major (and the C minor variant) for the first time. Variation 33 is more than just an epilogue at the end with its peculiarly serene, almost transcendental serenity.

Even Hans von Bülow (1830-1894), who for decades was considered "unplayable" as an interpreter of the Diabelli Variations hardly found words for this summum opus of the art of variation: for him it was the "A microcosm of Beethoven's genius in general, even a reflection of the entire tonal world in excerpt."

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Link to the project homepage "52 x Beethoven"

To be left without concerts from one day to the next is hard. Hard for the audience, who are used to choosing the right concert from a plethora of choices, and hard for the performers, who suddenly find themselves at home in a quiet little room. All musicians need recognition, freelancers fear for their livelihoods and everyone has to keep in shape somehow. After all, making music is like high-performance sport that requires daily training. The latter in particular has almost been forgotten in the hustle and bustle of the lockdown. But practising without a goal is almost unbearable in the long run.

And so the music makers looked for ways out. First there were touching balcony concerts that went around the world, then living room concerts celebrated their heyday. They were disseminated as streaming videos that appeared everywhere and flooded social networks. They were quickly created, spreading the message "Hello, we're still alive and we're giving you music". But what is the ultimate purpose of such hyperactivity in the music sector; what is the use, what is the harm of offering three-minute "Konzertli" every day?
 

The Lucerne Symphony Orchestra began its "Diary of a lost orchestra" on March 26 and got off to a brilliant start with almost 2,000 clicks, with other providers following suit. At first, it was comforting to be "supplied" with music and to know that others were also staying active. The living area became a music venue, but there was usually a lack of professional equipment: there was picture distortion, insufficient synchronization of picture and sound, and sometimes there was a lot of rattling from the speakers. Stepping in front of the camera was also a difficult balancing act. Many people stood there awkwardly, tried to say "Grüezi" and played along. Others perform together with colleagues in a virtual room, and on the screen you can see people with a button in their ear connected in a "window".

As a viewer, I become a voyeur in a private space: how does the person live, is there any visible clutter, is there a nice sofa, do they live in a house or in a small attic, etc.? Of course, it can also be quite sympathetic when you suddenly experience "your" orchestral musicians, who play in the concert hall far away in tails or a black dress, in private. But the public's interest quickly wanes: such concert series presented on the Internet show declining click figures from week to week.

After watching living room streams several times, it becomes clear that this is often more an act of desperation than a well-planned way to bridge the gap between concerts. The initial explosion in visitor numbers quickly turns into the opposite, and the audience is mercilessly left behind. The audience is too spoiled by the quality of the recorded "canned music". But even the same old Bach partitas, short Mozart pieces or horn quartets on offer lose their appeal when too many musicians are doing the same thing.

The aim, of course, is to stay in the conversation, to keep the audience happy, everyone "does it", then I have to too. The big institutions have a huge advantage in this race, they can plunder their stocks of videos and upload them for free, as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra has done and the Zurich Opera House is also doing. The attention is there and is helping to overcome lean times, the gap between "big" and "small" is widening.

Have the financially weaker ones lost out? Not necessarily, as the example of the Argovia Philharmonic shows, which twice offered a livestream with few resources: once with two orchestral musicians at Lake Hallwil, once as a "yoga concert" to join in. "The response was positive," explains Artistic Director Christian Weidmann, "but you can already feel that our audience prefers to come to the concert." Musicologist Susanne Rode-Breymann puts it in a nutshell: "Art on stage is not digital art."

The live concert, so often pronounced dead, will probably continue to flourish in the post-corona era. Or even more so? It has the advantage that performers and audiences are forced to adopt a different attitude in the concert hall than when streaming, as pianist Sophie Pacini freely puts it: "I don't even know where the recipient is sitting - is he perhaps sitting on the toilet?" Creating a concert hall-like feeling is difficult under such circumstances, she continues. The direct interaction between the podium and the audience is therefore still valuable.

The "at home" and "Salon Picasso" series, which the Basel Symphony Orchestra has been offering in regular streams since the lockdown, offer an interesting approach, even though they are also online. Behind these names are themed programs lasting around 30 minutes, held together by a dramaturgical thread. The orchestra's artistic director, Hans-Georg Hofmann, talks to members of the orchestra about individual sections, who then play - either in the orchestra's rehearsal hall or sometimes in a humorous way at home. The didactic is combined with the entertaining. "We have used the coronavirus period to build up a digital archive, and the contributions will remain available for a longer period of time," explains Hofmann.

But the longing for live music is great. And so, following the relaxation of the corona rules, many musicians are venturing closer to analog operations again. The Basel Chamber Orchestra is organizing "Coronaden" concerts, short performances in public spaces such as bus shelters. "Getting out of the background and into people's lives creates a great energy," says concertmaster Julia Schröder, who wants to keep the format even after coronavirus.

The Musikkollegium Winterthur is moving in a similar direction with "Music on your doorstep": subscribers, patrons and association members were able to order a free chamber concert with musicians from the orchestra. Demand has been very high, with 85 concerts given so far, and neighbors and passers-by have also been among the listeners. "We believe that we have gained new audiences and strengthened our relationship with existing audiences as a result," is the conclusion.

The "Digital Concerts" initiative by tenor Sascha Emanuel Kramer and sound engineer Marcel Babazadeh aims to exploit the current forced mainstream. Every Monday at 8.30 pm, a concert is broadcast via Facebook and YouTube from a factory hall on Lake Zurich.

The idea is to bring the intimacy of a classic house concert to the consumer in digital form. Eight concerts have already taken place and the clicks are numerous. However, the streams demonstrate the difficulty of establishing closeness to the audience from a digital distance. The greetings in an emphatically casual manner seem unprofessional, the moderations sometimes artificial. The equipment, however, is professional and the musicians play at a high level. However, it is also true here that quality is expensive: "We are dependent on financial support so that we can manage the costs and pay the artists fair fees." The slogan "the concerts are free, but not free of charge" brings money into the lockdown due to a lack of concert alternatives; financial solidarity is very important these days. This is also confirmed by other classical concert organizers. But afterwards? What traces will the streaming euphoria of these days leave behind?
 

Introduced in 2016, the orchestra program funding is aimed at professional Basel orchestras and larger instrumental ensembles of early and contemporary music. An expert jury assesses the submitted concert programs over three seasons according to transparent criteria.

The expert jury consists of Valerio Benz, music editor and music producer at SRF2 Kultur, Basel, Roman Brotbeck, publicist and consultant for music, cultural policy and research development, Basel, Lydia Rilling, chief dramaturge at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, Alexander Steinbeis, orchestra director at the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin and Lena-Lisa Wüstendörfer, music director of the Swiss Orchestra and musicologist, Zurich.

The tendering process for the next funding period has also begun: Around CHF 4.7 million will be available for orchestra program funding in 2021, 2022 and the first half of 2023 as a result of the decision by the Grand Council on 11 March 2020. Professional orchestras and ensembles that have established a regular concert series in the canton of Basel-Stadt can apply for funding.

Detailed information on the admission requirements and the documents to be submitted can be found at: https://www.kultur.bs.ch/kulturprojekte/musik.html
 

Link to the picture

The so-called Silbermann archive, which was compiled between the 1720s and 1780s, is a treasure trove for culture and science and documents the family's knowledge of organ building. Johann Andreas Silbermann compiled descriptions in his own hand of 35 organs built by his father, Andreas Silbermann, who originally came from Saxony, described 31 instruments that he had built himself and compiled details of almost 250 instruments from all over Europe.

A Silbermann diary, a notebook richly decorated with drawings and newspaper clippings, was already auctioned by the SLUB at Sotheby's in 2014. In it, Johann Andreas Silbermann describes a round trip in 1741 that took him from Strasbourg via Frankfurt through the central German residential cities to Berlin and back.

The documents are available online at www.slubdd.de/silbermannarchiv

Original article:
https://www.slub-dresden.de/ueber-uns/presse/pressemitteilung/2020/6/15/weltbekannt-und-stilbildend-slub-dresden-erwirbt-wertvolle-handschriften-der-orgelbauerdynastie-sil/

In 1956, I attended an organ recital by Helmuth Reichel in the Zurich Tonhalle, probably the only one in recent times. Since then, I have been keeping a close eye on the rather sorry chapter of the organ recital. And I am happy to contribute this vote in order to bring movement into the somewhat too quiet discussion with regard to the two instruments currently under construction. The fabulous opportunities that are opening up must be recognized and exploited now! We are once again looking forward to the fair competition between "Basel and Zééri".

Concert halls have acoustics designed to ensure that the vibrating orchestral sound can be heard through. Church halls are more ideal for organs because their reverberation ratios socialize the rigid sounds of the pipes. Many of the newer hall organs I know suffer from the fact that they sound gaudy, glassy and often too loud next to the orchestra. And then it is said that they are actually unusable. Isn't it significant that in England hall organs sound full and warm and blend with orchestras as if by themselves? They are rather less suitable for old masters. My memory of the Tonhalle organ from 1939 to 1986 goes exactly in this direction, which is why I campaigned for its preservation in 1985: as an alternative to the neo-baroque sound of church organs that was common at the time.

We are delighted that new organs are being installed in two important concert halls and that our local organ builders are once again able to demonstrate their high level of quality. This is now the third project at both venues, following two "Provisoires qui ne durent pas".
 

Stadtcasino Basel: Metzler organ

• Retention of the historic case with 56 stops
• Hall acoustics: largely new territory for Haus Metzler
• Electrically controlled instrument with mechanical effects manual with two consoles for conductor, ensemble and audience proximity
• Cleverly limited disposition in terms of windchest size and spatial conditions

Tonhalle Zurich: Kuhn organ

• Reference to the old Tonhalle organ after 1939 with a successful reinterpretation of the former case. "Compensation" for its exile to the Neumünster
• Kuhn's extensive experience with halls (USA, Japan, Europe)
• Considerable and expansive disposition, probably thanks to the elimination of the entire playing mechanism, thus sacrificing physical contact with the pipe valve
• Genuine sound enrichment through new register creations such as flauto turicensis or nose flute!
• A mobile console, only three manuals thanks to the flying windchest and thus better proximity to the conductor, ensemble and audience
• Pragmatic renunciation of mechanical action in view of the public's need for showmanship

At both locations, actual scenes for organ and organ-orchestra events, i.e. a jolt through the urban music worlds in general
What do we do with a big, great, million-dollar villa on a greenfield site? Let's start creating paths so that it can host more often. The lavish new buildings should have a supra-regional appeal.

Lively synergies with both music academies and theaters
Only in Geneva does a music academy have its own large hall organ. In all other places, the instrument has been relocated to churches, and a large repertoire of symphonic organ music has to make do with rather unsuitable galleries - with or without an orchestra. With the new instruments, cooperation between concert societies, universities and theatres is set to awaken. These halls open up sensational opportunities, especially in the field of choreography. We have known organ dances since the middle of the 19th century in France: Widor, Vierne, Messiaen, Alain, Litaize, Heiller, Bovet. There are also symphonic transcriptions.

The concert companies themselves or delegated active bodies as organ concert organizers
Massive and expansive new organs call for a scene of their own. After spending millions, appropriate facilities for organ events must be created. These should either be integrated into the operations of the two concert companies or delegated to associations. This is a matter of urgency because the KunstKlangKirche Zurich project, which I co-initiated, did not materialize due to a lack of interest. Until recently, the builder and local company Orgelbau Goll provided concerts for Lucerne's KKL organ.

Funds for operation proportional to the high construction costs and the prominent positions of these instruments
Considerable funds have to be made available for soloists' fees, advertising and the spatial infrastructure, such as organ maintenance. Basel and Zurich still struggle with the latter today.

Organizational integration of organ concerts into the respective hall operations
According to reports, there are always problems when concert halls have to be reserved for individual organists for hours on end. Sufficient rehearsal time is necessary, however, because each instrument is unique and always requires special "orchestration" of each score.

Titular positions for concerts, choreographies and possibly master classes
The above results in the creation of a well-paid organist-concertmaster position, far beyond the orchestra position. The future post holders will either play themselves, be involved in oratorio performances or put on concert cycles, including with guests from Switzerland and abroad. In cooperation with lecturers at the music academies, master classes and similar events should also be able to take place. We have role models in the Anglo-Saxon cities with their town halls or universities, where lunchtime recitals, for example, are very popular. However, if the organist's office is closely linked to a municipal church office, the hall organ will always have to take a back seat - as the history of both halls teaches us. So let's avoid being a "sidecar" of the deeply rooted church scene.

Orchestral organ concerts in the remit of house and guest conductors
Why do our conductors know the characteristics of every orchestral instrument, but have little idea of the nature of the organ? The organ is still ordered away to the "distant" church world at training centers. No wonder that conductors without a specific commission never dare to tackle the two dozen wonderful organ concertos with orchestra. What absolutely useless instructions I have had to experience! From now on, such concerts belong in the job descriptions of chief and guest conductors. If there had been a corresponding interest for a long time, the hall organs in both cities would have been renovated long ago and their sound would have been put in order.
Of course, it must also be admitted that the mechanical part of the organ prevents many performers from playing in a truly creative way. To quote the apostle Paul: "... and could have gotten all the notes perfectly right, but had not the love of music ..." I understand certain reservations on the part of conductors all too well!
 

Organ building as a balance between ideals and mission
In contrast to violin making, for example, the organ builder's non-industrial craft oscillates back and forth between his own ideas, which grow entirely out of the instrument itself, and the wishes of the usually larger committees of clients, the artistic and material builders.

Thinking organ concepts from the instrument
It is important that instrument-related thinking takes precedence over the "desirabilities" of a very time-bound organist, for example with regard to the finesse of electronic controls. For me, this is organ thinking.

The classic instrument is more important than sensational effects
There are people who make a pilgrimage to Sitzberg, Fribourg, Lucerne or Kufstein just to admire cymbal stars, rain machines, thunderstorms or surface sound. In organ building, the line should be drawn at the point where the emancipated electronic sound industry has a better command of fields of activity. Why haven't orchestral instruments already had electronic moderators on violin bridges, wind bodies or percussion?

The true art consists of the imaginative handling of "rigid" intonation
The rock-like rigidity of the organ sound, its essence of sound or pause, is as fascinating as it is challenging. Or as Marie-Claire Alain put it in 1969: "Le bon goût, c'est la connaissance du style."
 

At present, both organ twins are in statu nascendi. With many congratulations, but also high expectations of the two organ builders, I look forward to the results and the new activities that will soon blossom.

The organ in the church stands on the rood screen or at ground level. In the concert hall, it is enthroned above the orchestra podium. Recently, it has been played from a mobile console with electric action or from an attached console with mechanical action, either as a solo instrument or as an accompanying instrument for choirs and orchestras. The concert hall organ is a genre of its own. Its specification of 70 or more stops, spread over three to four manuals and pedal, is designed to be multifunctional with supporting foundation stops, crowning mixtures and strong reed stops. The key action is digitalized with a modular PLC bus system that allows almost unlimited presettings of entire concert programs via touchscreen display.

Hall acoustics with reverberation times of around two seconds and therefore a much shorter reverberation time than a Gothic cathedral, for example, require a present sound image. The concert hall organ must be able to drown out hundreds of instrumental and vocal voices. Controlled from the organ bench on the podium, the instrument unleashes sound magic ranging from a whisper to a storm at sound pressure levels of a few to over a hundred decibels.

Concert hall organs have come back into fashion after having almost exclusively adorned traditional concert halls as centrally positioned dummy prospectuses. The instruments at conservatories and music academies are also actual concert hall organs. Hall organs are often poorly maintained, rarely tuned and their action is worn out. The organs in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Smetana Hall in Prague or the Art Nouveau Palau de la Musica in Barcelona are rarely heard. They seem to have become accustomed to their Sleeping Beauty existence.
 

The function of a concert organ is only being reconsidered in new buildings or renovations of cultural centers. In 2004, the Kuhn Männedorf company built an organ for the Essen Philharmonic Hall an organ with 62 stops and 4502 pipes on three manuals and pedal. The 61 pipes of the 8-foot "Tuba en chamade" Hauptwerk stop protrude horizontally from the façade. The action of the console on the small gallery is mechanical, that of the mobile console on the podium is electric.

In 2009, the Eule company from Bautzen in eastern Germany built the organ in the Philharmonie Mercatorhalle Duisburg in the style of an English town hall organ. In the United Kingdom in the 19th century, the tradition of popular town hall organ concerts was cultivated. For example, William Thomas Best, who inaugurated the organ in the Crystal Palace in 1871, gave virtuoso organ performances in St. George's Hall in Liverpool. The organ in London's Royal Albert Hall is still celebrated today at the spectacular Proms Concerts. The Duisburg concert organ was modeled on the organs of the Kinnaird Hall in Dundee, Scotland (Harrison & Harrison 1923) and the Usher Hall in Edinburgh (Norman & Beard 1913). The Mercator Hall organ with its 72 stops spread over four manuals and pedal sounds broad and voluminous.

In 2010, the Vorarlberg-based company Rieger built the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein an organ with 6138 pipes and 81 stops in the historic façade of the first organ, designed by Friedrich Ladegast from Weissenfels in 1872. And in the same year, Eule Bautzen built a three-manual organ with 51 stops and mechanical action in the hall of the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
 

Photo: Rieger-Orgelbau

The Rieger organ in the Philharmonie de Paris built by Jean Nouvel

The organ, built in 2009 by Orgelbouw Van den Heuvel (Dordrecht), has 91 stops spread over four manuals and pedal in the 2000-seat Koncerthuset Copenhagen. The three works Positif, Récit and Solo expressif are built into swell boxes in order to blend their sounds in a graduated manner. The Cor Harmonique stands out in the Positif as a kind of Spanish trumpet, while the Tuba Mirabilis and Tuba Magna are intoned according to the English model.

Two new concert hall organs were built in Paris: the organ built in 2014 by Gerard Grenzing, based in El Papiol near Barcelona, in the Auditorium Radio France with 86 registers and 5320 pipes as well as in the 2500-seat Philharmonic Hall the organ built in 2015 by the Vorarlberg company Rieger, voiced by Michel Garnier, with 6055 pipes and 91 stops spread over 4 manuals and pedal.

The organ in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie was built in 2017 by the Johannes Klais organ building workshop in Bonn. The ranks of pipes in the open, square case (15 x 15 meters) are arranged over three levels. The front pipes are specially coated for touching. The 4765 pipes and 69 stops are assigned to four manuals (choir, Hauptwerk, Schwellwerk, Solowerk) and pedal. From the height of the acoustic reflector, the Fernwerk with four powerful reed stops radiates over the vineyards of the Rundherum concert hall. The Klais organ can be played from the attached console with mechanical action or from the mobile console on the podium with electric action.

Dresden has its Palace of Culture from GDR times with a new 1800-seat concert hall and an organ designed in 2017 by Hermann Eule Bautzen, also based on the principle of English town halls. The 4109 pipes of the 67 stops are distributed across four manuals and pedal and are assigned to the mobile console with electric action.
 

Photo: Martin Döring

The organ by Schuke, Berlin and Klais, Bonn in the concert church in Neubrandenburg

The 800-seater concert church is the brick St. Mary's Church in Neubrandenburg has been rebuilt. The companies Karl Schuke, Berlin, and Johannes Klais, Bonn, jointly built the organ, which was inaugurated in July 2017, behind a wooden façade that rises up to 12 meters high. Its 2852 pipes are distributed across 70 stops, four manuals and pedal and can be played on two consoles.

After the fire in the 1894 Victoria Hall Geneva In September 1984, the organ also had to be rebuilt. The Dutch company Van den Heuvel built an instrument with 71 stops on four manuals and pedal in the style of an Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. The organ, which was enthroned above the concert stage in 1992, has a mechanical action equipped with a pneumatic playing aid (Barker lever).

Designed by architect Jean Nouvel and acoustician Russell Johnson, the Salle blanche des KKL Lucerne In the summer of 2000, the company Goll, Lucerne, installed an organ with 66 stops on four manuals and pedal. Since fall 2017, it can also be played at the console on the podium.

The open air will take place in Hochdorf (LU) on Thursday, June 18, 6 to 11 pm.

Line Up:
Josua Romano, The B-Shakers, Veronica Fusaro, ZiBBZ, Marc Amacher & Band

Moderation:
Linda Fäh

The concert will be streamed from the large stage in Hochdorf. A maximum of 224 people can experience the concert live there. Tickets are only available via the Advance booking available.

The livestream is available here below or via the Website of the organizer free of charge, donations are welcome.

Organizer: Verein Summair

The musical has been the most successful genre of popular musical theater since the 1980s - in terms of audience numbers, sales and public response. However, the genre is not only important as part of the international entertainment industry, but has also developed artistically into a form of musical theater that can hold its own aesthetically alongside traditional opera or operetta and also deals with current social conflicts.

The new online service is aimed at all interested parties: from fans and theatergoers to journalists and academics from various disciplines.

The online service is based on the holdings of the German Musical Archive, which is based at the ZPKM. Anyone interested can use the encyclopedia free of charge and without registration. The archive was founded in 2010 and has been under state preservation order since 2013.

More info: www.musicallexikon.eu

According to the study, music competence can improve the recognition of emotions by speakers. However, it is unclear whether it improves the recognition of emotions through other forms of communication such as sight. The Bather psychology team presented musicians and non-musicians with visual, auditory and audiovisual clips of two people communicating. Participants judged as quickly as possible whether the emotion expressed was happiness or anger, and then indicated whether they felt the emotion they had perceived.

Musicians proved to be more accurate than non-musicians in recognizing emotions based solely on acoustic information. Although music training improves the recognition of emotions through sound, it does not influence the emotions felt. The results suggest that emotional processing in music and speech may use overlapping but also different resources, or that some aspects of emotional processing respond less to music training than others.   

Original article:
https://online.ucpress.edu/mp/article/37/4/323/106221/Musicianship-Enhances-Perception-But-Not-Feeling

In 1826, the Schott publishing house wanted to know whether the quartet was not an arrangement before the contract for publication was signed. Beethoven, a little annoyed by this, noted on the engraver's copy: "stolen together from various this and that." Concerned that he might end up being taken at his word, he followed up only a little later in a letter: "They wrote that it was supposed to be an original quartet, it was delicate to me, so as a joke I wrote next to the inscription that it was worn together. It is brand new underneath."

Apart from the linguistic wit and the subtle choice of words in this remark, it refers to a work that is new in several respects: with a total of seven movements (Beethoven, however, spoke of "Pieces"), four of which can be joined together to form two pairs, the composition already advances into new dimensions on the surface. But the individual movement characters also point far beyond the contemporary horizon and into the 20th century: the melancholy fugato of the first movement, the subtly circling second, the recitative-like third, which leads to the central variations, the cheeky Presto and the short, elegiac sixth movement, which precedes the angular, subjective finale. Even though Beethoven never saw a public performance of the work, he demanded a performance almost without pauses. Karl Holz, the cellist of the Schuppanzigh Quartet, asked in a conversation booklet at the end of August 1826: "Does it have to be played through without stopping? - But then we can't repeat anything! - When should we vote? ... We will order reliable strings." You can easily imagine the corresponding answers.

If we trust Holz's recollections, which were later recorded by a third party, this string quartet was also the last music Franz Schubert heard. It is said to have been performed privately a few days before his death; Schubert may even have played the viola part himself. Ludwig Nohl reports on this: "Mr. Holz, Karl Groß and Baron König played it for him; only Doleschalek, the piano teacher, was present. Schubert became so enraptured and enthusiastic that everyone feared for him. A slight indisposition, which had preceded and not yet been thoroughly cured, increased enormously, turned into typhoid fever, and Schubert was dead after five days." (Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner. A picture of the art movement of our century, Vienna 1874, p. 111 f.)

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Link to the project homepage "52 x Beethoven"

According to the France Musique report, Cisse was shot dead on a street in Philadelphia near his home. He was accompanied by a 17-year-old boy with a hand injury. It is apparently not yet clear whether his death is connected to the demonstration. During the time of Cisse's murder, there had been 16 victims of gun violence in Philadelphia.

Cisse was a student in an instrumental program at Philadelphia District School and part of a music and social program called Musicopia String Orchestra. His death has caused great consternation in the city. A fundraiser has been organized to help his family.

Nicholas Carter founded a project orchestra in Sydneyn in 2010, specializing in music, instruments and historical performance practice of the early 19th century. He was Principal Conductor of the South Australian Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and from 2014 to 2016 Kapellmeister and Musical Assistant to Donald Runnicles at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

At the invitation of Donald Runnicles, he was a permanent guest conductor at the Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming from 2010 to 2013. Since 2018, he has conducted the Klagenfurt State Theater and the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra.

They are still an insider tip among Beethoven's works and anything but pleasing: the Variations on the song "I am the tailor cockatoo". It is still unclear when the work was composed - but it was certainly some time, possibly years, before Beethoven first mentioned it in a letter to the publisher Gottfried Härtel on July 19, 1816. Despite the distance in time, the music critic Paul Bekker even saw it as a "Reduced counterpart" to the 1823 completed and driven into the colossal Diabelli Variations op. 120.

Bekker's commentary refers both to the variation sequence itself as well as to the extensive slow introduction and the "appendix" to the last, tenth variation, which Beethoven also described as such. While the theme is gradually dissolved in a fugato and only appears once more as a reminiscence, the introduction is based on the almost paradoxical idea of developing a theme that already exists and is also very popular from individual motifs: Beethoven creates the song on which the following variations are based and which was popular in Vienna at the beginning of the 19th century I am the Scheider Wetz and Wetz quasi new. (The text had already been changed by contemporaries to "Schneider Kakadu".) The melody was originally found in the Singspiel premiered in 1794 The Sisters of Prague by Wenzel Müller (1767-1835). This once very popular Viennese composer also wrote the Singspiel Kaspar, the bassoonist, or: The magic zither (1791), whose libretto, like that of Mozart's Magic flute on Wieland's exotic collection of fairy tales Djinnistan goes back.

The fact that the so-called Cockatoo variations Beethoven's contemporaries had already observed that this is not primarily music for pleasing entertainment. Thus in the General Musical Gazette from 1830: "The old song of the tailor Crispinus, alias: Wetz, Wetz, Wetz, is varied in such a way, with such spirit and bold imagination, as a master can only ever vary. The story is certainly not easy, but it is not meant to be, for it is by no means destined to be a vain dalliance."
 

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Link to the project homepage "52 x Beethoven"

The program is essentially divided into four parts: pandemic-related investments in cultural institutions, maintaining and strengthening cultural infrastructure and emergency aid, promoting alternative, including digital, offerings and pandemic-related additional requirements for cultural institutions and projects regularly funded by the federal government.

Together with the federal government's other aid packages, this results in support for creative professionals and the cultural sector amounting to several billion euros. For example, access to basic income support was extended to safeguard individual living conditions. The 50 billion euro program of the Minister of Economic Affairs for the self-employed has helped thousands of those affected to pay the rent for their cinema, music club, bookshop, studio or gallery. A voucher solution for cultural event organizers also forms a bridge.

Together with the numerous other measures already initiated from the culture budget, more than one billion euros will be used to mitigate the impact of the pandemic on culture. Among other things, 20 million euros have now been made available for a conversion program, 15 million euros for a future cinema program, 15 million euros for investments in national cultural institutions in Germany and 5.4 million euros for the German orchestral landscape.

More info:
https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/bundesregierung/staatsministerin-fuer-kultur-und-medien/aktuelles/eine-milliarde-euro-fuer-neustart-kultur-gruetters-hilfspakete-der-regierung-stellen-die-weichen-auf-zukunft–1757804