"Ode to the tractor"

Composing is as exciting as it is demanding: the path from an unformed idea to performing a composition in front of an audience is a complex one. The composer has to deal with their own visions on their own. However, when it comes to actually realizing music with conductors, practical experience with orchestras is crucial. This raises many questions: what notation options are there, what are their advantages and disadvantages, how can misunderstandings be avoided? What resistances, practical difficulties, but also new perspectives emerge? How can a composition be optimally projected acoustically into the concert hall? How versatile and powerful is the "wind orchestra" medium?

The Bern University of the Arts (BUA) addressed such questions with the Composition and Conducting for Wind Orchestra study week (November 14 to 18, 2017). The concentrated master class (project leader Rolf Schumacher) also brought composers together with master's students in the field of wind orchestra conducting.

The composers began working on the new pieces before the study week, as did the exchange with the composition lecturer, Oliver Waespi. The stylistic range and quality of the resulting compositions clearly exceeded expectations: influences from jazz, film music, classical and traditional wind music as well as contemporary music were evident. A highly stimulating week of study was therefore to be expected.

This began with an input lecture, in particular on the structure and aesthetics of the symphonic wind orchestra, as well as intensive individual tuition. Various participants continued to work on their composition drafts for a very long time. In some cases, new sketches were submitted to the instructors as late as 3 o'clock in the morning.

Subsequently, the drafts had to be brought into a performance-ready form and usable sheet music had to be produced. In addition, the composers met for the first time with the students who would be performing their works. This resulted in a valuable exchange. This was followed by the first full-day rehearsal session with the symphonic wind orchestra of the Swiss Army Band. First, the two works for chamber ensemble were rehearsed: Michel Byland interpreted a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm in his piece "The Enraged Elves", while Pascal Gendre explored certain aesthetics of chamber music for wind instruments in the 20th century in his "Suite No. 1", developing a rich, personal palette of expression.

Six pieces for symphonic wind orchestra were then placed on the music stands, some of them literally only one or two hours before the rehearsal. Michael Künstle's "On the Pulse of Time" contained pulse forms, melody lines and timbres typical of modern film music, while Tobias Fasshauer's "Invenzione alla Minuetto" subjected a minuet to a contemporary interpretation, simultaneously deconstructing it and reassembling it with his own personal signature. Anton Vinogradov declared his piece "Music op. 16a" an homage to Alfred Schnittke and followed finely drawn, aleatorically notated gestures by the woodwinds - which evoked the image of an imaginary, mysterious dialog - with a harrowing processional throughout the orchestra. "Genealogy" by Timmy Schenk, on the other hand, follows a spectralist tradition in which the harmonic material is derived from the overtone components of certain fundamental sounds; here, the orchestra had to develop a sound balance that was as controlled as possible. David Carillo's timbre piece "Translucency" thrived on the tension between light and shadow, based on the filtering to which light is subjected when it shines through translucent materials. Finally, in "Ode to the Tractor", Loris Knüsel took a march astray, so to speak, and restaged it in an original and formally concentrated way.

Based on this experience, certain pieces were revised, which was followed by another intensive rehearsal day, now focusing more on aspects of rehearsal methodology under the guidance of Philippe Bach. Incidentally, Bach will succeed Ludwig Wicki as a guest lecturer at the HKB from spring 2018. The new works were rehearsed by conducting students Loïc Bera, Jonas Danuser, Isabelle Gschwend and Stefan Popp and conducted at the final concert. All of them - as well as the army ensemble - demonstrated great flexibility and stamina, as they had to simultaneously do justice to the composers' ideas in the complex rehearsals, receive input from the lecturers and develop a personal interpretation.

All of them mastered this task brilliantly, as the final concert of the study week in Kriens showed. Here, the wide variety of compositional and conducting styles could once again be heard. Ultimately, not every work will prevail. However, the further development of music history always involves detours. Those who - like the interested audience at the Südpol - listened to the world premieres with an open mind and open ears gained extremely exciting insights.

This reaffirms the BUA's position as a leading "hub" in the field of contemporary wind music, as a training center for prospective conductors in the field of tension between the tradition, present and future of wind music making. This is also underlined by last year's creation of a new Master's core subject "Composition Harmony and Brass Band".

From fall 2018, new applications can be submitted for the Master's in Composition for Harmony and Brass Band within the Composition&Theory specializations at Bern University of the Arts. This course, which is probably unique in Europe, complements the existing Master's specializations at the BUA.
The main lecturer is the award-winning Swiss composer Oliver Waespi, whose aim is to embed composing for wind instruments in a broader aesthetic context.

The Master's degree lasts four semesters. In addition to the core subject, artistic practice, theory and research, individual seminars and lectures in the elective area as well as the final Master's thesis and the connection to the Master's course for wind music direction (director: Rolf Schumacher) are important.
The application deadline is March 15, 2018, and the course begins in September 2018.

Contact: Xavier Dayer, Program Director Master of Arts in Composition & Theory
E-Mail: xavier.dayer@hkb.bfh.ch
Phone: +41 31 848 39 84
www.hkb.bfh.ch/de/studium/master/mact