Access to the inaccessible

How to teach new music? How can music that is perceived as inaccessible be made accessible in the classroom? With Listening Lab, Universal Edition has started a series of booklets that show ways of approaching music in a broad-based way that involves all the senses.

The individual "workshops" within the booklets are aimed at different age groups. There are projects and games for children as well as for young people and adults. However, according to the authors, this information on the target audience should not be understood as absolute, but rather as adapting the language and working methods to the groups.

Twelve-tone row as a basis
Constanze Wimmer and Helmut Schmidinger are the first to present material relating to Alban Berg's violin concerto. This work is considered by many to be one of the most important concertos of the 20th century. At the beginning, the empty strings of the violin sound G-D-A-E. The piece, which is based on a twelve-tone row, develops from these four notes. A Carinthian folk song (Ein Vogerl aufm Zwetschgenbaum) and a Bach chorale (Es ist genug) are interwoven into the piece, as well as a waltz and the rhythm of a dance of death. All ingredients that reflect the extra-musical context. Berg dedicates his work to Manon Gropius, the daughter of Alma Mahler, who dies of polio at the age of 19, and subtitles it "To the memory of an angel". Death and grief, pain and love are palpable in this music.

Constanze Wimmer gains access to the work from the music itself and from the story that surrounds it. For example, in the "search for fifths": fifths are sung in pairs, one person plays a note and the other searches for the fifth. Or the previously detuned string instruments have to be tuned correctly. You can create your own personal twelve-tone series by noting down the letters of your own name as musical notes and then trying out the tone sequence with the baton. In the "Portrait Sound Painting Project Proposal", practical concepts show how you can immerse yourself in the world of Berg's violin concerto by playing, composing and experimenting.

The booklet offers many suggestions and tips for lessons. There is also a wealth of background information, and the many quotes from Th. W. Adorno and Willi Reich are particularly interesting.

Texture from 80 voices
Atmosphères! György Ligeti's work is a colossus of sound, shimmering, incomprehensible, disturbing. But even at its premiere in Donaueschingen in 1961, listeners immediately realized that this was something new, something truly new. A musical landmark of the 20th century. The piece became famous through Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

How can you immerse yourself in these cluster sounds without drowning and listening away? The melodies of the 80 individual voices seem like a textile fabric, sometimes tightly woven, sometimes broadly woven. There are no clearly delineated formal sections, no repetitions, no striking melodic or rhythmic shapes, no contrasting themes. The sound fields overlap and flow into one another, like the colors in the Unpainted pictures Emil Nolde's.

The authors Veronika Grossberger and Johannes Voit approach the piece on different levels. By means of research (analyses and quotations), listening, invention, imagination and interaction: Listening to the film music: What function does the music fulfill in the film? What do the Atmosphères in Kubrick's universe? Invent: You invent an unusual sound on an instrument or some other object. Take it to an alien planet - what happens there? Invent a story and set it to music ... Imagination: Observe the clouds. How they change, deform, dissolve. Tempo, dynamics, consistency. Interaction: Explore air sounds - on wind instruments, on string and percussion instruments, with your own body. Create an atmosphere. Clouds of sound rise up. Perhaps in a group improvisation. In addition, the playing instructions from the score - senza colore, molto vibrato. When does a sound begin to vibrate? When does it freeze? These sounds can be transformed into a pantomime performance.

The focus of the materials is on experience-oriented and activating settings, prepared for children, young people and adults.