An avowed opponent

Four years ago, the Basel Music Academy commemorated its former teacher Jacques Wildberger (1922-2006) with the exhibition The left ear (SMZ 1_2/2018). Now, to mark the centenary of the composer's birth, she is publishing a thick and comprehensive volume of documentation under the same title. The editor Michael Kunkel, head of research at the Hochschule für Musik and already responsible for the exhibition at the time, can draw on a rich source of texts, sketches, scores and pictures, but was also able to make the material available to a renowned group of authors. The authors take a loving but also critical look at individual aspects of his life and work.

First and foremost, there is certainly the political composer - which also gives the book its name. Wildberger was a communist, albeit only briefly in the party, and he was passionately interested in current issues, which he placed at the center of his music. Although he later made fewer concrete political statements, his existentialist approach was clearly influenced by current events - similar to Bernd Alois Zimmermann, with whom he had a friendship. However, he also took a musical stance early on, for example by studying composition with Wladimir Vogel, more precisely twelve-tone composition, and thus moving away from the Swiss mainstream. He was therefore regarded by many as a "Nestbeschmutzer": "In most of the reviews of my first works, the bucket of wrath poured over my poor head." In Darmstadt and Donaueschingen, on the other hand, he was well received, but even there he did not simply follow the trends. Individual works are portrayed here as examples, such as his mathematical-political Action documentée Epitaphe pour Evariste Galois (1962) or his six-tone chamber concerto (1995/96).

Wildberger was also a committed university lecturer and always an open discussion partner - which is documented in several letters to fellow composers such as Luigi Dallapiccola and Helmut Lachenmann. It is wonderful, for example, how he replies to the latter when he suspects that he is a "deeply religious humanist": he cannot believe "that this God [of Christianity] exists, which is why I have become an atheist - an uncomfortable situation, by the way". Wildberger was an avowed opponent. The beautiful volume, weighing almost 1.7 kilos, also contains numerous testimonies from Wildberger himself, not only a late interview with the editor, but also some texts that are not found in the previously authoritative Wildberger book by Anton Haefeli (Jacques Wildberger or the Doctrine of the OtherHug 1996). All in all: an ideal reason to immerse yourself in Wildberger's music once again.

The left ear. The composer Jacques Wildberger, edited by Michael Kunkel, 555 p., € 50.00, Pfau, Friedberg 2021, ISBN 978-3-89727-556-0