Symposium: The Unresolved in Music Theater

As the site of projects capable of outgrowing secure terrain, music theater is one of the most illuminating areas of contemporary artistic production. It does not cling to deep-rooted acoustic or visual habits, and develops strategies which cannot merely be attributed to the genre’s great paragons, from Berg’s Wozzeck to Nono’s Prometeo. It opens up spaces beyond conventional emotional compositions, and even beyond familiar narration and linearity. It is thus the bearer of unresolved questions and enigmas.

The symposium Das Ungelöste des Musiktheaters (The Unresolved in Music Theater) attempts to envision exemplary works in lectures and discussions, raise questions on paradigms in current music theater, debate favored themes, highlight contextual creations and traditional lines, discuss hopes for the unexpected and describe aesthetic experiences. The questions posed by the symposium – debated with the aid of theater practitioners, theorists and primarily composers – includes the relation to theater’s most diverse forms, particularly its “post-dramatic” ones and the difficulties associated with discovering suitable libretti or plausible production methods. They will also raise questions regarding changes in reception-related tendencies and their repercussions for contemporary composition.

The contributors include composers Helmut Lachenmann, Klaus Lang, Jörg Mainka, Isabel Mundry, Manos Tsangaris and Hans Zender, theater professional Reinhild Hoffmann and choreographer Xavier Leroy in addition to artistic directors Wolfgang Hofer, Juliane Votteler and Klaus Zehelein. Jörn Peter Hiekel directs the symposium.

The symposium was initiated by Jörn Peter Hiekel, director of the New Music Institute at the Dresden Music Academy, whose other roles include tutoring at the vacation courses in Darmstadt. Hiekel was an Akademie fellow in 2004.

To register and obtain a detailed event program, contact Marieanne Roth, mr@akademie-solitude.de, tel. +49 (0)711-99619-474