Huber, Nicolaus A. (*1939)
Huber's concentration on the periphery of what generally seems normal or natural, and thus harmless, in the treatment of musical material lets him accede to music alongside which a space for utopias and speculative thought has been cleared: a stance that makes him one of the few guarantors for progress in music.
(Ulrich Müller, Hessischer Rundfunk)
Photo © by Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden
Events
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28 Mar 2009 |
Huber, Nicolaus A.: La Force du Vertige Ensemble Aventure Köln, WDR-Funkhaus (Germany) |
|
17 Apr 2009 |
Huber, Nicolaus A.: O, dieses Lichts! Ensemble Aventure Darmstadt, Akademie für Tonkunst, Frühjahrstagung für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung (Germany) |
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24 May 2009 |
Allende-Blin, Juan: Silences Interrompus Huber, Nicolaus A.: Toene suchen einen Autor Ensemble Aventure Freiburg, Elisabeth-Schneider-Stiftung (Germany) |
| 1939 | Born in Passau on 15 December |
| 1956 | First public appearance as composer and organist |
| 1958-1962 | Studies at the Munich Musikhochschule: piano (with Oscar Koebel) and music education |
| 1962/63 | Studies composition in Munich with Franz Xaver Lehner |
| 1962-1964 | Junior teacher |
| 1964-1967 | Further composition studies with Günter Bialas |
| 1965/66 | Works at Munich's electronic studio with Josef Anton Riedl |
| 1969 | Cultural Prize for Music of the City of Munich Lectureship in music theory and analysis at the Folkwang-Hochschule Essen |
| 1969-1971 | Member of Josef Anton Riedl's ensemble |
| 1970 | Composition prize of Darmstadt |
| 1971 | Fellowship for the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris |
| 1971-1974 | Vice President of the GNM (German section of the International Society of Contemporary Music) |
| 1974-2004 | Professor of composition at the Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen |
| 1975-1980 | Collaboration with Peter Maiwald and a free theater group: tours with political revues through West Germany, appearances at mass rallies, in pubs and tents |
| since 1992/93 | Member of the Akademien der Künste in Berlin and Leipzig |
| Career | Invitations to composition seminars, master courses and portrait concerts in Germany and other countries such as Austria, Ecuador, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Portugal, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay and Venezuela. |
| World premieres and first performances of his works at many festivals in Germany and abroad, for example in Amsterdam (Holland Festival), Berlin (Musikbiennale), Donaueschingen (Donaueschinger Musiktage), Hanover (Tage Neuer Musik), Montepulciano, Paris (Festival d'Automne), Saarbrücken (Musik im 21. Jahrhundert), Strasbourg (Musica), Stuttgart (Tage für Neue Musik), Venice (Biennale di Venezia), Vienna (Wien modern), Warsaw (Warsaw Autumn), Weingarten and Witten (Tage für neue Kammermusik). | |
The first thing that strikes us about the compositions of Nicolaus A. Huber is their absolute self-sufficiency. The next thing is their accessibility. Generally these two features don't come in pairs: it means, after all, joining the familiar with the unfamiliar. But Huber's music thrives on just this dialectical tension. In the 1960s, he gathered experiences from both Stockhausen and Luigi Nono on what constitutes musical gesture, ensemble, the deadweight of tradition, and the freedom of new expanses, both temporal and spatial.
But these experiences were unable to satisfy him, not least of all because of their attendant social strictures. "The stimuli I got from Nono left me somehow dissatisfied. Take material and historicity, for instance: I couldn't find enough access to the real roots. So I started delving into psychology. I thought, if you really want to eradicate tonality, it's not enough to avoid a performance technique or something like that, you've got to change yourself from the bottom up. It was from this angle that I acquired my approach to tonality and my urge to revitalize human beings."
The above quotation from an interview implies an enormous amount of grass-roots labor. Even today, Huber still has an undiminished interest in the way human beings are affected by a tone, a sonority, a rhythm; and it is the unexpected responses that inspire him more than the predictable ones. The roots of this interest lie in Huber's penchant for political music, a sine qua non for him during the 1970s and one that continues to reverberate in an age when social utopias have long given way wholesale to the pressures of pragmatism.
Today, as Huber views the situation, composers are largely left to their own devices. Twenty years ago, a politically-minded composer could still write for the masses (if such was his intention) and keep an ear open for feedback from that quarter. Today, however, composers confront a lonely crowd. Moreover, this crowd is at the mercy of a constantly expanding apparatus whose sole purpose is to present a simulated caricature of reality, from newscasts to video games. As a result, the creative musician of today must make use of these same mechanisms. Thus, again and again, Huber's most recent works hinge on aspects of disorientation, on acoustical and optical illusion. In this respect, he has been strongly influenced by the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard. At the same time, however, his critical approach comes hand in hand with a retrenchment to the elemental forces of the composer's craft.
"I believe I have a special affinity for the elemental per se. It might be nothing more than a scale, or a single insistent pitch. I don't care for linguistic gibberish or ornamentation, and it makes me sick to hear them in other composers." What Huber is striving for is a new immediacy, an intensity of the moment of the same sort he discovered not only in the fragmentary works of late Nono but also (note the range of his interests!) in the short stories of Charles Bukowski. Here he has even detected aspects of tonality - a species of tonality, however, that still cries out for a new definition. "It's this area of distinctness and definability, with as few �33,Bteles�33$(A as possible, that I like to call the �33,Bclose range�33$(A. Recently I've come to refer to the cultivation and unfolding of the nuclear ego, the safeguarding of the close range, as a new definition of tonality."
These thoughts have left an increasingly distinct mark on Huber's compositions. The "close range" has even come more and more to include the body of the performer. For Huber, to write music is always to probe the possibilities and limits of the human body. In his piano piece "Beds and Brackets", for example, an inquisitive performer tells an entire story about the breadth of the arms and the interlocking of the hands, about transcending the keyboard and inspecting the instrument. At the end, an instruction in the score tells us that the doors and windows of the concert hall are to be thrown open or, where this is not possible, the sounds of the outside world are to be piped in on tape. Here the motion reaches a point of displacement so extreme as to go beyond or even to precede art itself.
Much of Huber's music thrives on similar ideas. The very titles of his compositions speak volumes, even those whose meaning is hidden at first glance by their deceptive neutrality. His "Nocturnes" for orchestra, for example, deal with landscapes of the night and secret conspiracies. The subtitle, a quotation from a novel by Ramón del Valle-Inclán, makes the meaning plain: "The night is deep in whispers and reverberations." Here, too, Huber is especially interested in the other close-range relations within a secretive darkness, where whispering can grow to maximum intensity or a scream can reverberate in the distance. Disorientation and twilight also resonate in such titles as "Sphärenmusik" ("Music of the Spheres"), "Demijour" or "Air mit �33,BSphinxes�33$(A". The latter is a piece for chamber orchestra in which a melody ("air") recedes further and further into "airy" regions full of mystery. Other titles place the emphasis on more elemental aspects. One example, borrowed from John Cage, is the term "Mit etwas Extremismus" ("with a bit of extremism"), to which Huber has added "und einer Muskel-Coda" ("and a muscular coda"). Another is "Statement zu einem Faustschlag Nonos" ("Statement on a Blow from Nono's Fist"), a piano piece that continues to occupy Huber's attention (he has also incorporated it in other works such as "Beds and Brackets" and "Drei Stücke für Orchester"). It is one of the most eloquent examples of Huber's alertness to physical sounds and the way they violently impinge on his artistic sensibility: "Shortly before he died, I sat with Nono on the jury of a composers' competition. During the sessions he sometimes pounded out massive rhythms of elemental proportions on the table with his fist, fortississimo. These liberating hammerblows remained stuck in my mind the whole time I was working on "Statement". They were entirely an outgrowth of the close range of doing and perceiving."
These and other elemental and energetic observations help to explain why Huber's music pushes forward again and again into realms of almost incantatory pulsation. For Huber, the regular, unbroken pulse is one of the most basic and primordial of all musical experiences. The repetition of identical events has a fascination all its own. Yet each repetition, it turns out, stands in a different landscape dominated by what has preceded it and encounters a different state of physical receptivity in the listener. Even the title of a piece for snare drum, "dasselbe ist nicht dasselbe" ("the same is not the same"), points to this aspect, both in its meaning and in the repetitive structure of its words. Once again, this factor of repetitiveness relates to disorientation and illusion. Critical composition (a term Huber adopted in the 1970s) can only attain the full brunt of the grass roots if it takes advantage of experiences as elemental as the naked sensation of bodily rhythms. The same sort of experiences can be gathered from, say, Andy Warhol's serial replications of photographs. Perhaps this is why Huber alludes to this very technique in his new orchestral project, "To 'Marilyn Six Pack' ".
Reinhard Schulz
(1996; Translation: Roger Clément)
Writings by Nicolaus A. Huber (Selection)
Huber's writings are almost completely included in the book Nicolaus A. Huber: Durchleuchtungen. Texte zur Musik 1964-1999, edited by Josef Häusler, Wiesbaden 2000
Latest writings:
"Die Zeit ist buchstabengenau und allbarmherzig". Zu Hölderlin in meinen Kompositionen, in: Dissonanz, Heft 76, August 2002, S. 4-13, und Heft 77, Oktober 2002, S. 4-15
"Le temps est littéral et miséricordieux". La place de Friedrich Hölderlin dans mes compositions, in: Dissonance, Heft 76, August 2002, S. 4-13, und Heft 77, Oktober 2002, S. 4-15
„Haltung ist wieder nötig!“ Ortwin Nimczik im Gespräch mit dem Komponisten Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 166 (2005), Heft 3, S. 40-43
Pour les Enfants du paradis. Kurze Charakterstücke für KlavierPlus (2003), in: Hören und Sehen – Musik audiovisuell (= Veröffentlichungen des Instituts für Neue Musik und Musikerziehung, Band 45), Mainz 2005, S. 57-61
Plaudereien und Beobachtungen. Über einige Beziehungen zu Johann Sebastian Bach (und Friedrich Hölderlin), in: MusikTexte Heft 108 (Februar 2006), S. 57-60
Ins Herz treffend. Fragmente zu Ligeti, in: MusikTexte 111, November 2006, S. 28
„Ich gebe das gerne aus der Hand“. Nicolaus A. Hubers Orchesterwerke. Der Komponist im Gespräch mit Kornelia Bittmann, in: up to date I-2007, Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel 2006, S. 15-17
Der Verstand im Körper. Ein Gespräch (mit Linde Großmann) über „Pour les Enfants du Paradis“, in: Kunst lernen. Zur Vermittlung musikpädagogischer Meisterkompositionen des 20. Jahrhunderts, hrsg. von Matthias Schmidt, Regensburg: ConBrio 2008, S. 181-190
Translations of Writings from Nicolaus A. Huber
Kritisches Komponieren (1972)
Critical Composition
Translated by Petra Music and Philipp Blume
in: The Music of Nicolaus A. Huber and Mathias Spahlinger, hrsg. von Philipp Blume, Contemporary Music Review 27 (2008), Heft 6, S. 565-568
Konzeptionelle Rhythmuskomposition (1983)
Translation of Huber’s Essay „Konzeptionelle Rhythmuskomposition“ on Conceptional Rhythm Composition
Translated by Petra Music and Philipp Blume
in: The Music of Nicolaus A. Huber and Mathias Spahlinger, hrsg. von Philipp Blume, Contempoorary Music Review 27 (2008), Heft 6, S. 569-577
Writings on Nicolaus A. Huber (Selection)
The Music of Nicolaus A. Huber and Mathias Spahlinger, hrsg. von Philipp Blume, Contempoorary Music Review 27 (2008), Heft 6
Amzoll, Stefan: „Ich bin ein Bewunderer des Seins“. Über Geschichte und kritisches Komponieren im Werk Nicolaus A. Hubers, in: MusikTexte Heft 108 (Februar 2006), S. 27-33
Blumenthaler, Volker: Moderne Musik im Arbeiterkonzert. Kritik zu einer Einführung von Nicolaus A. Huber zum Violinkonzert von Alban Berg, in: Eiserne Lerche, Dortmund 1979
Dibelius, Ulrich: Gesellschaft als Partner und Modell. Zum Komponieren von Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Musica 26 (1972), S. 338-341
ders.: Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Moderne Musik II. 1963-1985, München 1988, S. 77-80
Domann, Andreas: „Wo bleibt das Negative?“. Zur musikalischen Ästhetik Helmut Lachenmanns, Nicolaus A. Hubers und Mathias Spahlingers, in: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 62 (2005), S. 177–191
Ebert, Bernhard: Quasi una laudazione. Gedanken um Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Programmheft der Hannoverschen Gesellschaft für Neue Musik 1990, S. 1-2
Ehrler, Hanno: „… ein bißchen minipolitisch …“. Zu einigen jüngeren Kompositionen von Nicolaus A. Huber, in: MusikTexte Heft 108 (Februar 2006), S. 38-41
Gottwald, Clytus: Harakiri - zum letzten Mal, in: Melos 39 (1972), S. 388-389
Giner, Inigo: Different repetitions: An approach to the role of repetition in Nicolaus A. Huber’s music, Universität der Künste Berlin 2008
Hiekel, Jörn Peter: Das Vertraute und das Verstörende. Zu Nicolaus A. Hubers Komponieren, in: MusikTexte Heft 108 (Februar 2006), S. 50-53
ders.: „aufrührerisch mit kleinsten mitteln“. Aspekte des Widerständigen bei Luigi Nono, John Cage und Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 169 (2008), Heft 2, S. 32-37
Hilberg, Frank: "Mit Gefühl, mit Ausdruck, mit Ekstase". Über Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 2/1992, S. 28-33
Hoppe, Georgia Ch.: Die instrumentale Revolution. Entwicklung, Anwendung und Ästhetik neuer Spieltechniken für Rohrblattinstrumente, Diss. Hamburg 1989, S. 196-197, 216, 220-221, 226, 242, 248, 265 und Anhang
Jahn, Hans-Peter: Über Nicolaus A. Huber / On Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Komponistenprospekt Nicolaus A. Huber, Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1992, S. 6-9
Klötzke, Ernst-August: Über Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Programmheft des Festivals "Arnold Schönberg und die Neue Musik aus Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz", Duisburg 1993, S. 8-12
ders.: Nicolaus A. Hubers "Auf Flügeln der Harfe", in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 2/1994, S. 15-16
Lachenmann, Helmut: Magier und Chirurg. Über Nicolaus A. Huber, in: MusikTexte 20 (1987), S. 15-16, auch in: Musik als existentielle Erfahrung. Schriften 1966-1995, hrsg. von Josef Häusler, Wiesbaden 1996, S. 284-286
Nonnenmann, Rainer: „Arbeit am Mythos“. Studien zur Musik von Nicolaus A. Huber, Saarbrücken: Pfau 2002
ders.: Die Sackgasse als Ausweg. Kritisches Komponieren: ein historisches Phänomen?, in: Musik und Ästhetik 9 (2005) Heft 36, S. 37-60
ders.: Von der guten Verwirrung. Zum Themenschwerpunkt Nicolaus A. Huber, in: MusikTexte Heft 108 (Februar 2006), S. 3-7
Oehlschlägel, Reinhard: Chronologie eines Kompositionsauftrages, in: Melos 39 (1972),
S. 252-258
ders.: Konzeptionelle Reduktionen. Versuch über Nicolaus A. Hubers Musiksprache / Conceptional Reductions. An Approach to Nicolaus A. Huber's Musical Language, in: Komponistenprospekt Nicolaus A. Huber, Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1987, S. 5-10
Orgass, Stefan: Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Metzler Komponisten-Lexikon, hrsg. von Horst Weber, Stuttgart 1992, engl. in: Contemporary Composers, hrsg. von Brian Morten und Pamela Collins, Chicago 1992
Schat, Peter W.: Didaktische Brücken. Ein Kommmentar zu Nicolaus A. Hubers "Beds and Brackets", Musik & Bildung 5/1995, S. 49-51
Seidl, Hannes: Einbrüche der Popkultur in Nicolaus A. Hubers Musik seit 1990, in: MusikTexte Heft 108 (Februar 2006), S. 34-37
Sielecki, Frank: Das Politische in den Kompositionen von Helmut Lachenmann und Nicolaus A. Huber, Diss. Bonn 1993
Solomonoff, Natalia: Componer críticamente. Un acercamiento al pensamiento y al lenguaje musical del compositor Nicolaus A. Huber, Universidad Nacional del Litoral (Istituto Superior de Musica) Santa Fe, Abschlussarbeit 2006
Stäbler, Gerhard: Silences. (Ver-)Schweigen, in: SchNeBel 60, Hofheim 1990, S. 231-254, engl. unter dem Titel About Silence or What happens when nothing happens, in: EONTA 1 (1991), Heft 2, S. 68-81
Tibbe, Monika: Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 135 (1974), S. 167-169
Warnaby, John: The Music of Nicolaus A. Huber, in: Tempo 57 (2003), Heft 2, S. 22-37
Radio Portraits on Nicolaus A. Huber
by: Charles Amirkhanian, Stefan Amzoll, Volker Blumenthaler, Jolyon Brettingham-Smith, Ulrich Dibelius, Hanno Ehrler, Frank Hilberg, Manfred Karallus, Klaus Kirchberg, Georg-Friedrich Kühn, Roland Kurz, Ulrich Müller, Carolin Naujocks, Max Nyffeler, Reinhard Oehlschlägel, Cornelius Schwehr, Mathias Spahlinger and Gerhard Stäbler
für vierkanaliges Tonband und Gerüche
UA Köln, 1972
Manuskript
Anerkennung und Aufhebung
für 4 Filme, 3 zweikanalige Tonbänder und verschiedene Spiegel ad lib.
UA München, 1972
Bärenreiter
"Banlieue"
für Sprechchor, Klangrequisiten, Tonband, Gitarre, Synthesizer und Schlagzeug
UA Bonn/Witten, 1974
Bärenreiter (Teil 3: Manuskript)
Chronogramm
für Klarinette, Violine, Violoncello und Klavier
UA Madrid, 1968
Bärenreiter
Epigenesis I
für vier Blockflötenspieler
UA Wien, 1968
Bärenreiter
Epigenesis II
für eine Blockflötenspieler und Tonband
UA Witten (Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik), 1969
Bärenreiter
Epigenesis III
für Streicher und 2 Schlagzeuger
UA Hannover (Allgemeines Deutsches Musikfest), 1970
Bärenreiter
Harakiri
für kleines Orchester und Tonband
UA Darmstadt (Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik), Juli 1972
Bärenreiter
Informationen über die Töne e-f
für Streichquartett
UA München (Allgemeines Deutsches Musikfest), 1967
Bärenreiter
Mimus
für 2 Hörner, 2 Trompeten, 2 Posaunen, Basstuba, Schlagzeug (2 Spieler) und Klavier
UA Hannover (Tage für Neue Musik), 1967
Bärenreiter
Parusie. Annäherung und Entfernung
für großes Orchester und Tonband
UA Frankfurt (Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik), Juli 1968
Bärenreiter
4 Politrevuen (1976-1980)
Verlag pläne, Dortmund
Sonate
für Violine solo
UA München, 1966
Manuskript
Spektrale
für Klavier
UA Darmstadt, 1965
Manuskript
Traummechanik
für Schlagzeug und Klavier
UA Hannover (Tage für Neue Musik), 1968
Bärenreiter
Versuch über Sprache
für 16 Solostimmen, chinesisches Becken, Hammondorgel, Kontrabass und zweikanaliges Tonband
UA Darmstadt, 27. August 1970
Bärenreiter
Versuch zu "Versuch über Sprache"
für improvisierende Musiker und Tonband
UA Bonn, 1970
Bärenreiter
von ... bis ...
für Viola, Harmonium, Klavier und Schlagzeug
UA München, 1968
Bärenreiter
