“Since the first edition appeared, the response to Hans Zender’s works in the music life of the present has gratifyingly continued to increase. The same applies to the musicological analysis of Zender’s work as well as also to Zender’s texts on music. Perhaps the present volume has contributed to some extent to all of this. Therefore, it is all the more gratifying that this book, containing some of Zender’s central texts and even having almost the character of a complete edition of the writings from 1975 to 2003, can now be presented in a new expanded issue. Here, there are various substantial additions, referring above all to texts on compositions of the last 15 years whose consideration should give additional heft to this volume.”

(Jörn Peter Hiekel)

Hans Zender is regarded as one of the most important composers and conductors of his generation. However, he has also written a great deal about music. The scope of his texts is very broad – from theoretical and analytical writings and essays to critiques, glosses and even a radio play. This volume, which features all of his major texts, is practically a "complete edition." It can be seen as a basis for an in-depth approach to the multi-faceted compositional oeuvre and multi-layered intellectual world of Hans Zender. The texts repeatedly turn to fundamental aspects or take up elements that are primarily related to the works of other composers. One of the book's fundamental texts, "Gegenstrebige Harmonik," is a kind of new, microtonal "harmony method" that draws some remarkable consequences from the history of composition since Antiquity.


Bibliography:

Hiekel, Jörn Peter: Vielstimmig in sich. Zu einigen Kernaspekten in Hans Zenders Schaffen, in: Hans Zender. Vielstimmig in sich, hrsg. von Werner Grünzweig, Jörn Peter Hiekel und Anouk Jeschke (= Archive zur Musik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, Band 12), Hofheim: Wolke 2008, pp. 13-28.