The Donaueschingen Festival (german: Donaueschinger Musiktage, links=no) is a
festival
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, mela, or eid. A festival ...
for new music that takes place every October in the small town of
Donaueschingen in south-western Germany. Founded in 1921,
it is considered the oldest festival for
contemporary classical music in the world,
and among the best-known and most prestigious.
History
In 1913, the ''Donaueschingen Society of Friends of Music'' was founded under the auspices of the
House of Fürstenberg. The idea soon arose to establish a small festival for presenting young and promising artists. A committee of distinguished musicians, among them
Ferruccio Busoni,
Joseph Haas
Joseph Haas (19 March 1879 – 30 March 1960) was a German late romantic composer and music teacher.
Biography
He was born in Maihingen, near Nördlingen to teacher Alban Haas from his second marriage, being half-brother to the theologian a ...
,
Hans Pfitzner
Hans Erich Pfitzner (5 May 1869 – 22 May 1949) was a German composer, conductor and polemicist who was a self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera ''Palestrina'' (1917), loosely based on the life of the ...
,
Arthur Nikisch
Arthur Nikisch (12 October 185523 January 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London, Leipzig and—most importantly—Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of B ...
and
Richard Strauss, met in 1921 to discuss possible formats for the event.
The first concert was presented just a few months later. On 31 July 1921 the ''Donaueschingen Chamber Music Performances for the advancement of contemporary music'' (''Donaueschinger Kammermusikaufführungen zur Förderung zeitgenössischer Tonkunst'') gave world premiere performances of music by
Alois Hába
Alois Hába (21 June 1893 – 18 November 1973) was a Czech composer, music theorist and teacher. He belongs to the important discoverers in modern classical music, and major composers of microtonal music, especially using the quarter-tone scal ...
,
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...
and
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...
.
Three years later, guest composers included
Arnold Schoenberg,
Anton Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stead ...
, and
Josef Matthias Hauer
Josef Matthias Hauer (March 19, 1883 – September 22, 1959) was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is best known for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the ...
, who were among the main representatives of the Viennese
twelve-tone technique
The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition first devised by Austrian composer Josef Matthias Hauer, who published his "law o ...
.
In 1925, the festival's scope expanded from presenting only chamber music to include choral works; one year later, the offerings included music for wind orchestra. With experimental forms of music and art such as
Oskar Schlemmer
Oskar Schlemmer (4 September 1888 – 13 April 1943) was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer associated with the Bauhaus school.
In 1923, he was hired as Master of Form at the Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working at the w ...
's 'Triadic Ballet', the festival encompassed an increasingly wide range of activities and became more and more attractive to
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
composers and performers alike.
In 1927, the festival relocated to
Baden-Baden
Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the Rhine, the border with Fra ...
. During the years 1931–1933, 1935, 1940–1945, and 1948–1949, all concerts were cancelled due to the
overall national and international political situation.
Instead of the original chamber music series, the
National-Socialist party organized its own concerts from 1933 to 1935, called 'Donaueschingen Musical Celebration' or 'Old and new chamber-music from the Swabian-Alemannic region'.
After the war, the Society of Friends of Music was able to re-establish the festival under the name ''Donaueschingen Festival of Contemporary Music''. A cooperative agreement between the
Südwestfunk in Baden-Baden and its
orchestra
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...
shifted the program emphasis to larger orchestral works. In 1951,
Olivier Messiaen and his student
Pierre Boulez offered new compositions,
along with older works by Hindemith and
Béla Bartók.
In 1972, the Karl Sczuka Prize for Hörspiel (radio play) was awarded for the first time during the festival. Since 1993, every festival has its own theme.
In 1998,
South-West German Radio Baden-Baden became successor of ''Südwestfunk''.
The 2020 Donaueschingen Festival was canceled on short notice due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
.
The 2021 Donaueschingen Festival features the Donaueschingen Global Project.
List of selected composers
* 1921:
Alban Berg,
Alois Hába
Alois Hába (21 June 1893 – 18 November 1973) was a Czech composer, music theorist and teacher. He belongs to the important discoverers in modern classical music, and major composers of microtonal music, especially using the quarter-tone scal ...
,
Ernst Krenek
Ernst Heinrich Krenek (, 23 August 1900 – 22 December 1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including ''Music Here and Now'' (1939), a study ...
,
Philipp Jarnach
Philipp Jarnach (26 July 1892 17 December 1982 in Börnsen) was a German composer of modern music ("Neue Musik"), pianist, teacher, and conductor.
Jarnach was born in Noisy-le-Sec, France, the son of a Spanish sculptor and a Flemish mother. Besi ...
,
Anton Webern
Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stead ...
,
Arnold Schönberg
Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (, ; ; 13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian-American composer, music theorist, teacher, writer, and painter. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was as ...
,
Josef Matthias Hauer
Josef Matthias Hauer (March 19, 1883 – September 22, 1959) was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is best known for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the ...
,
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...
* 1925:
Hanns Eisler
Hanns Eisler (6 July 1898 – 6 September 1962) was an Austrian composer (his father was Austrian, and Eisler fought in a Hungarian regiment in World War I). He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artisti ...
,
Paul Dessau
Paul Dessau (19 December 189428 June 1979) was a German composer and conductor. He collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and composed incidental music for his plays, and several operas based on them.
Biography
Dessau was born in Hamburg into a ...
,
Igor Stravinsky
* 1926:
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...
,
Ernst Toch
Ernst Toch (; 7 December 1887 – 1 October 1964) was an Austrian composer of classical music and film scores. He sought throughout his life to introduce new approaches to music.
Biography
Toch was born in Leopoldstadt, Vienna, into the family ...
,
Gerhart Münch
* 1927:
Kurt Weill,
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud (; 4 September 1892 – 22 June 1974) was a French composer, conductor, and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as ''The Group of Six''—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions ...
,
George Antheil
George Johann Carl Antheil (; July 8, 1900 – February 12, 1959) was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author, and inventor whose modernist musical compositions explored the modern sounds – musical, industrial, and mechanical – of t ...
* 1951–1960:
Pierre Boulez,
Olivier Messiaen,
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre of works is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as ...
,
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th-century classical music, 20th and early 21st-century ...
,
Bernd Alois Zimmermann
Bernd Alois Zimmermann (20 March 1918 – 10 August 1970) was a German composer. He is perhaps best known for his opera ''Die Soldaten'', which is regarded as one of the most important German operas of the 20th century, after those of Berg. As a ...
,
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music.
Biography
Early years
Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...
,
Earle Brown
Earle Brown (December 26, 1926 – July 2, 2002) was an American composer who established his own formal and notational systems. Brown was the creator of "open form," a style of musical construction that has influenced many composers since ...
,
John Cage,
Henri Pousseur
Henri Léon Marie-Thérèse Pousseur (23 June 1929 – 6 March 2009) was a Belgian classical composer, teacher, and music theorist.
Biography
Pousseur was born in Malmedy and studied at the Academies of Music in Liège and in Brussels from 1947 t ...
,
Iannis Xenakis
Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde c ...
,
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled '' Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...
,
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernist composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra- ...
,
Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Raúl Kagel (; 24 December 1931 – 18 September 2008) was an Argentine-German composer.
Biography
Kagel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an Ashkenazi Jewish family that had fled from Russia in the 1920s . He studied music, his ...
,
Edgard Varèse,
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Eugeniusz Penderecki (; 23 November 1933 – 29 March 2020) was a Polish composer and conductor. His best known works include ''Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima'', Symphony No. 3, his '' St Luke Passion'', '' Polish Requiem'', ' ...
,
Wilhelm Killmayer
Wilhelm Killmayer (21 August 1927 – 20 August 2017) was a German composer of classical music, a conductor and an academic teacher of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München from 1973 to 1992. He composed symphonies and s ...
* 1961–1980:
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti (; ; 28 May 1923 – 12 June 2006) was a Hungarian-Austrian composer of contemporary classical music. He has been described as "one of the most important avant-garde composers in the latter half of the twentieth century ...
,
Heinz Holliger
Heinz Robert Holliger (born 21 May 1939) is a Swiss virtuoso oboist, composer and conductor. Celebrated for his versatility and technique, Holliger is among the most prominent oboists of his generation. His repertoire includes Baroque and Classic ...
,
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Garrievich Schnittke (russian: Альфре́д Га́рриевич Шни́тке, link=no, Alfred Garriyevich Shnitke; 24 November 1934 – 3 August 1998) was a Russian composer of Jewish-German descent. Among the most performed and re ...
,
Dieter Schnebel,
Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm (born 13 March 1952) is a German composer and academic teacher. He is musical director of the Institute of New Music and Media at the University of Music Karlsruhe and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Sa ...
,
Helmut Lachenmann
Helmut Friedrich Lachenmann (born 27 November 1935) is a German composer of contemporary classical music. His work has been associated with "instrumental musique concrète".
Life and works
Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart and after the end of ...
,
Hans Zender
Johannes Wolfgang Zender (22 November 1936 – 22 October 2019) was a German conductor and composer. He was the chief conductor of several opera houses, and his compositions, many of them vocal music, have been performed at international festival ...
,
Brian Ferneyhough,
Peter Eötvös
Peter may refer to:
People
* List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name
* Peter (given name)
** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church
* Peter (surname), a su ...
,
Younghi Pagh-Paan
Younghi Pagh-Paan (born 1945) is a South Korean composer.
Life
Pagh‑Paan was born in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do, South Korea. She studied music at the Seoul National University from 1965 to 1971. In 1974 she received a DAAD scholarship to s ...
* 1981–2000:
Luc Ferrari
Luc Ferrari (February 5, 1929 – August 22, 2005) was a French composer of Italian heritage and a pioneer in musique concrète and electroacoustic music. He was a founding member of RTF's Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRMC), working alongsid ...
,
Helmut Lachenmann
Helmut Friedrich Lachenmann (born 27 November 1935) is a German composer of contemporary classical music. His work has been associated with "instrumental musique concrète".
Life and works
Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart and after the end of ...
,
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music.
Biography
Early years
Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...
,
Bruno Maderna
Bruno Maderna (21 April 1920 – 13 November 1973) was an Italian conductor and composer.
Life
Maderna was born Bruno Grossato in Venice but later decided to take the name of his mother, Caterina Carolina Maderna.Interview with Maderna‘s th ...
,
Harrison Birtwistle
Sir Harrison Birtwistle (15 July 1934 – 18 April 2022) was an English composer of contemporary classical music best known for his operas, often based on mythological subjects. Among his many compositions, his better known works include '' T ...
,
Michael Levinas,
Gerhard Rühm,
Younghi Pagh-Paan
Younghi Pagh-Paan (born 1945) is a South Korean composer.
Life
Pagh‑Paan was born in Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do, South Korea. She studied music at the Seoul National University from 1965 to 1971. In 1974 she received a DAAD scholarship to s ...
,
Zoltán Jeney,
Hans Oesch,
Hans Peter Haller
Hans Peter Haller (26 October 1929 – 16 April 2006) was a German composer and pioneer of electroacoustic music.
Life
Born in Radolfzell, Haller studied church music in Heidelberg from 1947 and took composition lessons with Wolfgang Fortne ...
,
Christoph Staude,
Klaus Huber
Klaus Huber (30 November 1924 – 2 October 2017) was a Swiss composer and academic based in Basel and Freiburg. Among his students were Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Jarrell, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, and Kaija Saariaho. ...
,
Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew (7 May 193613 December 1981) was an English experimental music composer, and founder (with Howard Skempton and Michael Parsons) of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected experimental music, ...
,
Michael Henning,
James Tenney
James Tenney (August 10, 1934 – August 24, 2006) was an American composer and music theorist. He made significant early musical contributions to plunderphonics, sound synthesis, algorithmic composition, process music, spectral music, microto ...
,
Alvin Curran,
Julio Estrada
* 2001–2010:
Peter Ablinger,
Salvatore Sciarrino
Salvatore Sciarrino (born 4 April 1947) is an Italian composer of contemporary classical music. Described as "the best-known and most performed Italian composer" of the present day, his works include ''Quaderno di strada'' (2003) and ''La porta d ...
,
Mark Andre
Mark Andre (born 10 May 1964) is a French composer living in Germany. He was known as "Marc André," his birth name, until 2007, when he formally revised the spelling. He lives in Berlin. Andre's compositions ''durch'' (2006), ''...auf... III'' (2 ...
,
Georg Friedrich Haas,
Pascal Dusapin,
Walter Zimmermann
Walter Zimmermann (born 15 April 1949) is a German composer associated with the Cologne School.
Born in Schwabach, Germany, Zimmermann studied composition in Germany with Werner Heider and Mauricio Kagel, the theory of musical intelligence at ...
,
Brian Ferneyhough,
Peter Ruzicka,
Chaya Czernowin,
Enno Poppe
Enno Poppe (born 30 December 1969 in Hemer, North Rhine-Westphalia) is a German composer and conductor of classical music, and an academic teacher.
Career
Enno Poppe studied composition and conducting at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin with ...
,
Pierluigi Billone
* Since 2011:
Beat Furrer
Beat Furrer (born 6 December 1954) is a Swiss-born Austrian composer and conductor. He has served as professor of composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz since 1991. He was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 201 ...
,
Georges Aperghis
Georges Aperghis ( el, Γιώργος Απέργης; born 23 December 1945) is a Greek composer working primarily in the field of experimental music theater but has also composed a large amount of non- programmatic chamber music. He lives in Fr ...
,
Francesco Filidei
Francesco Filidei (born 1973) is an Italian concert organist and composer. A student of Salvatore Sciarrino, he has performed internationally. As a composer, he has collaborated with singer-songwriter Claire Diterzi and written operas premiered ...
,
Rebecca Saunders
Rebecca Saunders (born 19 December 1967) is a London-born composer who lives and works freelance in Berlin. In a 2017 ''Classic Voice'' poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000, Saunders' compositions received the third highest total ...
,
Bernhard Lang Bernhard Lang (born 24 February 1957 Linz, Austria) is an Austrian composer, improviser and programmer of musical patches and applications. His work can be described as contemporary classical, with roots, however, in various genres such as 20th-cent ...
,
Marco Stroppa
Marco Stroppa (born 8 December 1959, in Verona) is an Italian composer who writes computer music as well as music for instruments with live electronics.
Biography
Marco Stroppa studied piano, composition, choral direction and electronic music at ...
,
Klaus Lang,
Nima A Rowshan,
Stefan Prins,
Øyvind Torvund
Øyvind Torvund (born 1976 in Porsgrunn) is a Norwegian composer.
He studied composition at the Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo) with Bjørn Kruse and Ivar Frounbergand, as well as at Berlin University of the Arts, Universität der Künste (Ber ...
References
Sources
*Josef Häusler: ''Spiegel der Neuen Musik: Donaueschingen. Chronik – Tendenzen – Werkbesprechungen''. Kassel (1996) –
*
Bennwitz, Hanspeter: ''Donaueschingen und die Neue Musik 1921–1955''. Donaueschingen (1955).
Further reading
* Michael Wackerbauer: ''"Mythos Donaueschingen". Zur Rolle einer Idee im Wandel von Festspielkonzeptionen'',
*
*
See also
*
List of electronic music festivals
The following is an incomplete list of music festivals that feature electronic music, which encapsulates music featuring electronic instruments such as electric guitar and keyboards, as well as recent genres such as electronic dance music (E ...
External links
Official website of the Donaueschingen Festival at SWR radio
{{coord missing, Baden-Württemberg
Music festivals established in 1921
Contemporary classical music festivals
Electronic music festivals in Germany
Electroacoustic music festivals
Schwarzwald-Baar-Kreis