In music, the Cologne School is a loosely associated group of composers and

performers The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfo ...

of the generation that came to prominence in the 1970s, who lived and worked in the city of

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, Germany.

Composers

Most of the Cologne School composers had studied in Cologne during the 1960s with

Vinko Globokar Vinko Globokar (born 7 July 1934) is a French-Slovenian avant-garde composer and trombonist. Globokar's music uses unconventional and extended techniques, places great emphasis on spontaneity and creativity, and often relies on improvisation. Hi ...

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 ...

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 and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groundb ...

, or Bernd Alois Zimmermann, at either the Kölner Hochschule für Musik und Tanz, the , or at the Kölner Kurse für Neue Musik, organised by Prof. Hugo Wolfram Schmidt at the Rheinische Musikhochschule between 1963 and 1968. There is some disagreement about how to define the school and who its central figures are. One of the earliest writers on the Cologne School observed that a large proportion are foreigners, and chose to focus on seven non-German composers as representative: Ladislav Kupkovič from Slovakia,

Péter Eötvös Péter Eötvös ( hu, Eötvös Péter, ; born 2 January 1944) is a Hungarian composer, conductor and teacher. Eötvös was born in Székelyudvarhely, Transylvania, then part of Hungary, now Romania. He studied composition in Budapest and C ...

from Hungary, from Bulgaria, Daniel Chorzempa and John McGuire, both from the United States,

Mesías Maiguashca Mesías Maiguashca (born 24 December 1938) is an Ecuadorian composer and an advocate of '' Neue Musik'' (New Music), especially electroacoustic music. Biography Born in Quito, Maiguashca studied music at the Conservatorio Nacional de Quito, at th ...

from Ecuador, and

Clarence Barlow Clarence Barlow (also Klarenz, born 27 December 1945) is a composer of classical and electroacoustic works. Career Barlow was one of the founders of Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln. In 1988 he was the director of music at the Internatio ...

from India. Seventeen years later, another writer identifies Barlow and three other composers, Gerald Barry (Ireland),

Kevin Volans Kevin Volans (born 26 July 1949) is a South African born Irish composer and pianist. He studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel in Cologne in the 1970s and later became associated with the ''Neue Einfacheit'' (New Simplicity) mov ...

(South Africa), and

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 ...

(Germany) as the central figures in the first wave of the group, and sees Stockhausen, Kagel, the Hochschule, and the

Westdeutscher Rundfunk Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln (''West German Broadcasting Cologne''; WDR, ) is a German public-broadcasting institution based in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia with its main office in Cologne. WDR is a constituent member of the conso ...

(through its electronic music studio, new-music concert series, commissioning of new music, and its commitment to innovative programme-making both in TV and radio) as the key agents that produced this group. According to this view, later important arrivals included Chris Newman,

Claude Vivier Claude Vivier ( ; baptised as Claude Roger; 14 April 19487 March 1983) was a Canadian contemporary composer, pianist, poet and ethnomusicologist of Québécois origin. After studying with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne, Vivier became an in ...

, and John McGuire, but their approaches were in many ways at odds with the aesthetic of the earlier group.

Performers

One performer particularly associated with the Cologne School is the pianist

Organisations

Several institutions founded in Cologne in the late 1960s and 1970s are associated with the Cologne-School composers. These include the Gruppe 8 (, ,

York Höller York Höller (; born 11 January 1944) is a German composer and professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. Biography Höller was born in Leverkusen. Between 1963 and 1970 he studied at the Cologne Musikhochschule: composition wit ...

, , ,

Rolf Riehm Rolf Riehm (born 15 June 1937) is a German composer who wrote stage and orchestral works as well as music for ensembles and solo instruments. He began as an oboist and music teacher and was later a professor of music theory at the Hochschule fü ...

, , and Bojidar Dimov), founded in early 1969 and disbanded in August 1972, Feedback Studio ( Johannes Fritsch, David C. Johnson, and

Rolf Gehlhaar Rolf Rainer Gehlhaar (30 December 1943 – 7 July 2019), was an American composer, Professor in Experimental Music at Coventry University and researcher in assistive technology for music. Life Born in Breslau, Gehlhaar was the son of a German roc ...

), founded in 1970, the Beginner-Studio (

), founded 1977, and the Oeldorf Group (Péter Eötvös, Mesías Maiguashca, and Joachim Krist, together with the cellist Gaby Schumacher), founded 1972 and active until 1979.

Related ideas

A related term, Cologne School of Electronic Music, is sometimes applied to the previous generation of composers who worked mainly in the electronic music studio of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in the 1950s and 1960s, including Karlheinz Stockhausen.

References

Cited sources