During this 5-hour-discussion, Helmut Lachenmann explains the foundations of his music in great, unprecedented detail. The discussion consists of three sections, focussing on Lachenmann’s compositional aesthetics, the relationship between constructivity and freedom in his music, and a detailed discussion with the audience respectively. In the beginning, Lachenmann responds to Clemens Gadenstätter’s and Dieter Kleinrath’s analytical approaches to his second string quartet (see Kleinrath, Fraktalklang in this volume) arguing that a »chemical« analysis should always reference social preconditions and modes of listening instigated by the musical structure. Although music does not only have a structure, but is a structure, Lachenmann doubts that is possible to listen to music merely structurally; his music rather aims at a »liberated perception« which he labels the »last great humanity related utopia«. Elaborating on his often cited idea that a (»structure«-)sound may become identical with large-scale form, Lachenmann explains his concepts of (sound) »families« that are triggered by means of an »arpeggio«. A sound family might assemble highly diverse timbres by relating them to the same harmonic entity or the same basic playing technique – a principle that Lachenmann has derived from the analysis of European music. Introducing examples by Anton Webern and Gustav Mahler, Lachenmann shows how unconventional timbral organisation in their works sheds a completely new light on conventional structural topoi. The composer then explains his theory of listening which distinguishes between Hören (hearing) and Zuhören (listening). Familiar sound structures in music or everyday life usually do not challenge listening habits and thereby immerse the listener in a magical sphere. This mode of listening is especially obvious in functional music such as the German national anthem. The European concept of art, however, is crucially based on the idea of breaching, of intervening into these magical modes of listening, eventually resulting in a unique stylistic development over the centuries. In the second part, Lachenmann explains the multiple ways in which he confronts post-serial structures as represented by the (»structure-« or »time-«)»net« during the beginning of a compositional process. In most of his works, this net is the result of a highly complex structural arrangement of twelve-tone rows, yet it usually merely serves as a kind of »memory« and might be ignored or torn down at specific moments during the compositional work. The function of this net, ultimately, is to push the composer into new situations that he would not have confronted otherwise. In this context, Lachenmann defends the historical works of post-war serialism such as Boulez’ Structures Ia, arguing that »freedom« in that specific historical situation also meant to liberate oneself from a stereotyped fantasy by means of the »diving suit« of serial structure. After arguing that much of his music is based on the implicit double character of »process« (Prozess) and »condition« (Zustand), rather than separating these categories too rigidly, Lachenmann explains the ways in which he transforms »consonant« chords and sounds from tonal music. This practice in fact dates back to works of the early 1960s when he assembled a repertoire of interval collections such as constant sets (e.g. 2-2-2… semitones), continuously increasing/decreasing sets (e.g. 1-2-3-4…), cyclic sets (e.g. 2-3-2-3…) and harmonic as well as non-harmonic overtone sets. The playful, but not ironic integration of these collections into Lachenmann’s music is exemplified by a large section from Ausklang (1984/85) where a »fortissimo« C major tutti forms the final point of a transformation from toneless to resonant sounds. During the discussion with the audience, Lachenmann describes his compositional methods as making a »necessity out of the arbitrary« or forming »consistency out of contingency« – the serialist structural data assembled in the beginning of the compositional process provoke resistance, creative energy, and eventually become conscious as part of a personal musical vision. Similarly, a large-scale formal plan, although usually set out in the beginning, might be extended or revoked at any time in order to »let the idea of the piece discover itself«. Finally, discussing the current knowledge of extended playing techniques among professional musicians, Lachenmann argues against the tendency of becoming obsessed with alienated sounds as a »stylistic prison« and describes composition as a broadening of the mind.

Perception of music as a complicated interaction between hearing and seeing is described as an attraction by two extremes, incarnation and subtraction. In the context of staging a drama or an opera, for instance, incarnation stresses the body of the actor, whereas subtraction dissolves him into an ideal silhouette, into a real but invisible person on stage. In many contemporary art forms such as happenings or sound installations both extremes may be observed, leading either to an emphasis on theatricality, or reducing the work to one single effect: »One sound may be enough« (David Toop). Both forms, however, aim towards a specific kind of presence, demanding utmost concentration with specific religious undertones: no discourse, no structure is transmitted, rather epiphanies emerge directly from colours, fragrances or sounds. Various forms of this polarity appear in the techniques and ceremonies of contemporary ars electronica which the article considers as a (possible) challenge to »classical« contemporary music that is fixed in a score. Helmut Lachenmann’s views on analytical listening and perception (a key metaphor since the end of the twentieth century) are examined in this context, focussing on the musician’s body in selected works including Air (1968/69), Kontrakadenz (1970/71) and NUN (1999/2002). All three examples make clear that »listening« to Lachenmann’s music often implicates seeing how this music is performed in order to grasp how »heterogeneous series« connect diverse sound producing media and techniques. The relationship between hearing and seeing in Lachenmann’s music has recently been isolated by choreographer Xavier Le Roy who has produced ritualistic as well as »subtracting« versions of works such as Salut für Caudwell (1977) and Mouvement (1982/84). A completely »mute« performance of the latter work (Le Roy lets the musicians perform the complete piece without instruments), however, tends to simplify this relationship that might be described as an attempt to breach hearing by seeing and seeing by hearing.

Im zweiten Band der musik.theorien der gegenwart wird mit Helmut Lachenmann einer der führenden Komponisten der heutigen Musik ins Zentrum gestellt, dessen eigene »Theorien« des Komponierens, des Hörens, der Wahrnehmung, des Verhältnisses zwischen Musik und Gesellschaft für die in dieser Schriftenreihe thematisierte Öffnung des Theoriebegriffs zentrale Impulse geliefert haben. Lachenmanns Denken über und in Musik versteht es in brillanter Weise eine eng an musikalischen Texten und Klängen orientierte Theoriebildung von vornherein durch vielfältige Ebenen zu weiten, ohne bezüglich der Kohärenz des theoretischen Ansatzes Kompromisse zu schließen. Dass einer solchen Form der musikalischen Theorie nicht zuletzt ein dialogisches Prinzip inhärent ist, zeigt das programmatisch am Anfang des Bandes stehende Podiumsgespräch. Es belegt insbesondere wie Lachenmanns Kunstbegriff, der Komponieren und Hören in eins denkt, sich permanent neuen, unbekannten Situationen auszusetzen vermag. Die weiteren im vorliegenden Band versammelten Texte finden zu Perspektiven, die im »Kanon« der Lachenmann-Literatur bislang allenfalls marginal gestreift wurden, u.a. indem sie Lachenmanns Musik in die so unterschiedlichen Kontexte der Kognitionswissenschaften, der Klangkunst und der japanischen Mundorgel shō stellen. Sie begreifen dabei die theoretischen Ideen des Komponisten keineswegs als sine qua non der eigenen analytischen Position, machen jedoch durchweg diese so hochgradig vernetzbaren und entwickelbaren Ideen in neuartiger Weise produktiv und vermitteln dabei zwischen Theorie, Hören und musikalischer Praxis.

As Written presents an investigation of selected literary configurations of musical ineffability in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By putting literary parables into constellation with media technologies and texts from philosophy, critical theory, aesthetics, and media theory, the dissertation seeks to better understand the ways in which literature engages, discloses, disrupts, and determines musical discourse at times of aesthetic, political, and technological shift. The dissertation begins by establishing the “cryptographic” ineffable that emerges in early German Romanticism through readings of Novalis. These readings suggest this formulation of ineffability to arise out of an instrumentalization of instrumental music that emphasizes the symbolic relations of musical notation over music’s sound—this in service of a literary and philosophical project that strives to transcend its own medial and epistemological limits. Subsequent chapters will analyze alternative configurations of ineffability in writings by Richard Wagner, Theodor Adorno, Thomas Mann, and Helmut Lachenmann, but vestiges of this “originary” Romantic configuration will remain. Indeed, while the literary texts analyzed in these later chapters will respond to the medial, technical, and technological developments of their historical contexts, more than merely disclosing discursive formulations of musical ineffability, they, like Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen, will be shown to enact these formulations in forms of linguistic, sonic, and material absence through their complex narratologies and poetologies. How, this dissertation will ask, might literature’s ability to accommodate changing contexts in these configurations ultimately suggest musical ineffability as a conduit through which a music-discursive tradition that emerges in literature around 1800 is able to preserve itself into the twentieth century?

After the Christian democratic CDU party was forced into the opposition after the parliamentary elections of 1969 it created a program commission which should update the party's Berlin Program adopted few months earlier. Surprisingly it drafted a wholly new party manifesto challenging crucial dogmas of party's policies which led to stormy discussions. This thesis argues that this development was a consequence of generation change in the party which was accelerated by the loss of government as well as a result of the influence of the chairman of the program commission, Helmut Kohl. Kohl was a leading figure of the young rising generation in the party and a strong proponent of party reform. He created conditions in the commission for creation of a progressive proposal by giving influence to talented young reform oriented politicians. But the conservatives in the party were still strong enough to fight back and moderate the reform impetus of the draft. Party committee redrafted it and weakened some central progressive statements. Only the undisputable loss in the elections of 1972 and following election of Helmut Kohl to party chairman made the way free for a thru party reform. Many of the young politicians allied with Kohl during the program discussion in early 1970s became key figures in the CDU....

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