In Hans Zender’s oeuvre manifold traces of an intense confrontation with intercultural questions can be found. More specifically, many of Zender’s works relate to East Asian cultures. Generally, Zender highlights heterogeneity and his concepts of interculturality seem to be opposed to a hybrid mixture of idioms as described by the term »creolisation«. Most recently Zender’s opera Chief Joseph (2001-2003), a complex work about cultural conflict, oscillated between familiarity and strangeness, between descriptive and cryptic layers. Zender has referred to the ancient Chinese magical square luo shu and to ancient Chinese theories of tuning to widen eurocentric discourses of contemporary music, although the references in his scores can often hardly be labelled specifically »Asian«. On a similar conceptual level, three main traditions from East Asian philosophy have had substantial influences on him, namely: the anti-logocentric ideas of Zen-Buddhism (obviously partly triggered by John Cage), the Confucian ideals of music set forth in the ancient »Book of Rites« Liji, and the philosophers of the Kyoto-School – mainly Kitaro Nishida and his idea of »pure experience«. Zender’s works such as Fünf Haiku (1982) or Lo-Shu VI (1989) exemplify the composer’s transformation of traditional Japanese aesthetics into forms of obvious simplicity that establish a continuous change between uninterrupted flow and sudden silence. The notion of a »dissolution of time« is present in these pieces as well as in the earlier Muji no kyo (1975) which, conversely, ends in an intensification of the musical structure on all levels. Likewise, Furin no kyo (1989) and Nanzen no kyo (1992) superimpose different concepts of time associated with different cultures. In the final section of Furin no kyo the superimposition of different concepts of time and languages results in a collage-like microstructure. These examples confirm that Zender’s aesthetic focuses on contradiction and does not aim to harmonise cultural differences or conflicts. For Hans Zender interculturality means a fundamental »concussion of [established] meanings« (Roland Barthes).

No description available.

No description available.

In the first part of this essay, the relationship between music and language is discussed from two different points of view that simultaneously reveal two different dimensions of understanding music. Referring to Nelson Goodman, particularly to his term »metaphorical exemplification«, the possible meaning of a »language of music« is outlined. The »understanding« of this language is analogous to the (nonverbal) understanding of gestures, expressions, moods, atmospheres etc., and therefore akin to an understanding of meaning that does not require words. The understanding of musical art works, however, is not the understanding of a context of meaning (Sinnzusammenhang), since the means of creating musical coherence – such as repetition and variation, the game of identity and difference – are different from the means that create a context of meaning in verbal languages. Music’s affinity to language is at once music’s distance from language. The idea of understanding music must therefore be different from, or more than, the wordless understanding of gestural or expressive figures. Musical listening can rather be grasped as the re-enactment of an enigmatic interpenetration of sound, structure, and meaning, the understanding of which, among others, requires verbal explication. These forms of explication do not stand for a resolution of the enigma but, due to their interminability, sustain it. The second part of the essay demonstrates that the semiotic model of the understanding of music not only falls short due to its failure to accommodate musical coherence, but also because it blocks out areas of musical meaning that are only comprehensible structurally, and not necessarily amenable to wordless re-enactment. These areas include the crisis of the subject in new music (dating back to the late Beethoven), demonstrating a peculiar proximity between music and philosophy. This context connects music to a question of truth that not only refers to individual works, but also to the question of what art and music as an art form can mean today. One answer to this question, which has troubled modern art since the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, is suggested at the end of this essay in reference to Jacques Rancière: the tension between the autonomy of art and its dissolution of boundaries has become art’s condition of existence.

No description available.

The new situation of globalisation brings to mind that artistic material generally is a limited repertoire of signs. This material defines the artistic world; it encompasses an interpretation of the world rooted in the artist’s regional culture. This situation therefore requires »possibilities of approaching the Other and the Self for which there are not any patterns yet«, as Kuno Lorenz writes. The alienation of the Self and the full identification with the Other may form intermediate stages of this process. My music theatre work Chief Joseph (2001-2003) is largely based on the theme of a confrontation between Self and Other. This theme is approached from a diversity of angles: its different forms, its conflicts, its creative impulses, its disastrous consequences and the utopia of its success. The example for this confrontion used in my opera – the wars between European settlers and aboriginal Indians in North America – is especially loaded with cliché-like valuations in our collective memory. The music does not reflect the theme »Self and Other« by way of polystylicism or quotations of »exotic« material. Rather, six types of scenes are established, each of which relates to a different concept of musical time – a reflection of the author’s observation that cultural differences often can be perceived less in surface forms, but rather in the ways cultures conceive of or construct time. These scene types, moreover, show parallels with Fritz Mauthner’s attempt to categorise language as three »images of the world«: the »Leerszenen« [empty scenes] which are grounded in silence coincide with Mauthner’s type »adjectival language«, the »Klagen« [laments] which concentrate on single constellations of intervals or pitches parallel Mauthner’s »substantival language«, the instable, floating »Recitative« [recitatives] hint at Mauthner’s »verbal language«, while the other scene types (»Indian Songs« and ensemble scenes including »Councils«) in Mauthner’s system would appear as mixed forms. A key position is taken by the scene-type »Rotationen« [rotations], with one rotation occurring in each of the three acts. They form a system on their own, remaining independent of the dramatic action and try to suggest an exterritorial perspective on the theme »Self and Other«.

Welche Relevanz haben Prozesse globaler kultureller Homogenisierung und Differenzierung für die gegenwärtige Hervorbringung von Musik weltweit? Auf welchen historischen Voraussetzungen beruhen diese Prozesse und wie sehr werden sie zukünftige Entwicklungen prägen? Diesen Fragen widmete sich das interdisziplinäre Symposion 'Musik und Globalisierung' der Kunstuniversität Graz im Oktober 2006. Mit Hans Zender stand ein Künstler im Zentrum, der mit seiner Musik und seinem Denken die Debatte zur musikalischen Interkulturalität in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten nachhaltig bereichert hat. Die Beiträge zeigen, wie sich zwischen künstlerischen Entwürfen und (musik-)theoretischen und geistesgeschichtlichen Kontexten Verbindungslinien ziehen lassen und damit die 'Mehrbödigkeit' aktueller künstlerischer wie theoretischer Fragestellungen reflektiert wird.

Processing of microwave signals in electrical domain introduces many difficulties especially when the frequency of the signal is increased beyond several GHz. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) and frequency depended losses can be given as examples to these difficulties. Photonic processing of microwave signals, however, is immune to these problems since optical components such as fiber cables, lasers, optical modulators and photodetectors are both immune to EMI and have wide bandwidths. This thesis deals with down conversion of a microwave signal using a Mach-Zender modulator and filtering unwanted harmonics using a photonic filter.