MaerzMusik

The MaerzMusik Festival for Contemporary Music, is an event of the Berliner Festspiele and has been held annually since 2002 in March at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and other venues. It is the successor festival to the Musik-Biennale Berlin and is considered one of the most important festivals for Neue Musik in Germany. The artistic director of MaerzMusik is Berno Odo Polzer.^[1]

Musik-Biennale Berlin[]

MaerzMusik is the successor festival to the Berlin Music Biennale. Founded in 1967 in East Berlin, the International Festival of Contemporary Music was organised until 1989 by the  [de] and the Ministry of Culture as the Biennale in February. From 1991 to 2001, they were continued under the direction of Heike Hoffmann^[2] by the Berliner Festspiele. Many well-known composers premiered during the festival, including Günter Kochan, Georg Katzer, , Ruth Zechlin, Friedrich Goldmann, Johannes Kalitzke and Siegfried Matthus.^[3]

MaerzMusik[]

In March 2002, the festival took place for the first time for about ten days under the new name "MaerzMusik - Festival für aktuelle Musik" (MaerzMusik - Festival for Contemporary Music) and presented itself under the new artistic director Matthias Osterwold also with a new programmatic orientation. Alongside Neue Musik in its current developments as well as in works of historical significance, there was a new "presentation of experimental, conceptual, interdisciplinary and also media-artistic positions." The works of other disciplines such as the performing (music theatre, performance) or visual arts (sound art, installations) are included. Another focus was placed on non-European developments in music.^[4]

The programme ranged from established positions of Neue Musik such as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Wolfgang Rihm or Sofia Gubaidulina to younger composers such as Beat Furrer and Enno Poppe and visual artists such as Rebecca Horn and musicians from the field of Electronica such as Ryoji Ikeda and Aphex Twin. The concept was very successful, with Maerzmusik 2014 attracting around 15,000 visitors.^[5]

In autumn 2014, the Austrian musicologist and free curator Berno Odo Polzer succeeded Matthias Osterwold as artistic director of the festival.^[6] He reconceived MaerzMusik as a "festival for questions of time" on positions about how we deal with time. Developed from the perspective of listening, the festival sees itself as a space in which "life, art and theory, experience and reflection can converge."

Venues[]

The festival's venues included the "Gelbe MUSIK", the Museum für Gegenwart in the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Hebbel-Theater, the  [de], the Jewish Museum Berlin, the , the Kammermusiksaal of the Berliner Philharmonie, , the and the Berghain club.^[5]

Discography[]

• 2000: Musik-Biennale Berlin. Uraufführungen 1969–1995. (Red Seal)

References[]

Further reading[]

• Manfred Vetter: Kammermusik in der DDR. Peter Lang, Frankfurt 1996, ISBN 3-631-30257-6
• Helga de la Motte-Haber: Rückblende: 10 Jahre MaerzMusik. In Henrik Adler and  [de] (ed.): Das Buch der Berliner Festspiele: 2001–2011. Berliner Festspiele, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-9814277-1-4

External links[]

• Official website