Claus Kühnl
Encyclopedia
Claus Kühnl is a German
composer
and teacher. He lives in Frankfurt am Main.
.
His musical training began in 1973, first as an external student during his last years of high school and later, as a student at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, studying with Bertold Hummel
(composition), Julian von Károlyi (piano), Hanns Reinartz (conducting) and Zsolt Gárdonyi
(theory). Important for him at this time were analysis courses in New Music with Klaus Hinrich Stahmer and, from 1978 to 1980, the Student Chamber Orchestra "Musici Allegri", which he himself conducted. In 1980 he successfully finished his state exam in piano and then moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he continued his studies in composition with Hans Ulrich Engelmann
at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts
. There he met the German composer Gerhard Müller-Hornbach, with whom he founded the Mutare Ensemble in 1981. This Frankfurt-based ensemble specialises in the performance of contemporary music and rarely performed classical music.
His first publications appeared at this time and it also marks the beginning of his teaching at the Hoch Conservatory
in Frankfurt. At first he taught theory but in 1984 was able to start courses in composition and contemporary chamber music. He also taught theory in the musicology department of the Goethe University Frankfurt and at the Music Academy in Darmstadt
.
In 1983 he received a grant from the "Cité Internationale des Arts" in Paris where he met Tristan Murail
and Henri Dutilleux
, whose works he studied intensively. As more commissions for compositions came in he stood down as director of the Mutare Ensemble in 1986. In 1987 he met Wilhelm Killmayer
at a course for young composers directed by Killmayer in Hilchenbach
. His opera La petite Mort appeared in 1988 – a commission by the Frankfurt Feste (première 1991), and one year later the ensemble piece Duplum. Musik des Lichtes und der Finsternis, a commission by the Philharmonia Ensemble of the Hessischer Rundfunk
.
Through a grant in 1990 from the German Academy Villa Massimo
(Accademia Tedesca Roma Villa Massimo), Kühnl lived in Rome for one year. There the first thoughts germinated for a new aesthetic, which the composer described as "panharmony".
He found the first signs of globalisation positive and worked to achieve a blending of various styles and influences from which a new "alloy" could be created. A good example from this period is the piece Lausche den Winden, a commission by the Quartett avance.
After his return from Rome in 1992 he became compositon teacher at the Peter Cornelius Conservatory in Mainz, a position which he gave up after one year. In the following years Kühnl, aside from his usual occupations, devoted himself to various other cultural projects, including directing Response (students compose) and for four years acting as an advisor to the Department of Culture of the city of Hanau
. From 1993 until 1997 he worked, with several long pauses, on the opera Die Geschichte von der Schüssel und vom Löffel (première 1998 in Bielefeld), after a children's book by Michael Ende
, who Kühnl had met three times in Munich
. Since 1993 Kühnl has been an honorary member of the committee of the "Mozart-Stiftung of 1838" in Frankfurt am Main.
In the years 1999 and 2000 Kühnl held a stipendium from the "Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia" in Bamberg
. There he became friends with the author Jochen Missfeldt. The works of the following period show, in contrast to those of the 90s, the use of panharmony through the economy of method and conscious use of simplicity.
The major work of this period is the Concerto for Mandolin and 13 Instruments Voller Sonnen, which had its première in 2006 at the World New Music Festival in Stuttgart
. From the mid 80s he explored working with micro intervals
as well as spectral music
(a result of French influences) and towards the turn of the century this increasingly played an important role in his works.
Where as at first micro intervals had played solely a melodic function in the framework of various rhetorical figures, later they played a vertical role as well, producing beat frequencies or spectral fields, which create subtle sounds of expression.
Kühnl is married to the musician Yumi Yokoyama. He has two sons from his first marriage: Sebastian and Benjamin Kühnl.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and teacher. He lives in Frankfurt am Main.
Life
Kühnl is the eldest child of Gudrun Kühnl (née Schmitt) from Lower Franconia and Wilhelm Kühnl who comes from the SudetenlandSudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...
.
His musical training began in 1973, first as an external student during his last years of high school and later, as a student at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, studying with Bertold Hummel
Bertold Hummel
Bertold Hummel was a German composer of modern classical music.- Life :Bertold Hummel was born November 27, 1925 in Hüfingen . He studied at the Academy of Music in Freiburg from 1947 to 1954, taking composition with Harald Genzmer, and cello with Atis Teichmanis...
(composition), Julian von Károlyi (piano), Hanns Reinartz (conducting) and Zsolt Gárdonyi
Zsolt Gárdonyi
Zsolt Gárdonyi is a German-Hungarian composer, organist and music theorist. He is the son of Zoltán Gárdonyi.-Professional career:...
(theory). Important for him at this time were analysis courses in New Music with Klaus Hinrich Stahmer and, from 1978 to 1980, the Student Chamber Orchestra "Musici Allegri", which he himself conducted. In 1980 he successfully finished his state exam in piano and then moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he continued his studies in composition with Hans Ulrich Engelmann
Hans Ulrich Engelmann
Hans Ulrich Engelmann was a German composer.-Biography:Engelmann studied composition with Hermann Heiss and Wolfgang Fortner...
at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts
Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts
The Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts is a state Hochschule for Music, Theater and Dance in Frankfurt and is the only one of its kind in the Federal State of Hesse. It was founded in 1938....
. There he met the German composer Gerhard Müller-Hornbach, with whom he founded the Mutare Ensemble in 1981. This Frankfurt-based ensemble specialises in the performance of contemporary music and rarely performed classical music.
His first publications appeared at this time and it also marks the beginning of his teaching at the Hoch Conservatory
Hoch Conservatory
Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium - Musikakademie was founded in Frankfurt am Main on September 22, 1878. Through the generosity of Frankfurter Joseph Hoch, who bequeathed the Conservatory one million German gold marks in his testament, a school for music and the arts was established for all age groups. ...
in Frankfurt. At first he taught theory but in 1984 was able to start courses in composition and contemporary chamber music. He also taught theory in the musicology department of the Goethe University Frankfurt and at the Music Academy in Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
.
In 1983 he received a grant from the "Cité Internationale des Arts" in Paris where he met Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail
Tristan Murail is a French composer. His father, Gérard Murail, is a poet and his mother, Marie-Thérèse Barrois, a journalist. One of his brothers, Lorris Murail, and his younger sister Elvire Murail, aka Moka, also write, and his younger sister Marie-Aude Murail is a French children's writer...
and Henri Dutilleux
Henri Dutilleux
Henri Dutilleux is one of the most important French composers of the second half of the 20th century, producing work in the tradition of Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Albert Roussel, but in a style distinctly his own...
, whose works he studied intensively. As more commissions for compositions came in he stood down as director of the Mutare Ensemble in 1986. In 1987 he met Wilhelm Killmayer
Wilhelm Killmayer
Wilhelm Killmayer is a German composer of classical music and an academic.-Professional career:Wilhelm Killmayer studied conducting and composition from 1945 to 1951 in Munich at Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen’s Musikseminar...
at a course for young composers directed by Killmayer in Hilchenbach
Hilchenbach
Hilchenbach is a town in the Siegen-Wittgenstein Kreis of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.-Location: The map shows Hilchenbach's location in Siegen-Wittgenstein district. It is about 15 km northeast of Siegen...
. His opera La petite Mort appeared in 1988 – a commission by the Frankfurt Feste (première 1991), and one year later the ensemble piece Duplum. Musik des Lichtes und der Finsternis, a commission by the Philharmonia Ensemble of the Hessischer Rundfunk
Hessischer Rundfunk
Hessischer Rundfunk is the public broadcaster for the German state of Hesse. The main offices of HR are in Frankfurt am Main. HR is a member of the ARD.- Studios :...
.
Through a grant in 1990 from the German Academy Villa Massimo
Villa Massimo
Villa Massimo, short for Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo , is a German art institute in Rome, established in 1910 and located in the Villa Massimo....
(Accademia Tedesca Roma Villa Massimo), Kühnl lived in Rome for one year. There the first thoughts germinated for a new aesthetic, which the composer described as "panharmony".
He found the first signs of globalisation positive and worked to achieve a blending of various styles and influences from which a new "alloy" could be created. A good example from this period is the piece Lausche den Winden, a commission by the Quartett avance.
After his return from Rome in 1992 he became compositon teacher at the Peter Cornelius Conservatory in Mainz, a position which he gave up after one year. In the following years Kühnl, aside from his usual occupations, devoted himself to various other cultural projects, including directing Response (students compose) and for four years acting as an advisor to the Department of Culture of the city of Hanau
Hanau
Hanau is a town in the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany. It is located 25 km east of Frankfurt am Main. Its station is a major railway junction.- Geography :...
. From 1993 until 1997 he worked, with several long pauses, on the opera Die Geschichte von der Schüssel und vom Löffel (première 1998 in Bielefeld), after a children's book by Michael Ende
Michael Ende
Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende was a German author of fantasy and children's literature. He is best known for his epic fantasy work The Neverending Story; other famous works include Momo and Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver...
, who Kühnl had met three times in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
. Since 1993 Kühnl has been an honorary member of the committee of the "Mozart-Stiftung of 1838" in Frankfurt am Main.
In the years 1999 and 2000 Kühnl held a stipendium from the "Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia" in Bamberg
Bamberg
Bamberg is a city in Bavaria, Germany. It is located in Upper Franconia on the river Regnitz, close to its confluence with the river Main. Bamberg is one of the few cities in Germany that was not destroyed by World War II bombings because of a nearby Artillery Factory that prevented planes from...
. There he became friends with the author Jochen Missfeldt. The works of the following period show, in contrast to those of the 90s, the use of panharmony through the economy of method and conscious use of simplicity.
The major work of this period is the Concerto for Mandolin and 13 Instruments Voller Sonnen, which had its première in 2006 at the World New Music Festival in Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
. From the mid 80s he explored working with micro intervals
Microtonal music
Microtonal music is music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.-Terminology:...
as well as spectral music
Spectral music
Spectral music is a musical composition practice where compositional decisions are often informed by the analysis of sound spectra. Computer-based sound spectrum analysis using tools like DFT, FFT, and spectrograms...
(a result of French influences) and towards the turn of the century this increasingly played an important role in his works.
Where as at first micro intervals had played solely a melodic function in the framework of various rhetorical figures, later they played a vertical role as well, producing beat frequencies or spectral fields, which create subtle sounds of expression.
Kühnl is married to the musician Yumi Yokoyama. He has two sons from his first marriage: Sebastian and Benjamin Kühnl.
Prizes and awards (selection)
- 1982: Stipendium from the "Mozart-Stiftung of 1838" in Frankfurt am Main
- 1983: Stipendium from the "Cité Internationale des Arts" in Paris
- 1987: Chosen for the "Woche junger Komponisten" in Hilchenbach
- 1989: Composition Prize of the City of Stuttgart
- 1990: Stipendium from the "Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo"
- 1999: Stipendium from the "Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia" in Bamberg
- 2006: Chosen for the "World New Music Festival" in Stuttgart
- 2010: First Prize at the Concorso Internazionale di Composizione Musicale, Reggio CalabriaReggio CalabriaReggio di Calabria , commonly known as Reggio Calabria or Reggio, is the biggest city and the most populated comune of Calabria, southern Italy, and is the capital of the Province of Reggio Calabria and seat of the Council of Calabrian government.Reggio is located on the "toe" of the Italian...
for Sonata 1 for piano
Operas
- La petite Mort (1988/89)
- Die Geschichte von der Schüssel und vom Löffel, Comic opera after the book with the same name by Michael Ende (1997)
Orchestra
- Vorspruch und Gesang des Einhorns for double bass and orchestra (1986)
- Responsorien for Accordion, ensemble and orchestra (2002)
Chamber orchestra
- Monodie. Musik der Stille for chamber orchestra (1981)
- Vision for 20 solo strings (1982)
- Voller Sonnen, Concerto for mandolin and 13 instruments (2004)
- Racine, Concertino for piano and 14 instruments (2006)
Ensembles
- Duplum. Musik des Lichtes und der Finsternis for 6 musicians (1989)
- Lausche den Winden for clarinet, trombone, cello, piano and other instruments (1990)
Chamber music
- 5 Episoden for trombone (1976)
- String Quartet (1977/1983)
- Valse miniature for double bass and piano (1978)
- un souvenir for cello and piano (1979)
- Die Klage des Hiob, 5 dramatic scenes for organ and piano (1981)
- Lichtklang for 2 pianos, four hands (1992)
- Morceau '95 for trumpet or English horn or clarinet or viola and piano (1995)
- Offene Weite for double bass and piano (1996)
- Engel stürzen for accordion, harp, percussion and other instruments (2001)
- Gewendete Figur for flute(s), viola and double bass (2003)
- Nocturne en Sarabande for guitar (2004)
- Nachtschwarzes Meer, ringsum… for double bass and piano (2005)
- θriːhʌndrədændeɪtɪfaɪv (Threehundredandeigthyfive) for bass flute, bass oboe und contrabass clarinet (2007)
- Korona for piano, four hands (2007)
- Tanabata, Variations on a song by K. Shimofusa for violin and piano (2008)
- Kanten for double bass and harp (2009)
Vocal music with instruments
- kaze no iro for sopran, flute and piano (2001)
- Vom Grunde des Brunnens, 7 Lieder for baritone and piano (2001)
- VerStrömung for baritone, violin und piano (2002)
- Zwei Stücke for tenor (with harmonica) and amplified piano (2006)
- Cantus mysticus for tenor and piano with electric bow (2007)
- Fünf Gesänge nach lyrischen Fragmenten der Sappho nebst einem Alterslied for mezzo soprano and piano (2010)
Organ
- Epitaph für Kaspar Hauser for organ (with mechanical action) and 3 extra players (1997)
- Sie standen mitten im verschatteten Zimmer und redeten gedämpft… (2005)
- Assisi 2006 (2007)
Piano
- im horizont hätten fahnen zu stehen…, for prepared piano, (1987)
- Anverwandlung/Doppelblick (1990)
- Wurzeln des Zufalls (1993)
- Fünf leichte Klavierstücke (2001)
- Japanische Skizzen (2003)
- Der beleidigte Papagei (2004)
- … mir in die Augen (2005)
- Sonatas 1–10 (2005–2008)
Publications (selection)
- Musik und Eros – Gedanken eines jungen Komponisten (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Mainz: Schott, July/August 1985)
- Poet der Nacht – Henri Dutilleux (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. Mainz: Schott, January 1989)
- Verlorener Schatten oder Die Bühnenwerke Hans Ulrich EngelmannHans Ulrich EngelmannHans Ulrich Engelmann was a German composer.-Biography:Engelmann studied composition with Hermann Heiss and Wolfgang Fortner...
s (in: Commedia humana H.U. Engelmann und sein Werk, Wiesbaden, 1985) - Niemals in den selben Fluss – Brief an einen jungen Komponisten zur Zeitenwende (in: Oper aktuell / Die Bayerische Staatsoper 2000/2001, Stiebner Verlag). ISBN 3830716559, ISBN 978-3830716556
- Klassische Ordnung erweitert: Bertold Hummel – Komponist im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (Neue Musikzeitung, November 2002)
- Heraus aus dem toten Winkel: Claus Kühnl im Gespräch mit Julia Cloot (in: Rückspiegel Zeitgenössisches Komponieren im Dialog mit älterer Musik, ed. by Christian Thorau, Julia Cloot and Marion Saxer. Mainz: Schott Music, 2010). ISBN 978-3-7957-0118-5
Sources
- M. O. C. Döpfner: Den Hörer auf geistvolle Art ergötzen. (Frankfurt Algemeine Zeitung, 3 August 1984).
- Hanno Ehrler: Surreale Gebilde unter der Oberfläche des Klanges. (Sonntags-FAZ, 16 December 1990).
- Brigitta Mazanec: Rückzug in die Stille. Komponist im Wandel. (FAZ, 18 September 1991).
- Gabriele Streit: Neue Freiheit. Über die Klavierwerke (1987–92) Claus Kühnls. Programme from the Alte Oper Frankfurt v. 11 September 1992.
- Brigitta Mazanec: La petite Mort. (CD Booklet, WERGO Mainz, 1994).
- Jochen Missfeldt: Claus Kühnls Kunst. (CD Booklet, Offene Weite, Cavalli Records, Bamberg, 2000).
- Volker Milch: Ich sehe lauter offene Horizonte. (Wiesbadener Kurier, 20 December 2000).
- Jan Kopp: Musik des Lichtes und der Finsternis. (CD Booklet, Cavalli Records. Bamberg 2003).
- Biography of Claus Kühnl (official website)