New music for Young People

The artistic excursions bring great finds to cultural light, change thinking, perception and sensitivity towards banal things, they sharpen awareness of everyday environments and situations. John Cage (1912-1992) is the composer who made ground-breaking achievements in this sector.

Many of his works are based on concrete experiences of everyday life and nature. ‘Branches’ (1976) is one such piece, which deals with the sounds of plants and floral materials. ‘Telephones and Birds’ (1977) is another. Of course, the title says it all, it's about telephones and birdsong. The series of Cage's everyday exploration music could go on for pages, but he did not only write such pieces.

In many of his compositions, such as ‘Variations II’ (1961), he also focussed on social interaction when making music. Here, the musicians first have to create their own voices before they can get started: Printed transparencies are to be placed randomly on top of each other in order to determine the individual pieces of information for later playing. The composer doesn't care what the music is then made with, and the number of players is just as free. These three experimental pieces of music by John Cage and two further, equally multimedia works by composer Frederic Rzewski are at the centre of the current student project ‘Open your Ears’ at the Konzerthaus Berlin. The artistic mentors are the musicians of the renowned Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin. They have worked intensively with groups of Berlin schoolchildren on the pieces and organised the concert evening. It was undoubtedly a lavish evening for the young people. After all, the electrical equipment required, such as microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers and video projectors (self-made adverts are shown), demand a great understanding of technology and music. The teams of students taught themselves all of this - and of course how to perform the pieces themselves - under the guidance of the KNM Berlin and have thus become part of everyday musical life at MaerzMusik.

In addition to the pieces already mentioned, some of which will be performed with the musicians from KNM Berlin, the ensemble itself will also play John Cage's ‘Variations I’ (1958) and Alvin Lucier's iridescent and floating string quartet ‘Navigations’ (1992).