There are composers who like to be in isolation, devoted only to the production of their works. And there are some who, apart from their works, also live for other things. The latter group is indispensable for a living music world. Dieter Kaufmann is someone who belongs to this group.
Period | Education | Instrument | Teacher | Education Organisation | Location |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1959
|
graduation from high school | ||||
1959 - 1964
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German language and literature studies, art history | ||||
1959 - 1964
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music education | ||||
1964
|
composition | ||||
1964
|
composition | ||||
1964 - 1965
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1967 - 1969
|
composition | ||||
1967 - 1969
|
composition | ||||
1968 - 1970
|
Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM): electro acoustics | ||||
1968 - 1970
|
Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM): electro acoustics |
Period | Activity | Organisation | Location |
---|---|---|---|
1963 - 1967
|
choir singer | ||
1963 - 1967
|
choir singer | ||
1963 - 1967
|
choir singer | ||
1966
|
ever since freelancer | ||
1969
|
Groupe International de Musique Electroacoustique de Paris (GIMEP): founding member | ||
1970
|
Theater Pupodrom: music theatre experiments | ||
1970
|
ever since teacher of electro-acoustic music; managing head of the course of studies on electro-acoustic music | ||
1970
|
ever since animator and organizer of experimental concerts | ||
1975
|
founder (together with actress Gunda König and sound engineer Walter Stangl; ever since numerous productions of self-composed and other works in the field of acousmatics and musical theater) | ||
1976 - 1980
|
vice-president of the Austrian section | ||
1982 - 1987
|
broadcast series "Was soll der Klang in meiner Hand" (51 episodes) | ||
1983 - 1990
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leader of a composition class | ||
1983 - 1988
|
president of the Austrian section | ||
1984
|
co-founder | ||
1988 - 1991
|
president | ||
1991 - 2006
|
professor of composition and electro-acoustics | ||
1991 - 2006
|
head of the Institute for Electroacoustics and Experimental Music | ||
2001 - 2004
|
president | ||
2001 - 2013
|
president | ||
2002 - 2004
|
dean of composers, conductors and sound engineers |
Period | Performance | Composition | Organisation | Location |
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1972
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1980
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1984
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1986
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1993
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1994
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1997
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2010
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2013
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regular performances | ||||
regular performances at the ISCM - World Music Days | ||||
regular performances | ||||
regular performances |
Period | Commission | Composition | Commissioner (Organisation) | Commissioner (Person) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Groupe de Musique Expérimentale de Bourges (GMEB) | ||||
Groupe de Musique Experimentale de Marseille (GMEM) | ||||
Period | Award | Composition | Awarding Organisation |
---|---|---|---|
1968
|
promotional award | ||
1972
|
promotional award | ||
1975
|
composition award | ||
1981
|
Prix Futura for "Sprechquartett" | ||
1988
|
master's degree in electro-acoustic music in Bourges, honorary degree for 20 years of composing electro-acoustic music | ||
1990
|
Ernst-Krenek-Award | ||
1991
|
music award | ||
1992
|
recognition award | ||
1996
|
recognition award for music | ||
2008
|
Carinthian Culture Award | ||
2013
|
Composers in Residence | ||
award | |||
promotional award |
The years Dieter Kaufmann spent in Paris (1967-1970) proved to be formative for his artistic self-conception. Here, he did not only get to know electro-acoustic music and Musique concrète, which enduringly influenced his compositions, as well as his activities as a conductor and director. He became aware of social questions and problems through witnessing the student revolts of May 1968 ("Evokation: Oratorium gegen Gewalt" based on texts by Ingeborg Bachmann, 1968). Without letting any tangible political statements carry him away, these questions influence the relation between the production and scenery of works of art ("Volksoper", 1978), the position attributed to women in our society ("Bildnis einer Frau im Spiegel", 1972), and the dramaturgical and musical origin of his works. The fact that the focus during the 1980s was on the conflict between the solitary individual and society is highly visible: in the church opera "Bruder Boleslaw" op. 61 (1989), this is expressed through the refusal of a penitent in the Middle Ages to all types of communication, and in "vokalen Theater" "Die Reise ins Paradies" (after the posthumous draft music for "Mann ohne Eigenschaften", 1987), this is expressed through the failed attempt of a utopian, "different" life. His residence in Paris also resulted in the basic orientation of Kaufmann's musical poetics, in addition to the obvious affinity he developed to the work of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales Schaeffers and Bayles. Regarding his relation to tradition, or the legacy of European compositions from the last centuries, he describes himself as being between musique concrète composers and the sounds he himself has fixed: they are objets trouvés, stumbled upon as any other material which can be further processed. In 1985 he composed "Für Clara. Ein romantisches Klavierkonzert", for instance, in order to treat the otherwise happily included harmonic series as (transformable) chord pillars or to imitate a "romantic" piano phrase somewhere between Chopin and Schumann; it could be the voice of Gunda König or, as in the beginning of the recording "Wiener Werkel" (1971), a sequence of 64 excerpts of varied provenance - human, machine-like or musical, each a second in duration: Kaufmann sees the focus of his compositions as being less about "inventing" material than about creating relations between existent material.
Wolfgang Fuhrmann, in: Komponisten der Gegenwart. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik, 1992