Tag Archives: Germany

by | April 29, 2025 · 6:00 am

The traveling organ

When the congregation of the Catholic Heilig-Geist-Kirche in the historic Hanseatic town of Lemgo, North Rhine-Westphalia, embarked on a renovation project from 2021 to 2023, they sought to replace their aging electronic organ with a proper pipe organ but were constrained by budget limitations. An opportunity arose to acquire a nearly century-old Wurlitzer Style D theater organ, built by the Wurlitzer factory in North Tonawanda, New York (near Niagara Falls), in 1924. The organ was first acquired in the late 1940s by Dr. Howard C. Stocker for his personal use in Los Angeles. By 1955, Stocker had moved the organ to San Bernardino (just east of Los Angeles), installing it in a custom-built home specially adapted to accommodate the instrument’s size and requirements. The house soon became a popular venue for concerts. In 1987, tragedy struck when a fire destroyed the entire house–but remarkably, the organ survived. Despite the unfortunate event, Stocker was quite relieved because he believed a house could be rebuilt, but the Style D organ was irreplaceable.

After Stocker’s death in 1993, the organ was temporarily stored in Kansas before being transported to Celle, Lower Saxony, Germany. There, cinema organ enthusiast Friedhelm Fleiter–who had long sought a Wurlitzer Style D–discovered it. For many years, Fleiter preserved and maintained the instrument as a personal passion project. To ensure its functionality, several components were carefully restored and modified for use in the church; however, preserving the original organ’s design and architectural integrity remained the top priority.

When the organ was relocated to the church, preserving the original Wurlitzer Style D façade proved impossible. Instead, a new organ case was designed to complement the church’s architectural style. The organ’s structure consists of two vertically stacked, roughly cube-shaped sections, along with a freestanding console. The upper section houses the pipework and features swell doors on two sides, which remain closed when the organ is not in use to ensure the enclosed pipes stay in tune. Although the new organ cannot fully replicate the musical fidelity of the original, it serves its purpose well in worship settings, particularly for accompanying congregational singing.

This according to “100 Jahre und kein bisschen leise: Eine Wurlitzer-Orgel (1924) für Lemgo” [100 years old and not a bit quiet: A Wurlitzer organ (1924) for Lemgo] by Ralf-Thomas Lindner (Organ: Journal für die Orgel 27/4 [2024] 26–30; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 2024-20513).

Listen to Singing in the rain performed on a Wurlitzer Style D organ below. The second video features a different model Wurlitzer organ.

Related Bibliolore posts:

https://bibliolore.org/2022/08/04/the-fokker-organ/

https://bibliolore.org/2019/02/04/how-to-destroy-an-organ/

https://bibliolore.org/2011/03/29/the-wanamaker-organ/

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by | August 2, 2024 · 6:00 am

DAF’s electro-brutalism

As pioneers of electropunk and techno, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF, which means German-American Friendship) are regarded as one of the more innovative bands in new German music. Their song lyrics were provocative and minimal, featuring unusual synthesizer sounds set to cool drum beats and rejecting common song structures. The duo was founded in Düsseldorf in 1978 by Robert Görl and the Spanish-born Gabi Delgado-Lopez. The two had met a year earlier through the local punk scene. Together with three other musicians, they released their first LP Ein produkt der DAF in 1979. The album featured the sound that DAF became known for: electronic minimalism, which led the group to be associated with contemporary acts like the U.K.’s Throbbing Gristle and New York City’s Suicide.

DAF’s music became even more rhythmic on their second album Die kleinen und die bösen (1980). This was followed by the provocative single Der Mussolini (probably DAF’s best-known work to date) featuring lyrics that emphasized confrontation and minimalist beats that reduced the stiff marching style and thundering speech of reviled fascist dictators to a novelty dancefloor craze. Visually, their homoerotic leather outfits fit in well with the early synthpop duos of the day (OMD, Soft Cell, Blancmange, Cabaret Voltaire, Wham!) even though they never belonged to that scene. Overall, DAF’s style proved to immensely popular and made them one of the five biggest-selling acts in Germany in 1981.

By 1982, the group was finished. DAF’s final album Für immer was released after they disbanded–although today both Delgado-Lopez and Görl claim they never formally disbanded. The reason for ending the group was musical, explained Gabi-Delgado in an interview, and in his estimation the minimalist concept for the band had run its course. In the mid-1980s, however, the electronic music scene came to be dominated by DAF epigones. Their influence outlived their existence and inspired entire electronic (sub)genres like Detroit techno, Chicago house, German techno, industrial, and electronic body music (EBM).

This according to Das ist DAF: Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft: Die autorisierte biografie by Miriam Spies and Rüdiger Esch (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2017; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2017-46785). Also find the entry on Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft in Das Gothic- und Dark Wave-Lexikon: Das Lexikon der schwarzen Szene (2003) in RILM Music Encyclopedias.

Listen to a compilation of DAF songs below.

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by | May 17, 2024 · 6:00 am

Isang Yun: Composer and freedom fighter

Isang Yun’s youth was dominated by his involvement with resistance movements against the Japanese occupation of Korea, which began in 1910. His political activities deeply affected his development as a musician, which was characterized by the constant conflict between his artistic interests and the political commitment that he felt was necessary. Nevertheless, at the age of 17, Yun traveled to Japan, despite his father’s warning, to embark on a college education focused on the study of Western music. After two years, he returned to Korea to continue his studies and his involvement in the Korean liberation struggle. Yun was arrested by Japanese occupation forces in 1943, and it was not until 1948 that he returned to music, this time as a music teacher at an all-girls high school in his hometown. He later began lecturing at a university in Seoul where he received several awards for his compositions.  

These awards enabled Yun to continue studying music in Europe at the Berliner Hochschule für Musik (Berlin University of Music). His frequent participation in Darmstadt’s summer courses for new music led to his acceptance by the European avant-garde, within which he remained an outsider, albeit a respected one. Yun settled in Berlin in 1964 as a Ford Foundation scholarship recipient but the political conflict in his now divided homeland was never far from his thoughts. He was especially critical of South Korea’s leadership and refused several invitations to perform there. Yun hoped for the reunification of Korea, and to make this happen, he made a daring visit communist North Korea in 1963.

The brazen visit concerned South Korean officials, who had Yun kidnapped from Berlin in 1967 in a spectacular operation by the South Korean secret service. He was charged with treason and sent to prison where he endured torture, attempted suicide, and was forced to confess to espionage. After a trial, Yun was sentenced to life imprisonment, a charge that was later revised after massive protests internationally. Subsequently, Yun left Korea in 1969 and returned to Berlin and later became a German citizen. From 1970 onward, he worked as a professor and taught composition while lecturing on various occasions throughout Europe and North America. In 1972, Yun composed the piece Sim Tjong based on a popular Korean fairytale specially for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. When asked in a 1987 interview whether he was consciously trying to combine Asian and Western elements in his music, Yun replied,

“No, that would be too artificial.  The inner truth is, in actuality, a music of the cosmos. Realistically seen, I’ve had two experiences, and I know the practice of both Asian music and European. I am equally at home in both fields. I’m a man living today, and within me is the Asia of the past combined with the Europe of today. My purpose is not an artificial connection, but I’m naturally convinced of the unity of these two elements. For that reason, it’s impossible to categorize my music as either European or Asian.”

Celebrate Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month by reading the entry on Isang Yun (also spelled Yoon) in MGG Online. Listen to Yun’s composition Muak dance fantasy below.

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by | December 5, 2023 · 6:00 am

Gloria Coates, maverick composer

Gloria Coates was born in 1933 in Wausau, Wisconsin and later studied composition with Alexander Tcherepnin and Otto Luening, as well as singing, musicology, acting, and painting, receiving degrees from Columbia University and Louisiana State University. Coates initially worked as a composer, singer, actress, author, and painter. In 1969, she settled in Munich and focused on composing. This period of her life yielded 17 symphonies and ten string quartets, as well as other instrumental chamber music, vocal works, and electroacoustic music. In 2014, the Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed referred to Coates as “our last maverick”.

Coates used microtonality, scordatura, and glissandi on string instruments, and experimented with multiphonic vocal techniques, yet without ever entirely abandoning tonality. In a 2010 interview, she described her distinct approach to composition and use of glissandi. As Coates described, “I would say that my initial work with glissandi had to do with the fact that I’m also a visual artist. I’ve never really analyzed it, but, in a way, I was building structures visually that could also exist in sound. I think that’s how it all began.”

The premiere of her first symphony Music on Open Strings at the Warsaw Autumn Festival in 1978 brought her international fame. The symphony was included in the Bayerischer Rundfunk’s 1980 Musica Viva concert series, becoming the first orchestral composition by a woman in the 35-year history of the series. Coates became involved in Munich’s musical life by directing a series on U.S. contemporary music there from 1971 to 1984. Invitations to concerts and lectures in the early 1980s took her to Moscow (1981), India (1982), and Harvard University (1984).

Coates, who shared her time between the United States and Germany, died in Munich on 19 August 2023. Read the full obituary on MGG Online.

Listen to Gloria Coates’ composition Time advances to no destiny (performed by Lavinia Mallegni) below.

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by | November 9, 2019 · 6:00 am

Punk rock and the fall of the Berlin Wall

It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship.

Punk rock was a life-changing discovery. The buzz-saw guitars, the messed-up clothing and hair, the rejection of society, and the DIY approach to building a new one: in their gray surroundings, where everyone’s future was preordained by some communist apparatchik, punk represented a revolutionary philosophy—quite literally, as it turned out.

As these young kids tried to form bands and became more visible, security forces—including the dreaded secret police, the Stasi—targeted them. They were spied on by friends and even members of their own families; they were expelled from schools and fired from jobs; they were beaten by police and imprisoned.

But instead of conforming, the punks fought back, playing an indispensable role in the underground movements that helped bring down the Berlin Wall.

This according to Burning down the Haus: Punk rock, revolution, and the fall of the Berlin Wall by Tim Mohr (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2018).

Today we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall! Above, punks gathering on Alexanderplatz in East Berlin in 1981; below, the iconic punk anthem Überall wohin’s dich führt by Planlos, recorded live in 1983.

BONUS: The East German punk scene is reimagined in the 2001 film Wie Feuer und Flamme; the group in the clip is performing Überall wohin’s dich führt.

More articles about punk rock are here.

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by | July 31, 2014 · 1:00 am

Germany rocks opera

 

Increasingly, young opera singers from all over the world are moving to Germany, drawn by the prospect of steady work—even full-time employment.

In 2013 Germany saw 7230 opera performances, one-third of the world’s total. German opera houses employ 1270 soloists and 2870 chorus members on full-time contracts.

An American soprano who will be joining the Deutsche Oper in Berlin next year says “There aren’t as many opportunities as there used to be for up-and-coming singers in the U.S. If you’re a lesser-known name, American opera houses often don’t take a chance on you because they need to sell tickets. When I return to the U.S., people will say ‘She must be good, she’s sung at the Deutsche Oper.’”

This according to “If you want to sing opera, learn German” by Elisabeth Braw (Newsweek 17 July 2014; online only).

Below, a recent German opera production that provided numerous employment opportunities.

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by | November 21, 2011 · 1:00 am

Early muzak

In 1760 the Swedish diplomat Count Ulrich zu Lynar reported on an ingenious system for Tafelmusik at the court of Ludwig VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (above, 1691–1768):

“Next [to the palace] is a small garden and in it a Lusthaus where the Landgravial family dines during the summer, and in the middle of which, where the table is set up, there is a small round hole that leads to a basement, out of which music is meant to sound very beautifully. To that end, in each of the four corners there is also an opening from which the sound can come.”

This pavillion, built in the early eighteenth century and apparently used during Ludwig’s reign as a special entertainment for visitors, was demolished in the nineteenth century. A surviving architectural plan, however, indicates an underground passageway to it from the palace’s main building, presumably intended for the serenading musicians.

This according to “The court of Hesse-Darmstadt” by Ursula Kramer, an essay included in Music at German courts, 1715–1760: Changing artistic priorities (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001, pp. 333–363).

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