Several Facettes of Modern Music

Various locations in Vienna [ENA] The festival WienModern is a milestone for modern music lovers in Vienna. It has already its own publicum, its own favourite locations and authors. People are waiting with impatience every year to join the next round of modern music events. Nowadays the festival became the largest event of this kind worldwide. The WienModern festival has a long history and was grounded already in 1988 by Claudio Abbado.

Since the grounding of the festival by Claudio Abbado who the general musical director of the municipality of Vienna, the festival takes place every year while enlightening with the modern music the cooling down days of November. Since 1988 the festival became not only a magnet for interested in modern music publicum but also a real cultural institution with possibility to provide influence on development of modern music. The festival is also supported in its role of cultural institution, awareness raising and educational acidity by the Municipality of Vienna, by the Ministry of Arts, Culture, public services and sport as well as by a number of private foundations such as Erste Bank, Erst von Siemens Musical Foundation, Kapsch and others.

There are several clichés about what the modern music is and what it is not. The WienModern festival is working consciously with these clichés while shows all diversity and possible multiple facetted features of modern music. While talking about various facettes of modern music, Wien Modern is a festival where every lover of modern music can find his or her niche, starting from the youngest and to publicum with very tailor made interests.

The festival continues the tradition of the city of Vienna as a city of music where great names and great traditions take place. The city is known for such places as the Vienna Concert House, the Musikverein, the Vienna Opera, the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and many others. However, the WienModern festival also brings contribution to the image of Vienna as a world city of music, as a modern city, ready to experiments, not being afraid of new directions, styles and improvisations.

The special character to the festival is also being provided by various locations where performances take place. Each location has its character, each location has its own publicum who already knows that the favorite festival is coming again. And even the feature that everybody who has tickets can freely sit where every he or she likes too, contributes to the free and experimental spirit of the festival.

Traditionally the festival opens with the concert of Sofia Gubaidulina. This year it was a piece from 2019 “The Rage of God”. In her influence on the modern music Sofia Gubaidulina could be compared to Johann Sebastian Bach especially while combining rational and irrational in her cosmologic music. Sofia was born in a small village with the mysterious name “Bayarika” in the Tatar Republic of Russia. In translation from Tatar and Bashkir languages “Bayarika” means „Abundance”. Already at school she was famous for her absolute pitch and inspiring improvisations on piano.

Sofia Cubaidulina is one of the most significant composers of the twentieth century and one of the best representatives of WienModern festival that motto is diversity and away from clichés. Her music is full of great emotional strength, combined with the red line which goes through all her pieces and detailed feeling to each minimal change of sound. Sofia Gubaidullina is a composer who creates bringes between various countries and cultures. She does not belong to no one movement in the modern music, and at the same time she combines all of them including minimalism, avant-gardism and new folklore wave.

The cosmic character of works of Gubaidullina is reflected in the music of René Clemencic “Kabbalah - And it was in the middle of the night. Oratorio in Hebrew based on texts from the prophetic Kabbalah”. This is the piece full of Jewish mystic about cosmos and the spirit. René Clemencic was also specialist for ancient music who created an interpretation of the ten chapters of kabbala with interpretations of astronomy and astrophysics in frames of the Vienna planetarium.

The third performance which also follows the cosmic narrative, and the idea of mysterious cosmos is the installation George Crumb: Makrokosmos which was shown at the premises of the Jugendtheater am Steinhof, a famous building by Otto Wagner with mysterious atmosphere and elegance of the Art Nuveaux epoch. The performance is a phantastic and poetic model of the world which is formed from the big and small sounds of nature. The movements at the celestrial ballroom orient themselves on the twelve constellations of the zodiac. The entire piece is a combination of complexity of astronomy, astrology, religion and creation myths.

The WienModern is also addressing the most actual topics for our modern world such as diversity, tolerance, inclusiveness and engagement. Diversity and tolerance is one of the major topics of the WienModern festival. “Brauchen” is a performance full in spirit of diversity of the festival which was also performed in one of the most mysterious locations of the festival the Reaktor. The performance puts to discuss the change in norms, values and perceptions with the reflection in modern music. The performance also brings to discussion issues such as diversity and tolerance and social norms of male and female.

Inclusiveness and engagement is another topic where WienModern festival provides place to everyone, from younger to senior people. The Forest Concerts is a performance for the youngest those aim is to motivate children for music improvisation. The performance is full of sounds of forest and nature and is followed by the comic figures of Boss and SoundT who are experiencing nature after the city jungles.

The Heiner Goebbels: A House of Call is a masterpiece of completely different format, a truly pathetic performance. Heiner Goebbels is famous for his compilation of voice recordings in his imaginary notebook from the period from 1906 to 2017. His music combines narratives, rhythms and sounds in a kind of subjective world map of mankind. Iguazú superior by Georg Friedrich Haas is another fascinating and gigantic masterpiece which brings spectators to a mysterious journey along the Iguazú waterfalls. “As spectacular as the Iguazú Falls are (we were there in November, in the South American spring, rivers were full of water) - the most impressive thing was a hike above the falls, which could only be heard but not seen” were the words of Haas.

The festival does not only bring together music elements but also video installations and video arts. The piece Alberto Carretero: Renacer is a stream of video installations where each second could be compared to a modern art painting. The artist Alberto Carretero is using the artificial intelligence and membrane computing to develop algorithmic compositions. This is a truly transdisciplinary project. In the work of Stefano Gervasoni: In Nomine PPP the video of Paolo Pachini is used. The entire work is dedicated to the memory of Pier Paolo Pasolini and is a homage to the 100 year anniversary of this great artist and philosopher to show of interdependencies of modern and traditional, a complexity in which Paolo Pasolini was so skilled.

“Just don’t rush at street crossings ... In fact, the most important thing that had to be said ... And in this I also see some, maybe rooted in the centuries, in the family, a deep understanding that the most serious thing is just life.” – were the words of the father of Sofia Gubaidulina when she left her parents home to continue her study. The most serious thing is just life in all its facettes and interpretations, with all emotions, feelings, and senses. This could be a motto which takes us further through one more year, towards the new WienModern 2023 festival.