HANS THOMALLA ENSEMBLE/ORCHESTRA EJK0754 , ensemble 29'30'' LIST OF WORKS (SELECTION) The Brightest Form of (0-1-1-0, 1-1-1-1, Absence , percussion, multimedia-composition, strings: 1-1-1-1-1), SOLO video: William Lamson live-electronics (with 2 sound directors), EJK0741 violoncello 15' video Counterpart EJK0756 chamber orchestra 17' EJK0742 piano 13' Ausruff (or large ensemble): Piano Counterpart 1-1-2-0, 0-2-1-0, harp, piano, guitar, EJK0743 percussion 8' Percussion Counterpart percussion, strings: 6-5-4-4-1, live- electronics (with CHAMBER MUSIC sound director)

EJK0755 EJK0744 intermezzo for 9' amplified piano, 21' Flüchtig wild.thing 2 percussion orchestra (2 percus- sionists, , electric EJK0746 flute, , piano, 17' guitar, strings: Momentsmusicaux , violoncello 10-8-8-6-3)

EJK0747 , clarinet, 16' MUSIK THEATRE Stücke Charakter piano, , viola, violoncello EJK0757 dramatic soprano, 90' Fremd choir (8 alt, 16 , EJK0748 saxophone, piano, 12' in three scenes, Lied 16 ), orchestra vibraphone one interemezzo (2-2-2-2, 4-2-2-1, and one epilogue 2 percussionists, EJK0749 string quartet 13' Albumblatt piano, guitar, strings: 10-8-8-6-3), stage- EJK0751 saxophone quartett 5' instruments, mar- Albumblatt II ching band, live- elektronics (ad. lib.) EJK0750 soprano, piano 5' Three Desert Songs

EJK0753 , , 16' Wonderblock electric guitar, piano, 2 percussion, violoncello

EJK0752 saxophone, 14' Chodowieckistraße 15/I, D-10405 Berlin, Germany Fracking string trio Tel. +493044045164, E-Mail: [email protected] www.editionjulianeklein.de ANS HOMALLA ORTRAIT he fathoms the acoustics of sforzando, the rhetoric of H T P shock, and the sheer emotion of the scream to discover what they have in common. BIOGRAPHY What does Jimi Hendrix have to do with Frédéric Chopin? Acoustic phenomena such as Rauschen [noise] can become Not much at all, until they met in a piece by Hans Thomalla objects of interest in the same way as musical forms such 1975 born in Bonn in 2004. You might think Chopin’s serene salon elegance as the character piece in Stücke Charakter and the Album- would have no chance against Hendrix’s rock excesses. blatt in the string quartet of the same name. In the series 1994-99 Studies in Composition at the Hochschule für But in the course of his piece wild.thing, Thomalla perfo- Musik und darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt a.M. of compositions Counterparts on the other hand, the ab- rates and disassembles the originals, until the manic stract musical figure is confronted with the materiality of 1999- Assistant Dramaturg at Staatsoper Stuttgart drums and the melancholy piano voice permeate each the instrument: the bow of the cello seems to rebel against 2002 (produktion dramaturg for “Das Mädchen mit other. The uninhibited, but then completely solitary drum the melody; the uncontrolled hopping movement of the den Schwefelhölzern”, “Die Gezeichneten”, beat and the aimless piano suddenly become part of a “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” et al.) superball attached to the top of a mallet makes a well- common gesture. formed rhythmic scheme impossible. In addition, Thomal- 2002-07 Graduate Studies at Stanford University la’s musical questions tie up with social, sometimes posi- since 07 Associate Professor of Composition at Northwes- wild.thing is typical in many ways for the aesthetic horizon tively existential questions. When he determines foreign- tern University (where he also directs the Institute which forms the background to Thomalla’s compositions. ness in his opera Fremd as an aesthetic and political posi- for New Music) On the one hand, the composer, who was born in Bonn in tion, it is in the knowledge that he too experiences his 1975, alludes to his generation’s aesthetic openness: material as “something foreign”. HONORS AND AWARDS where Thomalla brings together different, historically disparate sounds, he does not exclude popular culture. 1996-99 Scholarship by the Studienstiftung des dt. Volkes And on the other hand, the material Thomalla chooses 2002-04 Scolarship by the DAAD for studies at Stanford usually comes from a particular meaningful context, giving University his work a semantic framework. When, in Momentsmusi- caux, he juxtaposes a passage from Brahms’s clarinet 2002-07 Alice Wilbur Chapman Fellowship at Stanford quintet with several figures from a study by Theobald University Böhm, the intimacy of chamber music meets up with the 2004 Kranichsteiner Musikpreis rationalised acoustic idea of the virtuoso flautist, internali- 2006 Christoph Delz Preis sation meets up with externalization. Thomalla makes this 2006-07 Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center contradiction the departure point for a musical movement, it becomes the beginning of a "semantic drift" during 2009 CIRA Grant (Collaborative Initiatives for Research which the "conceptualisation of sound gradually slips in the Arts) at Northwestern University away" (Thomalla) and something new and individual 2011 Award by the Ernst v. Siemens Musikstiftung comes into being. 2013 Faculty Research Grant at Northwestern szene photo of „Fremd“, Staatsoper Stuttgart 2011 University When he quotes Brahms or Chopin, Thomalla enriches his Thomalla once described himself as a speechless rhetori- works with a certain historical aura. Even a tonal chord is 2014-15 Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin cian. That is correct, in so far as he is at first an observer of enough to explode the avant-garde soundscape. For Tho- his chosen historic material and therefore speechless. It is malla, history is never historicism, but rather a way of not until the analytic act of composition that he perceives PERFORMANCES, ENSEMBLES AND MUSICIANS ascertaining his own position. He refuses to adopt tradi- language, his own and others. And then Thomalla is of tional stylistic elements uncritically – be it a certain sound Donaueschinger Musiktage, Huddersfield Contemporary Music course, not a “speechless rhetorician” – not only because or rhetorical flourishes – and works against the "sell-off of Festival, ECLAT Festival Stuttgart, Wittener Tage für neue Kam- he is capable of speaking so eloquently and intelligently semantic clichés" (Thomalla). The historic reference be- mermusik, Ultraschall-Festival Berlin, Darmstädter Ferienkurse, about music, but also because he gives his works a per- comes tangible in the figure of Bebung [trembling], which Staatsoper Stuttgart, , Ensemble Ascolta, sonal signature, just as if thinking about music had its own serves not only as a baroque ornament, but also as an , Arditti Quartett, Spektral Quartett, En- specific sound. semble Talea, , Münchner Philharmoniker, Trio emotional category of the musical subject in the string , Nicolas Hodges, Lucas Fels of the same name; or in Ausruff – a dispositive, with which (by Björn Gottstein)