"Salzburg Music Award 2009" goes to composer Klaus Huber


The " Salzburg Music Award – International Composition Award of the Land Salzburg" will be awarded for the second time in 2009. It is endowed with 100.000 Euros altogether, which makes it one of the highest awards of this kind. The laureate of the Distinction Award receives 80.000 Euros, while 20.000 Euros go to the laureate of the Advancement Award. This year, the Music Award goes to the Swiss composer Klaus Huber. The Advancement Award goes to Franck Christoph Yeznikian, as was announced by the culture delegate and deputy governor Mag. David Brenner today, 7 August.

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"The Land Salzburg intentionally established this award during the Mozart year in 2006 in order to draw an artistic link ranging from past to present. While cultivating musical heritage, the encouragement of contemporary music should never fall behind“. This, according to Mr. Brenner is the intention of the Salzburg Music Award, which was first awarded in 2006 to Salvatore Sciarrino. With the reputation of being a cultural capital, like Salzburg, goes a mission to move forward permanently, Mr. Brenner says.


"This award should be a contribution to Salzburg’s positioning as a centre of contemporary art as well as an impulse to the public to value new music and its protagonists accordingly. Although the International composition award of the Land Salzburg has its roots in Mozart’s city of birth, its impact reaches beyond the city limit. This is demonstrated by the jury’s selection of the Swiss composer Klaus Huber. One of the most significant contemporary composers in the international music world will thus be honoured.", the culture delegate points out.


The awards ceremony in 2009 will be in cooperation with the newly set up Salzburg Biennale, the Festival for New Music, which will first be held on four weekends in March 2009. The ceremonial act and the laureate concert will take place on Sunday, 29 March 2009 from 18.00 in the great hall of the International Mozarteum Foundation. In addition, the entire fourth block of the Salzburg Biennale will be dedicated to laureate Klaus Huber: „Klaus Huber and Arabic music“.


New cooperation with the Salzburg Biennale
As part of this new cooperation with the Salzburg Biennale the Salzburg Music Award will also be conferred every second year rather than in three-year intervals as previously, deputy governor Brenner announced. He hopes that the integration into the Biennale will create a stronger link with Salzburg’s music scene and give its musical life a stronger impulse.


Prof. Dr. Hans Landesmann, artistic director of the Salzburg Biennale, is also excited about the cooperation, "especially because within the context of the Salzburg Biennale the major presenters of contemporary music will find a collective platform and will then be able to take further measures to integrate the laureates into Salzburg’s cultural life and launch adequate activities in relation to Salzburg’s musical institutions. Moreover, the Biennale as well as the Salzburg Music Award will benefit from making use of synergetic effects with regard to international significance.“


In order not to cause additional costs by shortening the award interval, the Distinction Award will be endowed with 60.000 Euros, which is less than before. The Advancement Award stays the same.


International Jury selects Laureate
The Salzburg Music Award does not take account of nationality or city of residence. The Distinction Award is conferred upon the suggestion of an international jury, and the Advancement Award is conferred upon the suggestion of the composer to whom the Distinciton Award was assigned.


Conferring the award to Klaus Huber was suggested by the jury consisting of Harry Vogt (new music editor of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, artistic director of the Witten Days of New Chamber Music and the concert series “Musik der Zeit”), Sylvain Cambreling (one of the most experienced conductors of new music, chief conductor of the SWR Symphony Orchestra  Baden-Baden and Freiburg, guest conductor at the Salzburg Festival, the Paris Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala Milano and the Vienna State Opera among others) and Salvatore Sciarrino (Music Award Laureate 2006).


Election of Music Award Laureate 2009
The jury made their decision unanimously and explains their reasons as follows:


"Since the early 1970s, the composer Klaus Huber, born in 1924 in Bern, has had a reputa-tion of being a musician of expression and commitment, a transmittor of existential messages. His highly differentiated music speaks of the possibility of and faith in a better world. Huber fomulated his humanistic ideas with high artistic ethos and integrity. These ideas find adequate expression in works such as Tenebrae (1967), a kind of „passion music without words“, speaking of solar eclipse and the sombreness of life, or the cantata  inwendig voller Figur (inside full figure) (1971), which combines atomic menace with apocalyptic visions. „Um der Unterdrückten willen“ („For the sake of the oppressed“): the title of the first part of the large scale oratorio Erniedrigt-Geknechtet-Verlassen-Verachtet (Humiliated-Fettered-Abandoned-Dispised) (1975-82) could be seen as a leading theme in Huber’s incredibly rich, manifold as well as comprehensive oevre, encompassing all gen-res from musical theatre to forms of chamber music. In his early days as a student of Willy Burkhardt, Klaus Huber was intensively engaged in polyphonic thinking. Later on, when studying Webern and Strawinsky’s late music, he started using serial methods in his music.


Characteristic for Hubers music is his strong interest in Christian mysticism, Sufism and Zen. At the same time, he dealt with various musical traditions, occidental as well as Asian, Latin American and Arabic cultures. Huber’s music is about bringing the past to mind, as he repeatedly ties in with music dating back as far as Perontius, Gesualdo, Bach or Mozart (as in the chamber concert for piano Intarsi or in Ecce Homines for string quartet). Above all, however, Huber drew important inspiration from Arabic music, which he studied intensively and which lingers on in many of his works, such as for example the Lamentationes de Fine Vicesimi Saeculi for orchestra and Sufi singer (1992-93) or his chamber concert Die Seele muss vom Reittier steigen (The soul must climb off the mount) (2002). A bridging between Orient and Occident is also attempted in his compostition Die Erde bewegt sich auf den Hörnern eines Ochsen (The earth moves on the horns of a bullock) (1992-94) for Sufi singer, European and Arabic musicians, and audiotape. Huber had the impulse to write this work within the context of the first Gulf war in 1991 and the resulting „demonisation of Arabic culture“ circulating in the West: poetical, mystical images merge with current political topics in a fascinatingy coloured world of sound.


Only few have been so deeply involved in the refinement of the tonal system. For long, he has been questioning the tempered pitch grid. Inspired by Arabic practices of making music, Huber has developed highly differentiated third tone harmonics. Yet this system is always liked to his subject matters, messages and avowals.


The authors Huber set to music with special preference speak of this: In his music, the Sermon on the Mount stands next to the Communist Manifesto, texts from the South American „Theology of Liberation“ (Ernesto Cardenal) next to non-European authors of the present (like Mahmoud Darwish), Hildegard von Bingen next to Heinrich Böll (in Cantiones de circulo gyrante, 1985), medieval mystics next to Ossip Mandelstam. The stage piece Schwarzerde (Black earth) (1997-2001) is based on the lyricism of this Russian poet, who once formulated the entitlement of art to relate to the real world, which was so important to Huber.


To Klaus Huber, music is communication. This is manifested by his longtime teaching commitment. He understood the International Composers Seminar he founded in Boswil in 1969 as a kind of Anti-Babel to bring attention to young composers. As an influential teacher and transmittor of information, Huber has educated generations of young com-posers, thus making musical history – especially with his Freiburg composition class (1973.1990) and with guest professorships, courses and seminars. From his classes, follo-wing the same premises as his own compositions, different personalities have emanated, like Brian Ferneyhough, Wolfgang Rihm, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Reinhard Febel, Michael Jarrell or Toshio Hosokawa.


This award is intended to honour the life work of one of the outstanding composers of our time, an artist who is still productive today, and whose innovative music cannot be seperated from his high paedagogic and sociopolitical dedication.


Advancement Award for Franck Christoph Yeznikian
Upon Klaus Huber’s suggestion the Advancement Award goes to the composer Franck Christoph Yeznikian. Huber explains his reasons as follows:


"Franck Christoph Yeznikian a very individual, highly talented, intelligent and extremely sensitive composer, dedicated to the philosophical fundamentals of the art of composing. Despite his critical attitude towards career-oriented thinking, he has managed to achieve increasing public attention for his compositions without professional management. Never was he spoilt in any respect, which benefited his independence and compositional individuality.”


Biography of Klaus Huber
Klaus Huber, born on 30 November 1924 in Bern; 1947 to 1956 music studies at the Zürich Conservatory; violin classes with Stefi Geyer, theory and composition classes with his godfather Willy Burkhard in Zürich, 1955-56 composition classes with Boris Blacher in Berlin; 1950 to 1960 violin teacher at the Zürich Conservatory;


1955 World premiere of "Drei kleine Vokalisen" (“Three little Vocalises”) at the International Gaudeamus Music Week in Bilthoven, Netherlands. From then on, increasing international presence: 1958 world premiere of "Oratio Mechtildis" (Chamber symphony with alto voice) under Ernest Bour at the IGNM World Music Days in Strasbourg, 1959 World premiere of the chamber cantata "Des Engels Anredung an die Seele" (“The Angel speaking to the Soul”) at the IGNM World Music Days in Rome; the piece also receives the first prize at the composers competition of the IGNM-Section Italy (member of the jury include Luigi Dallapiccola and Wladimir Vogel). 1961 World premiere of "Noctes intelligibilis lucis" for oboe and cembalo with Heinz Holliger and Edith Picht-Axenfeld at the Darmstadt holiday courses. 1962 Performance of excerpts from the oratorio "Soliloquia" after Augustin in London under Hans Rosbaud, complete performance in 1964 in Zürich under Schönberg’s pupil Erich Schmid.


1960 to 1963 Associate music professor for history of music and musical literature studies at the Luzern Conservatory; 1961 to 1972 Classes at the Basel Academy of Music. From 1964 he teaches the composition and instrumentation class, from 1968 the composition master class; 1965/69/87 member of the jury fort he IGNM World Music Days; 1966/68/72 leader of the analysis classes and seminars at the Intenational Composition Competitions of the Gaudeamus Foundation; 1968 Travels to the Soviet Union with Constantin Regamey; 1969 Huber founds the International Composers Seminar in Boswil (Switzerland), which significantly remains under his influence until 1980.


1973 Stipendiary of the DAAD Berlin; the same year he is called to the Freiburg Conservatory as professor for composition and successor of Wolfgang Fortner. He employs Brian Ferneyhough as his assistant and expands the Institute for New Music. With their strong relation between theory and practise, his teaching methods are still an effective model today. His many pupils include Reinhard Febel, Toshio Hosokawa, Michael Jarrell, Younghi Pagh-Paan, André Richard, Wolfgang Rihm, Arturo Tamayo and Hans Wüthrich among others.


1979-82 President of the Swiss Musicians Association; 1983 First trip to Nicaragua, meeting Ernesto Cardenal for the first time; lectures in La Habana, Kuba; world premiere of the political oratorio "Erniedrigt – Geknechtet – Verlassen – Verachtet..." (“Humiliated-Fettered-Abandoned-Dispised”) (with texts by Ernesto Cardenal among others) in Donaueschingen; 1984 Beginning of his international activities as guest professor and composer in residence. He teaches in Latin America, Japan and Canada, in Europe among other cities in Siena and Paris (Conservatoire National and Ircam), Radziejowice/Poland, Skandinavia (Göteborg, Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo), Milano, Darmstadt, Basel, Huddersfield, London (Royal Academy of Music), Strasbourg (Festival Musica), Luzern (IMF) and Avignon (Centre Acanthes).


1985 World premiere of "Cantiones de circulo gyrante" after Hildegard von Bingen and a text by Heinrich Böll for the „Year of Romanesque churches“ in Cologne. 1987 Paris premiere of "La terre des hommes" after texts by Simone Weil; in the section titled "La Porte" Huber explores composition with third tones fort he first time, which becomes a fixed component of his composing technique with the string trio "Des Dichters Pflug" (“The poet’s plough”) (1989).  Beginning of his long lasting study of the work of Ossip Mandelstam. 1990 Termination of his teaching activities at the State Academy of Music in Freiburg.


1994 World premiere of "Die Erde bewegt sich auf den Hörnern eines Ochsen" (“The earth moves on the horns of a bull”) for Arabic and European musicians and audiotape based on a text by the Iranian Mahmoud Doulatabadi; this is the first time Huber works with Arabic modi (Maqamat). At the same time he creates the orchestral piece "Lamentationes de fine vicesimi saeculi" (with one Sufi singer ad libitum), where he transfers the Maqam technique to large  orchestra. 1994 World premiere of the chamber concert "Intarsi" with the soloist András Schiff in Luzern; together with the string quintet "Ecce homines" (1998) it testifies to Huber’s intensive study of Mozart’s music. 1998 Foundation of the concert series "Musica insieme" in Panicale/Umbrien, Huber’s second place of residence.


2001 The world premiere of "Schwarzerde" („Black earth“) at the Theatre Basel under Arturo Tamayo marks the final point of Huber’s long lasting preoccupation with Ossip Mandelstam. He increasingly turns towards Arabic cultures; as regards his composition technique he strives for a synthesis of the micro interval structures (derived from the Maqamat) with European traditions, especially with the vocal polyphony of the Renaissance. With the Paris vocal ensemble "Les Jeunes Solistes" (Direction: Rachid Safir) he finds the ideal interpreters if his highly artificial vocal style. Significant works of this latest creative period include the chamber cantata "Die Seele muss vom Reittier steigen..." (“The soul must climb off the mount”) based on a text by Mahmoud Darwish for countertenor (or alto), violoncello, baryton and small orchestra (Donaueschingen 2002) and "Miserere hominibus" for seven vocalists and seven instruments (2006 Luzern).


Major Awards:

1959  First prize of the composers competition of the  IGNM-Section Italy,

1970  Beethoven Award of the city Bonn for the orchestral composition "Tenebrae",

1975  Composers Award of the Swiss Musicians Association,

1978  Art Prize of the city Basel,

1985  Reinhold Schneider Award of the city Freiburg,

1986  Premio Italia for "Cantiones de Circulo Gyrante",

2002  Culture and Peace Award of the Villa Ichon, Bremen,

2007  European Church Music Award, Schwäbisch Gmünd.


Klaus Huber is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, the Berlin Academy of Arts, the Free Academy of Arts Mannheim, honorary member of the IGNM, honorary doctorate at the Strasbourg University and honorary citizen of the community of Panicale/Umbria. He lives in Bremena and Panicale.


His catalogue raisonné encompasses all categories from stage work and oratorio to ensemble and chamber music in various vocal and instrumental arrangements. The autographs are kept in the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel. His works are published by Bärenreiter, Schott and since 1975 by Ricordi (Munich). His collected scripts were published by MusikTexte (Cologne) in 1999 under the title of "Umgepflügte Zeit" (“Ploughed up time”). (Further information with detailed bibliography and discography on www.klaushuber.com).


Biography Franck Christoph Yeznikian
Franck Christoph Yeznikian was born on 22 May 1969 in Besançon (France). He started playing percussions in 1984, whereupon he took various classes at the Conservatoire National de Région (C.N.R.) in Besançon. 1987 – 1989 Studies in music and singing at the Centre Polyphonique and 1989-1991 conscientious objector to military service, various activities and piano improvisation at the C.N.R. Dijon with Jean-Pierre Leguay; 1991-1994 Classes in composition with Denis Dufour and Jean-Marc Duchenne at the C.N.R. Lyon (acousmetic and instrumental music), research paper on Heinz Holliger and Paul Celan (aesthetics); 1991-1994 Private classes with Klaus Huber as well as workshops with Harrison Birtwistle, Gérard Grisey, Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Jarrell, James Dillon; 1994-1997 Studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon, specialisation in counterpoint (medieval times and renaissance) with Gérard Geay, analysis of 20th century music with Robert Pascal (paper on the relationship between Klaus Huber and Ossip Mandelstam);


1996 First prize Hidden Potential at the Boswil seminar and competition (Switzerland), Beginning of the Research paper on the arte historian and philosopher  Georges Didi-Huberman; 1998-2000 Composition studies at the Hoogeschool Maastricht with Robert H.P. Platz and a course at the Ircam, Paris ; 2002 Laureate of the Festival International de Musique de Besançon for „Lacrimis Adamanta Movebis“ for large orchestra. World premiere of his piece „La ligne -la prim’ombra- la perte“ for mezzo, chorus, percussions and string orchestra in Donaueschingen; 2003, Advancement award of the Academy of Arts, Berlin Commission by Musica of «les humeurs cristallines», for viola da gamba, two theorboes and cembalo. Commission of the first string quartet “FIBRÆ” of the Diotima Quartet, as well as the solo piece “La chair de l’ombre” for Theorbe. Commission by the CNSM de Lyon for the harp class of Fabrice Pierre with two harps and alto “In statu Nascendi” for Dominique Vellard; Commission “PHASMES (de Laocoonte)” by the SWR Stuttgart for solo cello and large orchestra, first performed by Jean-Guihen Queyras under the baton of Brad Lubman; Concert portrait in Brussels with the world premiere of PVLVERE (small ensemble, band and electronics) with the ON ensemble and the C.R.F.M.W Liège; Scholarship and commission in Strasbourg with the Linea Ensemble.


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