Salzburg Music Prize 2011 - Winner of Award



Friedrich Cerha Bildrechte Landespressebüro   Landeshauptmann-Stellvertreter Mag. David Brenner mit Musikpreis-Preisträger Friedrich Cerha Bildrechte: Landespressebüro


Justification of the jury in awarding the Salzburg Music Prize to Friedrich Cerha:


“Separating himself ironically from American minimalism, György Ligeti once described himself as a ‘maximalist’. This characterisation could also apply to Friedrich Cerha, who not by chance was befriended with Ligeti and was regarded highly by him. Cerha embodies in unspectacular, yet also radical manner an exemplary multi-perspectivity for the art of the modern. In terms of compositional technique his works unite avant-garde techniques of the post-war period with older procedures and materials which are thereby treated in a completely new way.  At the end of the 1950s, parallel to Ligeti, Xenakis and Lutoslawski, Cerha developed his own manner of composition with sound surfaces and textures, for instance in the exorbitantly difficult Spiegel cycle for orchestra dating from 1960/61.  Later pieces, including above all the operas 'Baal', 'Die Rattenfänger' and 'Der Riese von Steinfeld' contain tonal and cantabile elements which have repeatedly led to comparisons with Alban Berg. However, Cerha’s completion of 'Lulu' led in some cases to a clichéd categorisation of his music which on no account does justice to its individualism.


Cerha was never concerned with mere eclectic variety or even aesthetic concessions, but on the contrary with overcoming the squaring of the circle, something which belongs to a basic problem of New Music: to address the listener as far as possible undisguised with the articulation possibilities of compositionally differentiated music, in other words unifying construction and expression or even organic figurative growth.  In overcoming the poles of new and old or older, as well as differentiation and expression, a specific Viennese intermingling of commitment to tradition and innovation is also evident. It is not by chance that Cerha was essentially influenced by exponents of the Viennese School such as Polnauer, Kolisch and Steuermann, so that he has to be regarded as the most significant contemporary representative of a specific Viennese form of composing. This also includes the link between complete mastery of the craft in the service of autonomous musical form with an interest in the variety of expression of opera extending back to Italian Baroque music. Perhaps his excellent literary taste can also be regarded as Viennese, which led to fruitful contacts with the Viennese poetry scene, and is occasionally expressed in the inscrutable deeper meaning typical of the region. For instance the two 'Keintaten' from the early eighties, which are both an allusion to the genre of the cantata, the pun on the name of the librettist Ernst Klein and the Yiddish word for father: Tate. The title of the piece thus means fatherless.  Not only in this work by Cerha does art stand as an autonomous form of resistance against trends seeking to destroy the individual, which have been effective since the 20th century in the most varied ways.


One would not do justice to Cerha’s versatility if his activity as a conductor and organiser were also not honoured.  Among other things he and Kurt Schwertsik founded the ensemble 'die reihe', whose concerts repeatedly led to outcries in Vienna.  In addition Cerha also published a series of essays under the same name in the service of the serial and electronic avant-garde. In 1978 Cerha founded the cycle 'Pathways to our Time' which was dedicated very successfully to New Music. By honouring Friedrich Cerha, tribute is paid not only to an exemplary composer but also to an outstanding intellectual institution."


Biography:


Friedrich Cerha was born in 1926 in Vienna where he studied at the Academy of Music (violin, composition, music education) and at the university (musicology, German literature, philosophy). From 1956 to 1958 he took part in the holiday courses for New Music in Darmstadt. In 1958, in order to create a permanent forum for New Music in Vienna he founded the ensemble "die reihe" which subsequently achieved pioneering work in presenting avant-garde works, pieces from the Viennese school and the entire classical modern period.


From 1959 Cerha taught at the Academy of Music in Vienna, where from 1976 until 1988 he was professor of composition, notation and the interpretation of New Music. From 1960 until 1997 he was active as a conductor with leading international institutions in fostering New Music, with orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Cleveland and the Concertgebouw and opera houses in Berlin, Munich and Buenos Aires.


In 1978, together with Hans Landesmann in the Konzerthaus in Vienna he founded the cycle "Pathways to our Time", which he directed until 1983. From 1994 Cerha worked intensively on interpretation with the Klangforum Wien, whose president he was until 1999.


Cerha has received several prizes and honours, including the Austrian Medal of Honour for Science and Art, the decoration "Officier des Arts et Lettres" and the Golden Lion from the Venice Biennale for his lifetime achievements.


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