Friedrich Goldmann, born in Saxony, lives as a freelance composer in Berlin, but he has also worked in the field of musical education and as a conductor. He was a member of the East German Academy of Arts and has been a professor of composition at the Berlin Hochschule der K�nste since 1991. The works of Friedrich Goldmann selected for this documentary CD were all written between 1988 and 1992. For all their many dissimilarities, they reveal the composer's increasing interest in what might be called contingency in musical composition, i. e. The realization that nothing is necessary, that anything can be accomplished in different ways, and is hence contingent. Goldmann's encounter with this basic problem of modern art has led him to distinguish between two complementary strategies of composition. On the one hand, the composer may systematize the connections between compositional elements (e. g. harmony and rhythm). On the other hand, this same systematization makes it possible for him to isolate the functionally self-contained complex entities thus obtained. Both these strategies - the systematic integration of elements, and the isolation of complexes by making them functionally autonomous - are among the abstract principles and initial axioms of Goldmann's musical language. This abstractivist tinge in Goldmann's cast of thought is counterbalanced by his highly practical bias as a performing musician. For years Goldmann has been an active conductor, and this has affected his approach to composition by granting him not only a capability of rational detachment, but also a highly refined and sophisticated range of expression.

Hermann Keller, a composer and pianist, has been daring to approach and stretch limits ever since he first started to write music. For Keller, each music-making activity involves the exploration and testing of his timbral material. Far from proceeding purely theoretically, he does this by gathering experience on the instruments for which he writes. One feature of his combination of jazz and contemporary composition is a sense of restlessness and discontent, of rebellion and escape, that typifies his music as a whole. The conflictive potential resulting from this symbiosis, combined with acrid timbres bordering on the shrill and discordant, gives Keller's music it's tension.

On time with the German and international start of the motion picture "Brother of Sleep" ("Schlafes Bruder" / "Frere de sommeil"), directed by Joseph Vilsmaier, WERGO has released a CD with the central musical work of the film - the "Toccata for organ". All five works of this CD can best be characterized as spiritual or meditative music that goes beyond "sacred music".

" A previously unknown shellac recording of the dadaist recording his immortal sound poem, Ursonate, from the 1930s, was apparently recently discovered. And to much amazement has been released here for the first time. Historically, sonically mindblowing." (forcedexposure.com) "This is a remarkable artifact and a revealing, even moving rendition." (Option, July/August 1995) Note: According to Ernst Schwitters's testimony, this is the original recording of his father Kurt's performance. We do not wish to conceal the fact that this claim has since been doubted by a third party. WERGO is investigating the matter.

The music of "Don Juan", which Richard Strauss rightly called a "tone poen", is of a double nature: it can just as well be heard as an effervescent and enraptured tour de force of a creative temperament which has found itself or as the depiction of various episodes. In "Macbeth" it is not the Shakespeare drama which Richard Strauss reproduces here, but rather its essence: a psychogram of the two protagonists in musical terms, a psychic profile of the Scottish nobleman turned criminal usurper and his spouse who ensnares him and spurs him on. Despite of the manyfold commentaries and philosophical interpretations of "Also sprach Zarathustra" (Thus spake Zarathustra), however, this much is certain that Strauss did not try to set a philosophical system to music. Nevertheless, there is also no doubt that he undertook the task - inspired by intensive study of Nietzsche - of singing the praises of a "superhuman" being in the sense of a spiritual creature conscious of itself and freed of all earthly traces.

The present CD, portraying the Polish composer Jagoda Szmytka, is characterized by the idea of a physical music. In her works, Szmytka takes a closer look at the physicality of sound and examines the contact between the bodies of the performer and the instrument, among others. In "hand saw WeltAll-Stars. Generously", for example, she focuses on the hand as the instrumentalist's most important part of the body while a gestural "cell" in the form of an ascending glissando pervades the piece "for travellers like angels or vampires" in multiple variants. "Her music is body" (Michael Rebhahn) - this is because even the physical aspects are decisive for the composer when creating her music. As a result, Szmytka pushes the performers to their physical limits - as well as herself during the process of composition. Characteristic of Szmytka's works is that she does not only use in her compositions tonal materials classified as "sublime" but also emphasizes the by-products, such as the rustling bow hair or the action of the piano. "Smytka describes her use of the mixture of raw and sublimated materials, which are removed from their 'class affiliation' within her compositions, as the 'sculpting of sound'." (Rebhahn) The works are performed by the Ensemble Interface and, for the first time in the series, by the Ensemble Garage from Cologne and the duo leise dr�hnung, all young aspiring ensembles of new music.

Edition ZKM is dedicated to productions from the ZKM-Institute for Music and Acoustics. The institute is part of the Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany, (ZKM) which also includes the Museum for Contemporary Art, the Media Museum, a Media Library and the Institute for Visual Media. Guest artists from all over the world are invited to work in the music studios to realize specific projects. The projects, ranging from digital synthesis and algorithmic composition to the integration of live electronics, from radio art to sound installation, encompass a broad spectrum of that locus where digital technology stimulates musical fantasy. In his composition "Etude d'apr�s Seraphin", Rihm works intensively with digital electronic means for the first time. As a layer of commemoration (also of pre-civilization sound levels) the electronic part is closely connected with the eleven live playing instrumentalists. Since their first performance - 25 years ago - Ensemble 13 has been praised for their perfect interpretations of contemporary music. This production received the quarterly German Record Critics' Award.

The "Compositions for Trumpet and Electronics" continue the ZKM Institute for Music and Acoustics series for solo instruments and electronic sound. The brilliant and versatile contemporary trumpet player Marco Blaauw belongs to the modern generation of instrumentalists who have grasped that the further development of instruments and technical resources is part of the evolution of new music. He therefore sees the computer as a stimulus, as an acoustic counterpart of the musician, and as an instrument itself, which is there to be made use of in it's potential. The four compositions recorded on this CD are prime examples of this openness in performing and experimentation. They have been assembled by David Dramm, Yannis Kyriakides, Agostino di Scipio and Mich�l Koenders who put both the instrument and the musician in the limelight in a very individual manner and take the listener to unexpected realms of sound: Yannis Kyriakides composes a tonally balanced interplay between instrument and tape with synthetic sounds, Agostino Di Scipio integrates the trumpet into an unstable feedback system, Mich�l Koenders processes trumpet sounds in real time, and David Dramm stages a mixed-media constellation consisting of set and live components. The communicative play in these four compositions is also interesting because it is based on the familiarity of the instrumental sound, involves this in different unpredictable interactions, which makes what is heard vivid, and emphasizes the performative quality of the interplay. This continually re-models the communicative quality of the reception, the relation of the music to the listener. Marco Blaauw: double-bell trumpet, trumpet, live electronics / Dominik Blum: Hammond organ, analog synthesizer.

The great man is one who has not lost his child's heart. (Chinese proverb by Meng-tzu) An old theater has been empty for many years. A rumor is circulating that a ghost is wreaking havoc. Despite the warnings of the city fathers, a new theater troupe moves into the spaces and begins to rehearse the fairy tale "The Fisherman and His Wife." Of course, the ghost doesn't just watch... The ghost - who, by the way, after a closer look, and above all after a closer hearing, turns out not to be so scary - tells his story.

Tuba player Melvyn Poore is a world-renowned soloist, composer and scholar. This recording offers a selection of notable contemporary works (including a composition of his own) by Georg Katzer, Cort Lippe and Valerio Sannicandro. In these works, the tuba, combined with the live electronics, acts as a meta instrument, while at the same time being the calming influence, no matter whether the works are meticulously fragmented or narratively structured.

My imagination, once released into the room, pulled me into a huge conflict with myself, because these texts can not compose like a phone book, Defy and encounter a repeatedly into the depths, the definitions shaken and the positions begin to sway. So the Mainzer composer Volker David Kirchner expressed about the composition of the "Missa Moguntina" that is the Mainz Cathedral quasi "tailored to the body": Many hours has Kirchner spent in this cathedral to the very special atmosphere, the acoustics, the sounds that changing people to take up the space as a whole and to bring his music to sound. The work of the text of the Latin Ordinary measurement lies with Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei basis, where the composer between Gloria and Credo, a musical setting of Psalm 130 "De Profundis clamavi ad te, Domine" intercalates. So is the centerpiece of the exhibition, the credo, started at the lowest possible point, and then - to reach the "Et resurrexit" climax - omitting all historical appositions. "... Kirchner has found the way to new light. His Missa means climax and turning point in his work. The Missa is an experience. The interpretation did experience nature, primarily due to the convincing directing Mathias Breitschaft..." (W.. -E von Lewinski: Allgemeine Zeitung, Mainz, November 23, 1993)

The connection between the earthly-social and the transcendental worlds of the gods and the dead as well as the crossing of the threshold between life and death are always enacted in the Bora Sambar Region of western Orissa through music, specific ritual instruments and ritual mediators, the musicians. The sound of the instruments and the specific rhythm of the traditional ritual music represent the respective language of local goddesses. Together with the voices of the priest-musicians they are an expression of the communication between the world of the living, the world of the gods and the world of the dead. The recordings for this CD - a co-production with the Berlin Ethnological Museum - were made between 2003 and 2006 in western Orissa, Eastern India and published on Wergo for the first time. Lidia Guzy, who is also responsible for the extensive liner notes, recorded this music during her 14-months-long fieldwork in the course of her research project "Music and Dance Traditions of Sambalpur/western Orissa". During this research on the immaterial culture of western Orissa, she documented unknown, forgotten or endangered musical traditions of the socially marginalized Ganda musicians and of the various non-Brahmin priest-musicians of the region.

The French composer Thierry Lancino composed his work "Aloni" for instrumental ensemble, boys' choir, vocal soloists and the live-elctronic environment developed at IRCAM, Paris. Specially designed algorithms process the acoustic music of instrumentalists and singers in real time and create a new musical dimension of space, timbre and artistic intensity. Tamas Ungvary is one of the pioneers of digital music at EMS, Stockholm, and is currently head of the computer music program at the Music Academy in Vienna. He composed for the computer as "non-real time soloist" in "Gypsy Children's Giant Dance with Ili Fourier". The recording of a children's dance from Hungary is analyzed by the computer and put back together in a way only an artist could come up with. The result is a phantastic voyage through sounds with gypsy music shimmering on the waves of new spectral shapes.

The German composer Paul-Heinz Dittrich, who has been special pupil of Rudolf Wagner-R�geny at the East German Academy of Arts, is Professor of composition at the High School of Music in Berlin. The main burden of his compositional oeuvre falls on the paradigm of language, whether articulated, gestural, conceptual or silently internalized. Dittrich's path as a composer may therefore be seen as language migrating from the outside of music to the inside. Here it takes on a new guise as articulation, poetics and "voix int�rieure". Two of the works presented on this CD - "Etym" for orchestra after Arno Schmidt's "Zettels Traum", and "Concert avec plusieurs instruments Nr. IV" - are an expresssion of a new vantage point for listening to language. The piece "Action-Reaction" was intended by the composer to be a contribution to the efforts, important at that time, to move electronic music away from the isolation of the studio and to the concert hall, giving the player an opportunity to perform new dimensions of sound.

Countless of Maurice Ravel's works most impressively reveal that there is more of the present living in the past and past in the present than we imagine. Bego�a Uriarte: piano / Karl-Hermann Mrongovius: piano.