Dieter Schnebel

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Dieter Schnebel (born March 14, 1930 in Lahr/Baden) is a composer. From 1976 until his retirement in 1995, Schnebel served as professor of experimental music at the Berlin Hochschule der Künste.

Schnebel has become one of the many important postmodern composers through a unique craft, challenging our definitions of music, its limits, and even its unusual sound capabilities from humans themselves. But before developing into a professional expresser of music as an art form, Schnebel underwent vigorous studies in various fields.

He began with a general private music study with Wilhelm Sibler from 1942 until 1945, when he started piano lessons with another Wilhelm(!), Wilhelm Resch, and lasted with him until 1949 at the age of 19. He continued then with music history through 1952, under Eric Doflein. Simultaneously he began composition (in 1950) under several musicians, including Ernst Krenek, Theodor Adorno, and Pierre Boulez. This led to his attendance at the University of Tubingen, where he studied musicology under Walter Gerstenberg, as well as theology and philosophy, while picking up further piano study as well. In 1955 however, the degree he left with was in fact theology, but with a dissertation about Arnold Schoenberg. Soon after, Camilla Riegger became his wife (in 1956), which led to a son and daughter. He became a minister, and taught theology and religion until 1963, when he added philosophy and psychology to his teaching practices. Then in Berlin, starting in 1970, he became a professor of experimental music and music research, with subsequent visits to the USA for other opportunities. Since 1976 he’s been teaching composition on and off in Berlin.

Schnebel had a limited set of musical cycles, but he tended to work through them all at the same time, so it is nearly impossible to divide his written music history into defined sections. Sometimes a set would be worked through a decade or more, but his musical styles are still grouped together with labels; here are some of the more prominent sets:

“Versuche” (4 works) concerns the serial technique of composition, exploring space by putting large gaps between performers. And being highly religion-oriented in background and in practice as he is, his contributions to the world of modern religious music were some of the more important works: “Fur Stimmen (...missa est)” (4 works) is a set of vocal and organ experiments regarding prayers and verses of the Bible. “Produktionsprozesse” is a slew of “language and body” compositions which concerns more of the physical act of sound producing itself rather than the actual sound being produced...with the performers utilizing speech and breathing organs, tongue, throat, etc. in unusual styles through exercises which grow into a musical texture and atmosphere of broad communication formats.

And although the majority of his works are considered material aimed toward the “vocal experiment” and 12-tone side of music, his pieces do have a wide range of styles, even with such a small size of composed repertoire. For instance, he put forth many arrangements of Bach, Beethoven, Webern and Wagner; sometimes using their traditional concepts to the idea of untraditional techniques and ways of listening to them.

Theories self-created and inherited were/are often practiced at performances. He believed that you could increase a student’s vocal range through the use of specific psychological methods, or physical placement. For example, placing singers far apart in a triangular shape causes a musically spacial feeling, and therefore sounds much different from the density when singers are close together. Other times he may just take a traditional piece and turn it into an improvised 13-voice canon. Pieces using such theories can be found in his most famous works’ set; the “Fur Stimmen (...missa est)” choral pieces, like “:! (madrasha 2)” and “AMN”. The first, an unpronounceable title, means “a nonverbal outburst or exclamation”, and used to explore the options in human phonetic sounds, such as vocal and musical versions in lips, tongue, glottus, nasal and other pressures through pitches. The second (unvocalized Hebrew) emphasizes the idea of musical space, with several large gaps in the piece, as well as bizarre vocal experiments.

Other stylistic choices of his fancy are influenced by the likes of Henry Cowell and his “elastic music,” by raising and lowering predetermined melodic pitches, placing excess notes on top of them, rhythmic and tempi values distorted within voices, as well as dynamics. He also required multiple conductors with multiple choirs/ensembles when certain pieces were performed, although they were meant to stay out of synch with each other. John Cage and Kagel were other prominent influences, and worked through Cage’s unpredictability by setting up musical compositions that were followed, but not always set in stone, on the staff paper when performed. Additional concepts were explored through the art of theatrical music: i.e., the body language and “dance” of a conductor during a performance, or say a solo pianist and his audience would be performers together for one of his songs — visual elements were often involved. Works also include musical theatre.

Schnebel makes an important impact on the development of revolutionary vocal music, and continues through both tonal and atonal approaches even today. Awards include the Arts Prize of Lahr in 1991. The first European Church Music Prize was conferred upon him by the City of Schwäbisch in the same year. He has been a member of the Berlin Akademie der Künste since 1991 and the Bayerische Akademie der Künste since 1996.

Other works include: cycles such asMaulwerke, Schulmusik, Laut-Gesten-Laute, Museumsstücke, Schaustücke. Influenced by Fluxus, and founded the group Die Maulwerker. His Musik zum Lesen [Music to Read], is intended to be read and "listened to" in the mind.

Paraphrased from the following sources:

[1] Stolba, K. Marie. The Development of Western Music: A History. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1998.

[2] Grove Music Encyclopedia, <http://www.grovemusic.com>

[3] Warnaby, John. "Dieter Schnebel and His Sinfonie X". Tempo, New Ser., No. 186. (Sep., 1993), pp. 26-31. <http://www.jstor.org>