Heiner Goebbels: Contre l'œuvre d'art totale

Translated by Isabelle Kranabetter and Aleksi Barriere for Collection : Écrits de compositeurs

Philharmonie de Paris, 432 pages

Le compositeur et metteur en scène allemand Heiner Goebbels (né en 1952) est une figure majeure de la création contemporaine. À l’intersection de la théâtralité de la musique et de la musicalité du théâtre, ses spectacles exaltent l’hétérogénéité des voix, des genres et des médiums. « Faire de la musique avec les moyens de la scène », comme l’imaginait Arnold Schönberg.
Depuis ses débuts de musicien et de créateur radiophonique, jusque dans ses rôles plus récents de curateur et d’enseignant, Heiner Goebbels est en dialogue constant avec les artistes et auteurs qui ont influencé son travail : Hanns Eisler, Heiner Müller, Elias Canetti, Gertrude Stein, mais aussi, côté francophone, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Maurice Blanchot ou Paul Valéry.
Ce recueil est la plus vaste anthologie de ses textes écrits au fil des quarante dernières années, et la première en français. Tour à tour carnet de bord, journal rétrospectif, espace de réflexion sur les pratiques artistiques, dont la sienne, Contre l’œuvre d’art totale constitue un manifeste esthétique et politique : pour l’abolition des hiérarchies entre les arts, pour la liberté d’invention des spectateurs-auditeurs.

Intakt CD 426 / 2024

The instrumentalists of The Mayfield have together created the music to the large scale performance Everything that happened and would happen by Heiner Goebbels – a music theatre piece on Europe as a historical and contemporary ‘construction site’. The band is named after the Mayfield Depot, a vast disused railway station in Manchester, in which they rehearsed and created the work. It inspired the aesthetics of the music. The instrumentation is dedicated to a coexistence of acoustic and electronic sources, ranging from percussion, as the earliest and universal source of musical expression, to birdcalls, saxophones and prepared grand piano and to Ondes Martenot, one of the first electronic instruments. An invented electric guitar added with digital sensors bridges the gap between these different sonic universes. The Mayfield music results in soundscapes between controlled noise and ‘musique concrête instrumentale’. At La Muse en Circuit – the Parisian recording studio designed specifically for electro-acoustic music that Luc Ferrari established in 1982 – the musicians recorded 95 improvised pieces. Willi Bopp, who has worked closely with Goebbels for 35 years, subsequently created a collage of those selections, which were further winnowed and sequenced into the seamless 16-track selection featured on this remarkable album. „The collective’s brand of free improvisation is stunning, a liquid form of electro-acoustic music of uncommon physicality, depth, and dynamics that sounds like little else in the realm of contemporary experimental music“, writes Peter Margasak in the liner notes.

Coming up in the Fall

Heiner Goebbels succesfully returned to his practise as skillfull improviser on the grandpiano at the Monheim Triennale Prequel with several duos: with the Scotish bagpipe virtuoso Brighde Chaimbeul, the Palestinian electronic sound artist Muqata'a, the Indian / American Singer Ganavya Doraiswamy and with Peter Evans (NYC, trumpet).

Now many performances and concerts will follow in the second half of 2024: Songs of Wars I have seen at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in London and during the Ensems Festival in Valencia, A House of Call during MITO Festival in Turino, Milano and during Festival d'Automne in Paris, and last not least Everything that happened and would happen during the Salzburger Festspiele as part of European Capital of Culture

After teaching in Genova during March and in Parma during June, he also continues with lectures in Düsseldorf and during the European Capital of Culture Salzkammergut.

GENOVA, DÜSSELDORF, MONHEIM AM RHEIN, LONDON, SALZBURG, TURINO, MILANO, PARIS

2024 started with a four week Visiting Professorship at the University of Genova in March for several interdisciplinary seminars/lectures/workshops - open for students in literature (DIRAAS), languages (DLCM) and Digital Humanisties (DIBRIS), PhD students and students at the conservatorium and of the university theatre Il Falcone. This invitation was an initiative in collaboration with the classes for electronic music and performing arts at Niccolò Paganini-Conservatorium.

From April until the end of November many major compositions by Heiner Goebbels are performed in Europe: the staged concert Songs Of Wars I have Seen, the orchestra cycles Surrogate Cities and A House of Call and the large scale performance Everything That Happened And Would Happen

A book with a French edition of Aesthetics of Absence will be announced together with a lecture at Philharmonie de Paris.

Please look for precise dates, times and locations at the Calender

2023 was a full year with a large number of new exhibitions and site specific installations: 7 Columns in Elefsina (Greece), The Comforter in Vilnius (Lithuania), The Last Painting at Museo Reina Sofia (Madrid), To see something to hear something at Musée du Luxembourg (Paris) and No 862 - an Oracle Machine at the World Heritage of Völklingen (Germany).

Further more there were concerts of Songs of Wars I Have Seen by various Ensembles in Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland, A House of Call performed by Orchestra Casa da Musica in Porto and by the London Philharmonics.

And at last - after the pandemic break - the large scale performance Everything That Happened And Would Happen was restaged and performed at the Theatre Olympics in Budapest - it can be seen again in 2024 at the Salzburger Festspiele.

More concerts of A House of Call are planned in 2024 - for the first time in France and Italy and the Opera in Düsseldorf will present Surrogate Cities in a choreography by Demis Volpi.

Heiner Goebbels is invited to join the Monheim Triennale July 4-6, he plans a visiting professorship in Italy, a new radio production and a CD release. More details about all that and more in the next weeks on this website.

862 - premiere of an oracle machine

On the weekend September 1st - 3rd, a new performative installation has been successfully premiered in the ironworks at the border between France and south-west Germany - accompanied with TV reports on the news (ARD tagesschau) and followed by many reviews in daily newspapers.

Together with René Liebert (video), Marc Thein (light), Willi Bopp (sound) and Matthias Mohr (dramaturgy), Heiner Goebbels has conceived an intense and unique encounter with a former coal stamping machine - which speaks to us in a delicate balance of words, sounds and images.

Only six more performances of this site specific work can be attended until September 17th.

TV report by Uwe Loebens for SR

To see something, to hear something

A Musée du Luxembourg, Paris: September 13, 2023 to January 28, 2024

GERTRUDE STEIN AND PABLO PICASSO - The Invention of Language

Every day from 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. / Nocturne on Mondays until 10 p.m

Duo Concert at Tempoe Reale, Firenze

After returning from Budapest performing Everything That Happened And Would Happen on June 14th, Heiner Goebbels and Gianni Gebbia gave a Duo Concert at "Centro di ricerca produzione e didattica musicale" Tempo Reale. Gianni Gebbia on soprano and baritone saxophone, Heiner Goebbels on piano, chinese violin, and various prepared instruments.

Everything that happened and would happen

After the sudden pandemic break in 2020 the large scale performance Everything That Happened And Would Happen had two successful shows again at the 10th Theatre Olympics in Budapest.

Surrogate Cities / Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Ende April bis Mitte Mai 2024 wird der Ballettdirektor und Chefchoreograph Demis Volpi in Düsseldorf an der Deutschen Oper am Rhein seine letzte Kreation in dieser Funktion mit dem Ballett am Rhein zeigen. Gemeinsam mit seinen Tänzer*innen und seinem Team begibt er sich auf die Reise zu einem abendfüllenden abstrakten Ballett, inspiriert von der Vielfarbigkeit der Klänge und dem kraftvollen Ideenreichtum des Werkes von Heiner Goebbels „Surrogate Cities“. DIe musikalische Leitung hat Vitali Alekseenok, der mit der Beginn der Spielzeit 2024/2025 neuer Chefdirigent sein wird.

Heiner Goebbels at Music for Vilnius

The International site-specific music festival „Muzika erdvėje“ - Part of the official program „Vilnius 700“ - invited seven world-famous composers from diverse countries and cultures, renowned for their performances on prestigious concert stages and at international festivals from New York to Tokyo, to honor Vilnius by offering their exclusive musical gifts in celebration of the city's 700th anniversary. Each composer is creating a new music piece dedicated to a selected location in the city, which will be publicly presented during the cycle of world premieres from May to July. Heiner Goebbels has chosen to create a site specific audiovisual installation for the church of Saint Virgin Mary of Consolation, which will be open from May 10th. The portrait concert under the direction of Vykintas Baltakas will happen on May 12th. On the same day the Goethe Institut will present the Lithuanian translation of Heiner Goebbels' Anthology Aestetic of Absence. For COSMOS Theatre workshops Heiner Goebbels will offer an open lecture on May 3rd.