About me
a personal note 1
philosophical
... I believe that the ability for artistic decisions is not necessarily attached to specific points of reference. And then there is no reason at the same time to be accused of favouring a certain post-modern aesthetic of indifference. In this context I would like to suggest a basic idea of Zen-Buddhism, the so-called “Koan”. A “Koan” is, roughly explained, a tenet-like problem, that, because of its immanent contradictory character, is not rationally comprehensible. Only an encompassing analysis may finally lead to a kind of transcendental process that goes beyond that aforementioned contradictory element. But this is a complete individual experience which defies any kind of verbalisation. It can be compared with an artistic process of decision making, far a way from traditional or conventional dialectic methods, but also far away from post-modern tendencies of disintegration of any kind.
n my eyes, this enables a new possibility of artistic freedom of decision. It is not irresponsible, nor is it signified by a certain immanent bias. A word by Stephane Mallarmé seems to me to be quite appropriate here:
I have created my work only through elimination. And each truth that I have achieved was generated by the loss of an impression; an impression that burned itself in the very moment of its flashing. And based on the darkness that was set free by it, I was allowed to intrude deeper into the feeling of an absolute darkness. (Stephane Mallarmé, cited after Maurice Blanchot: The Singing of the Sirens, Berlin 1982, page 82, translation by D. Mack)
AAlso this quote – from a time that cannot at all be blamed for post-modern thinking – implies the lack of so-called archimedic points, without loosing orientation, or, with the words of Harry Lehmann, becoming addicted to a “total subjectivity”…
(Dieter Mack)
Excerpt of the article: Vom
Sinn der Toleranz - Einige Gedanken zu Bewusstseinsstrategien im
Zusammenhang mit aktuellem Komponieren und Thesen von Harry Lehmann, erschienen in KunstMusik Bd. 6, Hrsg. von Maria de Alvear & Raoul Mörchen, Köln 2006, or a slightly changed version in: Dieter Mack: Zwischen den Kulturen, Hildesheim 2022, Seite 438 ff.
a personal note 2
intercultural and the question of sensuousness
„A Personal Note I“ has more dealt with aspects of my philosophy of life. Furthermore it was supposed just to be a stimulus in order to read the whole essay. In the following text, I try to formulate some more concrete information about myself, a composer who plays Balinese gamelan for 30 years, who has lived in Indonesia for all together about nine years and who even likes to cook.
Intercultural Aesthetics – Synthesis or Antithesis and the Meaning of Sensuousness
For me, the question which role Western and Indonesian thinking has played in my music was never a question of synthesis or antithesis. One’s own musical language can only be the cumulative result of an encompassing transformation of all experiences that one carries around in mind at any temporal point in one’s life. I call this process the search for an own culture. What I am looking for is something authentic, something that transcendents the dichotomy between synthesis and antithesis.
Balinese musical practice, or better, the everyday life in the Balinese society has had a significant influence on me. But this happened as well with big band jazz, free improvisation, my life in Southwest Germany and my visits to Japan and South-India. And how can this all exist together with my love for the music of Maurice Ravel and Igor Strawinsky, not to forget the music of Perotin, Guillaume de Machault, Mozart, Messiaen and Frank Zappa, just to name the most important?
Apparently temporal and spacial dimensions are not separated clearly anymore. They collaborate in different ways and modes. In this aesthetical plurality it is my task, to find an authentic artistic position. Middle-European culture has put the temporal aspect, the historical commitment, too biased into the foreground. Just let us recall Adorno’s dictum:
… The rules were not thought voluntarily. They are configurations of the historical compulsion of the musical material (Theodor W. Adorno: Philosophie der neuen Musik, Frankfurt 1958, page 61, translation by the author).
I had understood that quite well, but it has never satisfied me. The role of the spacial component, from the direct socio-cultural environment until other cultures was always of similar importance for me.
At this point, my interest in the culinary explains itself as well, although this is something quite profane on first sight. However, food, eating and drinking habits have always been important signatures of the local in a positive sense and the sensuous at the same time. Both I regard as a historically grown and authentic expression of a culture. The achievement of a wine-grower, who, together with nature, tries to create a common identity or a common expression, has always fascinated me. The same holds for cooks who are able to combine naturalness and a sensuous magic. Therefore cooking is my hobby No. 1. An own vineyard I cannot afford, but at least I am able to appreciate the results of others. The small and by far incomplete selection of wine-growers (see “links”) seems to represent a similar concept as I do. In regard to cooks, I will never forget at first the late Alain Chapel, while in Germany I owe my long-lasting experiences to people like Franz Keller Jr., Karl-Josef Fuchs, Eckhart Witzigmann, Harald Wohlfahrt and recently Roy Petermann, just to name a few. But if I go back to my roots, I have also to mention I Gusti Gedé Raka (he died in 2002) the head of the family where I stayed in Saba/Bali since 1978. His sensible treatment of spices and even his interest in cooking – he was actually a famous dance- and music teacher or even a kind of philosopher – was always quite moving for me.
All this does not report much about my musical language, but it tells a lot about my idea of life and my responsibility as the basis of my own creative work.
By that, the creative process resembles, in spite of all sensuousness, the principle of “composing as an existential experience”, as it has been stated once by Helmut Lachenmann. Based on this background, I would like to say that composing as a “global player” must not necessarily reflect a bi- or multicultural life experience on an ostensible and materialistic level. Here I see my task, my contribution to a world culture. I just simply add a personal nuance to that infinite variety of the world of music.
Postscriptum:
Perhaps one is missing some more detailed analysis of my compositorical techniques. I have not put them on the website because too much special knowledge would be necessary. If someone is interested in those details, I recommend my own contribution in the book: Musik-Kulturen – Darmstädter Diskurse 2, edited by Jörn Peter Hiekel, Saarbrücken, 2008, Pfau-Verlag, or Torsten Möller (editor): Wenn A ist, ist A - Der Komponist Dieter Mack, Saarbrücken 2008, Pfau Verlag.
a personal note 3
reading example
(excerpt from: Dieter Mack: Auf der Suche nach der eigenen Kultur – Komponieren im Spannungsfeld bi- oder multikultureller Erfahrungen, in: „Musik-Kulturen, Darmstädter Diskurse 2“, Texte der 43. Darmstädter Ferienkurse 2006, hrsg. von Jörn Peter Hiekel im Auftrag des IMD Darmstadt, Saarbrücken 2008, Pfau-Verlag
…Looking back some years, it is also obvious that German critics and musicologists mainly referred positively towards foreign composers when they were talking about problems of bi-and multiculturality. This happened especially then, when there was a certain sense of "resistance" or "conflict" in those works. But these criteria had been mostly unrecognized for European composers. Even the late Peter Niklas Wilson only mentioned Vinko Globokar, Young-Hi Pagh-Paan and Mauricio Kagel as composers that have to be taken seriously in the intercultural discourse, because their music reflects the flawed nature of the discourse between cultures (Die Trommeln des Südens, DIE ZEIT, Nr. 28/1992).
Is an intercultural discourse really only justified if it reflects the flaws in the interaction of cultures? Is there only then an artistic authenticity? I am convinced that such a question may only be answered by each art work itself, because the meeting of cultures or of their representatives is as old as the human existence.
Especially in Germany any cultural meeting, exchange, involvement etc. is still quite often seen with a certain suspicious tension and the latent feeling of an "a priori guilt" – leading as far as a desire to abstain from any cultural contacts at all. There are various reasons for that attitude. It is understandable for representatives of the post-war generation, who had to suffer under the racism of the Nazi regime. Even today those people assume a potential danger of alienation or modern imperialism if intercultural contacts take place. It is understandable if one has a genuine critical position towards globalized standardizations as a contemporary renaissance of master race consciousness. It is not understandable if it is due to a nostalgic mentality of yearning for “cultural biotopes” if one talks about “untouched cultures”, a common attitude in ethnomusicology for quite a long time. Already in 1978 Edward Said in his famous book “Orientalism” pointed in that direction when he spoke about…Europe’s day-dream of the Orient…”(New York 1978, page 52). He strongly rejected the fictitious idea of cultural purity, thus neglecting the far more complex reality.
Let me please make one short remark concerning "Exotica" from Mauricio Kagel, a piece that is often praised as a good example of a critical approach in an intercultural situation. If one presents Kagel’s music to the representatives of those ethnicities to whom the instruments belong, they regard Kagel's concept as an insult towards their respective cultural forms of expression and to no degree as an artistically valuable approach. 1 2
Summarizing I would like to state that terms as Modernity, New Music or even the term avantgarde have to be reconsidered, as was suggested by Rolf Elberfeld1 and some others. We would do better speak of multiple modernities, and sometimes, in countries like Indonesia, of multiple intracultural modernities.
Beck and Anthony Giddens3. Although one may sympathize with many of their ideas, I feel that the almost forced categorization of contemporary artistic production is questionable. No doubt that one is allowed to construct his/her own systems of coordinates. But I see a danger, if one becomes too normative at a moment when the normative should be put into question. I feel that historical processes should be better judged after a reasonable temporal distance. 1 Rolf Elberfeld: Kitaro Nishida, Das Verstehen der Kulturen, Amsterdam 1999. 2 C.S. Mahnkopf: Kritische Theorie der Musik, Weilerswist 2006; and Harry Lehmann: Avantgarde Heute, in: Musik & Ästhetik, Heft 38, April 2006. 3 Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens & Scott Lash: Reflexive Modernization, Stanford 1994. .3
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Biographie
1954 born in Speyer/Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany,
1975-1980 study at Musikhochschule Freiburg (composition with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough, musictheory with Peter Förtig and piano with Rosa Sabater)
1977-1981 assistant at the Experimental Studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation, SWF scholarship-holder of the H.Strobel Foundation in 1980/81
since 1980 various assistantships/ lecturships for musictheory, improvisation and Balinese music at the music-universities Freiburg, Trossingen, Basel and University of Freiburg.
seit 1980 verschiedene Lehraufträge für Musiktheorie, Improvisation und balines. Musik an den Musikhochschulen Freiburg, Trossingen, Basel und der Uni Freiburg
seit 1986 Professur für Musiktheorie/Gehörbildung an der MuHoSchu Freiburg
seit 1980 Mitglied des Stuttgarter Ensembles ExVoCo (Ltg. Dr. E. Liska)
seit 1978 verschiedene Studienaufenthalte auf Bali, Südindien und Japan, davon 1981/82 ein ganzes Jahr auf Bali.
1982 Gründung eines Ensembles für balines. Musik an der Musikhochschule Freiburg
1982- 1991 weitere Studienaufenthalte auf Bali, Kompositionsworkshops in Bandung, Surabaya Yogyakarta und Jakarta.
1988 Tournee "Portrait Dieter Mack" durch das Goethe-Institut in Südostasien
1991 "Composer in Residence" an der School of Music, Victoria University, Wellington, Neuseeland.
1992-1995 Gastdozentur (über DAAD) an IKIP-Bandung, Indonesien; Mitarbeit in der nationalen Lehrplankommission Indonesiens;
seit 1995 weitere Kurzzeit-Gastdozenturen in Indonesien, vor allem an UPI – Bandung (ex IKIP) Mitwirkung in einem Forschungsprojekt der Ford Foundation bezüglich der Dokumentation traditioneller Musikkulturen in Indonesien und deren didaktischer Aufbereitung für den Musikunterricht.
1997/ 98 Mitverantwortlicher des Projekts CATUR YUGA (kulturelles Zusammenarbeits- projekt zwischen Bali/ Indonesien, Basel/ Schweiz, Freiburg/ Deutschland)
seit 1999 Gastdozent im Aufbaustudiengang „Komposition“ an der Kunstakademie STSI-Surakarta
seit 2003 Professur für Komposition an der Musikhochschule Lübeck
2003-2006 Beratende Mitarbeit beim „Haus der Kulturen der Welt“ in Berlin.
2004 Kompositionskurse in Neuseeland (Goethe Institut) Portraitkonzert während des „Art Summit Indonesia“ in Jakarta Gastdozent bei den Kammermusikkursen von „Jugend Musiziert“ in Weikersheim.
2005 Kurator für das Gamelanfestival im Rahmen des Südostasienfestivals „Räume und Schatten“ am Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
2006 Dozent bei den Darmstädter Ferienkursen
2007 Gastkurse am Zentralkonservatorium Beijing/China, University of Illinois/Urbana Lehrauftrag am musikwiss. Seminar der Uni Heidelberg, Kompositionskurse in Weikersheim
2008 Mitglied der Freien Akademie der Künste Hamburg Vizepräsident der Musikhochschule Lübeck Kommissionstätigkeiten beim DAAD, Goethe Institut
2009 Konzertreise mit dem Ensemble Selisih nach Indonesien und Neuseeland (über das GI), Lehrauftrag am musikwiss. Seminar in Hamburg, Vorsitz bei der Musikauswahlkommission des DAAD, Mitglied des Fachgutachterausschusses (seit 1998)
2010 "Composer in Residence" bei Bucheon Symph. Orchestra Lehrtätigkeit an der Seoul National University und Yonsei University; Gastkurse in Singapore, Tokyo und Kuala Lumpur
2011 Konzert - und Vortragstournee nach Manila, Singapore und Kuala Lumpur; Artistic Director Kompositionswettbewerb "Young Composers Southeast Asia"
2011-13 Beratertätigkeit an UPI Bandung, Indonesien
2012/13 Konzerttournee mit des studio Ensemble der musikFabrik in Südostasien
2013 composer-in-residence beim „con Tempo“ Festival Beijing; Mitglied des Planungskommittees „Art Summit Indonesia“
2014 Gastlehrtätigkeiten in Malaysia, Singapore und Bangkok
2015-19 Vizepräsident der Musikhochschule Lübeck für Internationales und Veranstaltungen
2015 Gastlehrtätigkeit am Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music/Bangkok. Und am Zentralkonservatorium in Beijing, Malaysia
UA Schlagzeugkonzert „Wooden“ mit der Deutschen Radiophilharmonie und Brad Lubman, Solist: Johannes Fischer
„Composer in Residence“ beim Brücken-Festival in Rostock
Das Gesamtwerk (außer den Bärenreiter Publikationen) bei Verlag Neue Musik Berlin
2016 Beendigung der Mitwirkung im Musikbeirat des Goethe Instituts
Weitere Gastlehrtätigkeit am PGVIM/Bangkok
Konzert und Masterclass am Music Dpt. University of Fullerton/California
Evaluation S 3 – Studiengang Musikerziehung an UPI Bandung
Jurymitglied beim Kompositionswettbewerb Yogyakata.
2017 Gastlehrtätigkeit an TNUA in Taipeh und Geidai University in Tokyo
Gastlehrtätigkeit am Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music/Bangkok.
„Howard Hanson Visiting Composer Residency”, Eastman School/Rochester
2018 Gastlehrtätigkeit an Geidai/Tokyo, PGVIM/ Bangkok, UiTM Kuala Lumpur;
Uni of Brit. Columbia/Vancouver. Zum Jahresende Beendigung der Tätigkeit als Vizepräsident der MHL Lübeck
2019 Gastlehrtätigkeit am PGVIM-Bangkok, Chiayi University-Taiwan und der
School of Music in Thessaloniki-Greece
2020 1. – 8. März Masterclass und Konzert am Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Singapore
Abegeordneter für International Affairs der Musikhochschule Lübeck
Proben und Workshop mit “Kyai Fatahillah” in Bandung,17. – 29. Februar.
2021 Eintritt in den Ruhestand, Umzug nach Freiburg und Schwanheim
2022 Premiere von “The Time After-Reset” für Gamelan Orchester, Percussion und Fixed Media
bei“Essen NOW” in Essen/Philharmonie. 1. November.
2023 -Forschungsreise nach Bali/Indonesia, Januar-Februar
-Portrait Festival in Heidenheim (mit Ens. Handwerk, Aventure, Selisih, Duo Hahn & Schepansky)
- Masterclass in Trstenice/Tschechien
-Gastprofessur (via DAAD) am Princess Galyani Vadhana Institute of Music, Bangkok, July-October
-Premiere of “Kayumanis” für 2 Klaviere & 2 Percussionists durch Berlinpianopercussion.
- Mitglied der European Academy for Sciences and Arts