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Born in Graz in 1953, he
studied at the city’s Musikhochschule, composition with Gösta Neuwirth
and Ivan Eröd, piano with Doris Wolf and music education. He was
associated with the Musikhochschule in Graz until 1997, lecturing in
counterpoint, contemporary compositional techniques, analysis, and
microtonal music. During that period, he continued his compositional
studies with Friedrich Cerha in Vienna (1981–83), attended the
Darmdstadt Courses (1980, 1988, 1990) and spent a year at ircam studying
computer music (1991). His honours include the Andrzej Dobrowolski
Composition Award presented by the Province of Styria (2004), the
International unesco Composers’ Rostrum Prize (2000, for Violin Concerto),
the City of Vienna Ernst Køenek Prize (1998, for the chamber opera Nacht)
and the Sandoz Prize (1992). He has served as composer-in-residence at
Collegium Novum Zürich (2001), and held grants from the Salzburg Festival
(1992–93) and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science, Research and
Culture (1995).
His commissions have included those from the festivals in Stuttgart,
Bregenz, Witten and Donaueschingen, the Alban Berg Foundation, Klangspuren
in Schwaz (Austria), the Munich Biennale and Musica Viva. His works have
been featured at prestigious venues in Zürich, Seville, Barcelona,
Royaumont, Oslo and New York, the Darmstadt Courses, the Alte Oper in
Frankfurt and such festivals as Wien Modern, Musikprotokoll in Graz,
Bregenz Festival, Ars Musica in Brussels, Insel Musik in Berlin, Musik der
Zeit in Cologne, Akiyoshidai Festival (Japan), Festival d’Automne in
Paris, Musica Nova in Helsinki, and the Huddersfield Festival. They have
been performed by leading orchestras and esembles including the Berlin
Philharmonic, Klangforum Wien, the Kairos Quartett, and the radio
orchestras in Baden-Baden, Cologne and Munich.
Georg Friedrich Haas has published papers on the music of Luigi Nono, Ivan
Wyschnegradsky, Alois Hába and Pierre Boulez. He presently lives in
Vienna.
Selected works: Monodie for 18 instruments (1988, rev. 1999), ...sodass
ich’s hernach mit einem Blick gleichsam wie ein schönes Bild... im
Geist übersehe for string orchestra (1991), ... aus freier Lust ...
verbunden ... for various instruments (1994), Nacht, chamber opera, set to
texts by Friedrich Hölderlin (1995–96), Violin Concerto (1998), Torso
for orchestra, after Schubert’s Piano Sonata in C major D840
(1999–2000), Blumenstück for choir, bass tuba and string quintet
(2000), in vain for 24 instruments with a notated lighting sequences
(2000), de terrae fine for solo violin (2001), flow and friction for
microtonal piano for four hands (2001), tria ex uno, sextet for violin,
cello, flute, clarinet, piano and percussion (2001), In iij Noct. –String
Quartet No 3 (2001), die schöne Wunde, chamber opera, set to texts by
Franz Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe (2002–03), Natures mortes for large
orchestra (2003), String Quartet No. 4 with live electronics (2003),
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (2003–04), Opus 68 for orchestra, after
Skryabin’s Piano Sonata No. 9 (2004), Haiku for baritone and 10
instruments (2004), Ritual – Freiluftmusik for 12 big drums and three
brass orchestras (2004).
Monodie
‘...that monodic chant, which reaches its artistic pinnacle in the
operas and madrigals of Monteverdi, is an imitation of the affected,
soulful, intricately designed dramatic performance of Italian speech: the
theatrical gesticulation of the reciter, who, inspired by the meaning of
the spoken text, tries to express the feelings as if he himself was
overflowing with them, and at the same time to awaken these feelings in
the listener.’ (Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, the article Monodie in the
lexicon Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart; attached by G. F. Haas to the
score as an explanation).
‘Chant for one voice’, that is the literal translation of the Greek
term ‘monody’. The composition of Georg Friedrich Haas which bears
this title is not, of course, concerned with reconstructing that which the
Greeks sang to the accompaniment of the lyre, and the Florentines to that
of the general bass. Neither is there any solo instrument which would
stand out against the more or less profiled accompaniment. Rather, monody
here is constituted by a subtle, red thread, woven into the fabric of
virtuoso staging of the sound of the whole ensemble.
That red thread arises mainly out of the successive overlaying of dynamic
accents: in the continuum of the ensemble sound, the phases of swelling of
the instruments are displaced in relation to each other, so that the chord
structure translates en passant into the horizontal structure – the
result is a ‘consonance’, in which the narrative stories sketched in
contour (melodically) create a monody of sound colours, separated in a
variety of ways. Individual instruments at times remain in the background,
at other times become ‘heroes for
a second’, when for a very brief moment they are left outside the area
of the sound continuum, and in this way are sublimated towards monodic
chant – ‘not with a dramatic intention, not in the form of an entrance
with an expressive gesture, but like an echo, as if seen under the
magnifying glass of time...’ (Georg Friedrich Haas). Ascending scale
progressions with distinguishable tritones are in this way led through the
orchestra, but also wander imitatively in single parts.
Another method of composing a virtual solo instrument into the orchestra
part is employed by Haas in the second movement. All the instruments play
the same note, thus the dynamic accents do not create a melody here, but a
rhythmic structure, enriched by intervals, which after a moment meet again
in unison. The glissandi, which water down the microtonality achieved at
one moment, are shaped along a similar principle, and from the
filigree-sculptured structures pulsating in a variety of ways arise also
purely tonal harmonies. At the end there appears an ostentatious
apotheosis of the ascending scale, with a dying out epilogue of strings
bidding it farewell.
Horst A. Scholtz
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