B I O G R A P H YBiography :: Works :: Performances :: Pictures :: Audio :: Discography :: |
Deutsch :: english ::
B E R N D F R A N K E |
His dramaturgically-tonal compositions aim at achieving a musical language directly understandable by the hearer but without degenerating into banality or neoromanticism. On the contrary, comprehensibility and differentiation (tonal as well as structural) are two strands of one intention: to write music which is communicative but which does not drag with it the embarrassing baggage of obligatory convention. Musical influences for Franke have been Witold Lutoslawski and Edgar Varèse as well as Charles Ives, John Cage and Morton Feldman. Development has been both quick and slow, principally brought about by engaging with the work of other composers and more especially with painters such as Chagall, Dürer, Goya, WOLS, Pousette-Dart, Erich Hauser and above all Joseph Beuys.” (Gisela Nauck)
|
| 1959 Born in
Weissenfels/Saale Studied at the Leipzig Conservatory “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy“: Composition (Siegfried Thiele) and Conducting (Wolf-Dieter Hauschild) 1980-83 Foundation and Direction of the Group „Junge Musik“ Leipzig 1981-85 Meisterschüler (Senior Student) Academy of Arts, Berlin since 1981 Lecturer at Leipzig University and Leipzig Conservatory (FMB) 1981 Hanns Eisler Prize and Mendelssohn Scholarship 1987 Composition Prizes: 9. Internationales
Kompositionsseminar der Stiftung Künstlerhaus Boswil (Switzerland),
Kucyna International Composition Prize Boston (USA) 1988 Composer Workshop, Gaudeamus Foundation Amsterdam (collaboration with Ton de Leeuw and Chu Wen Chung) starts cycle half-way house - SOLO XFACH 1989 Leonard Bernstein Fellowship, Tanglewood Music Center
(USA) 1993 Lecture tours/workshops in Atlanta, Baton Rouge, Carrollton, Minneapolis (USA) 1994 Jury member, “Münchener Biennale für Neues
Musiktheater" at the invitation of Hans Werner Henze 1996 Lectures and concert tours in Atlanta und Jacksonville (USA) 1996-98 Artistic Director "Neue Musik in der Galerie Beck" Leipzig/Düsseldorf 1998 Foundation of Ensemble SOLO XFACH for authentic performance of works in the growing cycle half - way house - SOLO XFACH (for Joseph Beuys) 2000 First production with the Ensemble SOLO XFACH with
Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt 2002 new publisher with C.F. Peters Frankfurt-New
York-London exclusively 2003 Composer of the Year at the Kaustinen Festival
in Finland 2005 starts cycle IN BETWEEN (wp in Tokyo)
|
"Bernd
Franke`s work distinguishes itself from other types of music formed
by the emphasis of contrasts not only by its elegance and hedonistic
character but ultimately by the way such contrasts are minutely
built up and stressed through an ever-sharpening differentiation of
sounds towards a timbre- determining voicing through which the
polarities are not discharged as unresolved conflicts, but rather
preserve a striving for balance and harmony which, however, in the
end remains unattained. 