In the 1990s the studio with its many components was increasingly replaced by simulation within a single computer system, which also shaped teaching and the new diploma regulations for composition. With the Electronic Studio, the chamber music hall and the multi-purpose hall “Neue Aula”, a concert hall equipped for the reproduction of electronic music, teachers and students for the first time had a place where what had been devised in the studio could be tried out directly. The anniversary edition appeared in 2001, when a new recording studio, an AV studio and a jazz/pop electronics studio were opened at the college.
For Ralf R. Ollertz’ “Pyrocua” (1994) the booklet prints a text by the Brussels critic Luc Honorez, who hears gentleness and violence, chaos and genesis in this music. In “exSamples mechanique” (1992) Friedhelm H. Hartmann combines automatic generation from two eras: the pieces are written in his algorithmic language Celsyus and translated into MIDI control data, while their sounds come from old mechanical music automata in a Prague museum of musical instruments. Hannes Galette Seidl’s “re: bounce” (2001) is a remix of Iannis Xenakis’ “Rebonds” for solo percussion that adopts not only its material but also its structures: samples and envelopes run at between a sixteenth and sixteen times normal speed, creating transitions from the subaudio range through percussive clicks to continuous pitches.
Javier Alejandro Garavaglia’s “OVERTURE (in memoriam T.A.T.)” (1997) for four-track tape is dedicated to his late viola teacher Tomas Alejandro Tichauer. All its materials are based on the note C, above all on the first chord of the prelude to Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”, which the phase vocoder transposes along the overtone spectrum. In “grau & blau” (1999-2000) Yong Joon Yang starts from an “inner scream”, “I am weak, please don’t hurt me”, and builds the piece on a rhythmic structure in the proportions 1:1:1.5:0.5, controlled algorithmically with Common Music and synthesised in Csound. Sven-Ingo Koch’s “saxl” (1999) is a “window composition”, a relief seen in changing perspectives separated by cuts, made from three saxophone samples: a swelling d’, a texture of key noises and a small, agile group of notes.
In “Dem Grau der Nacht enttaucht” (2000) for two-track tape Roman Pfeifer conceives the piano key as a set of tones: from five piano notes he filtered spectra whose tones are intersections of the partials of three other keys, and so composed timbre directly with three-note complexes. Dirk Reith’s “Dialogue from Mécanique Mon Amour” (1993), commissioned for WDR’s Rheinisches Musikfest 1993, is one movement of an evening-length multimedia work; a video by Jean-François Guiton is projected with the live performance of the alto saxophonist Simone Otto and the electronics. The piece engages with the mechanical world of machines and is at the same time a declaration of love to the Ruhr region.