ex machina Vol. 6 – Die neunziger Jahre

At the end of the 1960s, live electronics was the great catchword of electronic music. Handy devices such as the VCS III synthesizer made by the English firm EMS could be used in many different ways, including in combination with mechanical instruments played live. In 1970 the Folkwang-Hochschule Essen commissioned the Berlin firm Hofschneider to develop three systems for live electronic music. With the delivery of these systems the history of electronic music at the Folkwang-Hochschule began.
An ensemble worked with this equipment which had grown out of the “Gruppe MHz” (directed by Günther Becker) and which from 1971 consisted exclusively of members of the Folkwang-Hochschule. These were: Alfred Alings, Günther Becker, Ferdi Brendgen, Mirko Dorner, Pierre W. Feit and Dirk Reith. Over the following years the ensemble changed several times until, in 1973/74, it disbanded as a permanent live electronic ensemble.
In 1990 the senate of the Folkwang-Hochschule founded a central, cross-departmental institute, the ICEM (Institut für Computermusik und Elektronische Medien). Looking back on thirty years of electronic music at the Folkwang-Hochschule, one finds that each of those three decades had a very particular technical, compositional and hence aesthetic stamp:
The 1990s were the decade in which digital technology step by step replaced the analogue technology used over the previous twenty years. The studio, with its variety of highly diverse components, was increasingly “compressed” by simulation within a single computer system, the so-called digital workstation. This had a decisive influence on the training of young composers, which found expression in the new diploma curriculum for composition. All the works on the EX MACHINA CD Vol. 6 “Die 90er Jahre” show very vividly that through the overall conception, i.e. The integration of the electronic studio, the chamber music hall and the new multi-purpose hall “Neue Aula”, teachers and students had for the first time a unique field of experiment at their disposal for musical performance using electronic means. What was “devised” in the studio could be tried out directly in the large concert hall, which is specially equipped for the playback of electronic music. It thus becomes understandable that the Folkwang-Hochschule in the south of Essen developed into one of the few internationally recognised centres for electronic music and media art in Germany.