Michael Emanuel Bauer: Nothing is original!

Quotation, pastiche and montage have always been artistic and aesthetic processes in Western art music. Whether in the parody masses of the Renaissance, in the baroque pasticcio operas of George Frideric Handel or in Bach's Christmas Oratorio, adapting, revising or further composing one's own or other composers' works is not considered a flaw. It was only with the advent of the Romantic artistic ideal of the original genius that it became increasingly frowned upon to appropriate musical material in any form whatsoever. Appropriation is also widespread in pop and jazz. There is no innovation without sampling, cover versions, remixes and new arrangements. The lecture will focus on musical appropriation in new music as well as in pop and jazz from the 2000s onwards. Music by Bernhard Lang, Lady Gaga, Danger Mouse, Mostly Other People Do the Killing and others will be discussed from the perspective of Appropriation Art, an art movement that emerged in the USA at the end of the 1970s, and various artists who are influenced by Appropriation Art or pursue similar concepts. What about the original? Isn't every repetition a new original? Or as the filmmaker Jim Jarmusch states: "Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination."

Michael Emanuel Bauer (*1974) is a composer and musicologist. Aesthetically and conceptually, he is close to Appropriation Art. Bauer studied musicology and jazz piano and holds a doctorate in musicology. He attended composition courses with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Dieter Schnebel and Bernhard Lang. He has a long-standing collaboration with the Fassbinder composer Peer Raben. He has worked at the Wiener Festwochen, the Munich Biennale, the Deutsches Theater Berlin, the Residenztheater, the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Staatsschauspiel Dresden, the Schauspielhaus Bochum, the Neuköllner Oper Berlin, the Kunstfest Weimar and the Zurich Festival as well as with Nurkan Erpulat, Gesche Piening, Ulrich Rasche, Matthias Rebstock and Miriam Tscholl, among others. He also writes for concerts, radio plays and arthouse cinema, teaches in Bayreuth, Hildesheim and Osnabrück and is a juror in the International Antonín Dvořák Composition Competition. Bauer is the recipient of the Leonhard and Ida Wolf Memorial Prize for Music from the City of Munich. Publications on contemporary music, music theatre and pop culture by Henschel, MusikTexte and Wolke, among others.

Further information

Creditable for MUWI Aktuell