Performance as Composition

Abstract

F or more than two decades the German composer Heiner Goebbels has written music for theatre, ballet, opera, radio, TV, and concert hall as well as tape compositions and sound installations. He has created music for many theatre productions, such as Dantons Death, directed by Ruth Berghaus, and Richard III, directed by Claus Peyman. In recent years New York audiences have been introduced to his work with performances of Hashirigaki at the BAM Next Wave Festival and Eislermaterial and Black on White with the Ensemble Modern at the Lincoln Center Festival. Goebbels had worked frequently with the texts of Heiner Muiiller, including The Liberation of Prometheus, Shadow/Landscape with Argonauts, Wolokolamsk Highway, and The Man in the Elevator, seen in New York at The Kitchen within days of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It featured Miiller himself reading his text, accompanied by the musicians Don Cherry, Arto Lindsay, George Lewis, and Ned Rothenberg. Other authors whose writings have been used in musical settings are Gertrude Stein, Poe, Thoreau, Robbe-Grillet, and Kierkegaard. Paul Auster's In the Country of Lost Things was featured in Surrogate Cities. Heiner Goebbels' music is performed frequently in festivals on several continents (www.heinergoebbels.com). In 2003, Sir Simon Rattle conducted his orchestra piece, From a Diary, in its Berlin Philharmonic premiere. This interview was conducted in New York, March 19, 2003.