»DIY« Approach to education

Stefan Fricke talks to Uwe Dierksen and Dietmar Wiesner about the educational projects run by the International Ensemble Modern Academy

From international masterclasses and seminars for composers and conductors to educational projects and a Master’s degree in contemporary music in cooperation with the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (HfMDK), the International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA) offers a broad spectrum of programmes. While the last issue of the magazine focused on masterclasses, this time we turn our attention to educational projects. Stefan Fricke spoke with trombonist Uwe Dierksen and flutist Dietmar Wiesner.

Stefan Fricke: Ensemble Modern has been carrying out special educational projects since the mid-1980s. How did this come about?

Dietmar Wiesner: There were projects in schools very early on, I think in 1984, but in 1988 we did our first educational project together with members of the London Sinfonietta, who were like mentors for us, because these educational ideas originally come from England. The London Sinfonietta had already gained a lot of experience in this field and passed it on to us. We did some projects in schools in West Berlin – the Berliner Festspiele were a collaborating partner – and in Mönchengladbach at the Ensemblia Festival. That was the beginning, and then we did many similar educational projects, also in Frankfurt and elsewhere in Hesse.

SF: And Education became an integral part of the programme in 2003 when Ensemble Modern founded the IEMA, the International Ensemble Modern Academy.

DW: Yes, Education is a key part of the IEMA’s educational mission. It was clear to us from the outset that we didn’t want the Academy to focus solely on top young people straight out of music colleges – as is the case with the Master’s degree programme and the IEMA-Ensemble – but that we wanted to have as broad a focus as possible, including active teaching of »experiencing music«. Not only for children and young people, but also for adults. We recruited two tutors from the UK, Fraser Trainer and Paul Griffiths, who already had a wealth of experience in this area. We adopted some of their ideas and took them further. Uwe Dierksen played a very central role, as did our drummer Rainer Römer and myself for a while. The three of us were a kind of management team for these educational projects, always exchanging ideas and plans and going into schools with our Ensemble Modern colleagues to carry out the various projects.

Uwe Dierksen: The contact we had with the two tutors was phenomenal. They gave us a number of tools on how a »DIY« approach to music and arts education can really work. I learned a lot, and in the schools afterwards I kept seeing how incredibly important it is to actually make music yourself in order to understand music. When the pupils start making music and are guided along the way, you can clearly see how their engagement with music improves with every session. Making music themselves also improves their ability to judge and talk about music. And then a lot of good questions come up, such as: »What is experimental music?«, »Why did Arnold Schoenberg write twelve-tone music or Luigi Nono serial music?«, or »Why is tonality no longer enough for composers?«. It leads to some fantastic discussions.

DW: I’d like to quote Simon Rattle here. He once compared the job of a conductor to that of a football coach, saying that anyone who has never kicked a ball doesn’t know what a three-dimensional space feels like, he or she has never felt it. The same can be said about dance, about sound, about anything that has physical movement and three-dimensionality.

SF: Why do you need people from Ensemble Modern for this kind of education?

DW: Because we really want to do it, and because this work is so important to us. We always talk and work with the pupils as equals, as we do with the students in the IEMA-Ensemble. We never claim that we can do it better, but we go on a journey together. In the educational projects we start from scratch together, but of course we have our knowledge of Bernd Alois Zimmermann or Karlheinz Stockhausen or Birgitta Muntendorf in the back of our minds.

SF: But why you, in particular? There are music teachers, too.

DW: Of course, but the lessons are far too school-like.

UD: It’s a plus that we’re not teachers, that we come from outside and don’t have to use certain pedagogical methods. We don’t have to give grades, for example.

DW: We don’t have to work through any pre-defined material. We don’t have to show the students how Mauricio Kagel composed, we just do it with them and all of a sudden something similar to Kagel comes out. That’s a big difference from the usual lessons.

UD: Let me give you two practical examples of what a workshop with me might look like: First, as an icebreaker, we start with different warm up exercises to create our own music from the get-go. Body percussion, for example, is ideal for this. Secondly, if the school has its own orchestra, I listen to what they do and what repertoire they have. Then I work with them from there. They feel comfortable because they all have their place in the orchestra. Over time, however, I mix things up so that nobody sits where he or she usually sits, or only plays the familiar passages. I think it’s a process that everyone can relate to. We’re coming from the outside and we’re taking young people over a certain threshold into something they’re not familiar with. I think it’s great.

SF: Arnold Schoenberg, whose ›Chamber Symphony No. 1‹ opened the very first concert of Ensemble Modern in Cologne in 1980, wrote the following dedication in his textbook ›Harmony‹: »I learned this from my students.« What are you learning for yourself in the educational projects?

DW: One project I have in mind was on the subject of serialism. I showed the pupils how a twelve-tone row works, what the laws are and how they were intensified in serialism. And then the children began to write and realise these things themselves. And they did it with such a beautiful, playful ease that I was struck at how uncomplicated it could be. When I was a student, I thought it was extremely complicated, and I found abstract thinking really difficult at first. Years later, it was suddenly resonating with an ease that left me both incredibly surprised and moved. The students were combining serial principles with their stories and it was beautiful.

UD: In my case there are two things in particular. I learn a lot from the concert, which rounds off a work phase, where you realise during or afterwards that we have achieved all this together. It’s an incredibly happy moment. The other begins before that and for me is a purely interpersonal phenomenon: I find myself in a situation that is completely alien to me, with so many young people, and everyone, including myself, is more or less inadequate. There are always completely different people. In the beginning, I put a lot of energy into the new project and especially into the participants, which is often quite exhausting, but at some point, I don’t know what else to call it, a familiarity, perhaps a kind of love, sets in. And it happens almost magically. From then on it’s all about how we can all make music together as well as possible.

SF: And the compositions in the school projects are always created on site with the participants? You don’t bring any with you?

DW: That’s right. I call it improvised composing. At some point, the piece that you want to perform together and that everyone has internalised emerges from improvising together, from thinking together and from playful impulses.

SF: Yet everything begins with a first sound, whatever that sound may be.

DW: My first sound, my first icebreaker, is always »push – push«. It’s one of those sounds that’s then always passed on. For example, for a project based on Hanns Eisler’s piece ›14 Arten, den Regen zu beschreiben‹ (14 Ways to Describe Rain), I simply told the participants beforehand that they should each bring a film on their mobile phone showing rain. And then we made film music.

SF: Uwe, do you have a favourite opener?

UD: I never know beforehand what I’m going to do. I always try to get a grip on the situation at hand. That’s crucial for me. F: Do you also benefit in your educational projects from the experience you have gained in Ensemble Modern, which has been organised on a democratic basis from the outset?

DW: I think so. That’s everything, especially with new music. The repertoire we’ve built up wouldn’t have been possible if it had been organised hierarchically.

SF: You also share your educational experience with IEMA-Ensemble students.

DW: Yes, this has been a module in the training programme for IEMA students for several years now, and they already have some prior knowledge, as music colleges are also focusing more on the educational aspect. I would also like to underline how important we consider education to be in the IEMA training programme. On the one hand, for the students, who can find a completely different, physical, »DIY« approach to music. On the other hand, because this pedagogical competence is an integral part of the music profession today – whether you join an orchestra after graduation or work as a freelance soloist or in a collective. You have to be able to carry out educational work. And you need to have the tools in your toolbox to make it happen.

SF: So far we’ve been talking about educational projects for children and young people, because most of these activities take place with these age groups. But what about educational work with adults, with non-professionals of an advanced age?

DW: We have done this occasionally, for example with our ›connect‹ projects, where the audience is involved and plays along with simple everyday objects at the concert. It creates a completely different perception of music.

SF: I think so, too. New music still needs – perhaps more than in previous years – motivated »loudspeakers« who are not directly part of the new music scene, but who are interested in its aesthetic novelty, diversity and substance, and who dare to take part. The experience of making music oneself, of creating one’s own expressions of sound, could pave the way for this. Thanks very much to both of you for this interview.