Research Catalogue

Michel Roth

Composer, Artistic Researcher

Switzerland °1976

research interests: music, games, indeterminacy, collaborative processes, interactive performance, artistic research, organology, music theory, sonification, transdiciplinarity

affiliation: Music Academy Basel; www.sonicspacebasel.ch

Michel Roth, born 1976 in Altdorf, lives in Lucerne/Switzerland. He is professor of composition and music theory at the Hochschule für Musik Basel and member of its research department. As long-time director of the Lucerne Studio for Contemporary Music, he worked with Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann and Peter Eötvös, among others. Many radio and CD productions document his work, for which he has received numerous prizes and grants. His works can be heard regularly at international music festivals, including the opera "Im Bau" (2012, Theater Basel, Zurich, Barcelona) and the depressive operetta "Die Künstliche Mutter" (2016, Lucerne Festival, Gare du Nord Basel). He also researches and publishes on music-theoretical and interdisciplinary topics with a focus on game theory and indeterminacy (e.g. David Tudor), collaborative art (e.g. Dieter Roth and his "Rarely Heard Music") and organology (e.g. trombone and percussion playing techniques).

www.michelroth.ch

research

research expositions

Smorzando. Chopin on the MP3 player (2017) author(s): Michel Roth published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
My article focuses on the phenomenon of the ephemeral in music in general. I would like to stay with piano music for a while, where the rapid fading away of tone is normal, and a central component for the regulation of this process, the damper, is called il smorzatore in Italian. The Préludes Op. 28 by Frédéric Chopin will serve as one example; I will later move on to a piano LP by the Swiss artist Dieter Roth and will end with an orchestral work by the young German composer Hannes Seidl.
open exposition comments (0)

works

Im Bau - In the Burrow. 15 Sound Spaces after Franz Kafka (05/12/2019)
Art object: Digital artwork, WERGO/Music-Academy Basel, artist(s)/author(s): Michel Roth
"In the Burrow. 15 Sound Spaces after Franz Kafka" is a contemporary opera by Michel Roth. The stage version was premiered in 2012 at Lucerne Festival and Theater Basel. The libretto is based on Franz Kafka's novel "Der Bau" ("In the Burrow"). In 2017, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Music-Academy Basel, a radio opera version of the work was created, recorded as a course through 53 room constellations on the campus of the Music-Academy. A interactive website (with 3D/binaural rendering) documents the unusual production process and invites to undertake your own explorations of the "burrow": through the work and through the rooms of the Musik-Akademie Basel. German/English; running with Firefox, Chrome or Edges (not running with Internet explorer). www.imbauprojekt.ch
Dieter Roth and Music (01/02/2016)
Publication: Catalogue, Music-Academy Basel, artist(s)/author(s): Michel Roth
The Swiss artist Dieter Roth (1930-1998) combines in his work such diverse media as literature, drawing, assemblage, installation, prints, book art, performance and new media. Less well known are his music-related works, which have be shown extensively for the first time in an exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zug in 2014 ("Und weg mit den Minuten" - Dieter Roth und die Musik, 6.9.2014-11.1.2015) and in 2015 at the Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin. This website (mostly in german) provides extensive documentary material on the exhibitions, accompanying events and collects a huge amount of hitherto unpublished sources and (acoustic) art works. Especially remarkable is a series of oral history videos (more than 20 hours of material) with Dieter Roth's co-workers and musical fellows (such as Hermann Nitsch, Günter Brus, Gerhard Rühm, Oswald Wiener a.o.) under the subtitle Materialien/"Selten gehörte Gespräche".

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Michel Roth

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