Ana-Alexandra von Bülow, née Popescu, lives in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe and works as a freelance journalist, musicologist and music lecturer. She studied musicology, piano and music education at the Academy of Music in her home city of Bucharest (Romania). In Germany, she worked as a freelance dramaturg and journalist for the Paul Hindemith Institute and the Alte Oper Frankfurt under the name Ana Popescu. She has written music reviews for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and CD booklets for record companies. She was head of the press and events office at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts for several years. She later founded an association in northern Germany to promote art and culture. In 2001, at the invitation of the German Music Council, Ana von Bülow was a member of the jury for early music in Hamburg for the judging in the 38th national competition "Jugend Musiziert". Since 1998, she has repeatedly participated in the symposia of the Institute of Music at the University of Oldenburg with musicological contributions.

DADA - postmodern , On the word-sound relationship in Aurel Stroe's "4 Morgensternlieder" for soprano, saxophone and percussion.

The article examines the message that forms a meta-level, as it were, that springs from the cycle. The choice of poetry, which subtly combines humour and sarcasm, as well as sens and nonsense, language and mere primal sounds - whereby Christian Morgenstern can be seen as a true forerunner of the Dada movement - leads to the fact that dealing with it in the process of setting it to music allows freedoms that ultimately give priority to the level of the musical. This happens on the most diverse levels of musical form. What is tragic here is rather the tension between the chosen subject matter and the biographical context surrounding the composition's creation.

Corneliu Dan Georgescu (born 1 January 1938 in Romania), composer, ethnologist and musicologist, is the author of symphonic and electronic music, opera, organ and chamber music, mostly in cycles (including Atemporal Studies, Hommage to Mondrian, Hommage to Brancusi, Outline for a Fresco, Orbis, Jocuri, Transylvanian Motifs) as well as films, books and studies on topics such as the typology of Romanian dance music or Carpathian alphorn signals, musical archetypes, syntactic flexibility, melodic systems, improvisation, Enescu's oeuvre or Carpathian alphorn signals.the typology of Romanian dance music or Carpathian alphorn signals, musical archetypes, syntactic flexibility, melodic systems, improvisation, the work of Enescu and other Romanian composers.

Research activities at the "Institute for Ethnological and Dialectological Research" and at the "Institute for Art History" in Bucharest, after moving to Germany in 1987 at the "International Institute for Traditional Music" and at the Free University in Berlin, collaboration on the encyclopaedias MGG, KDG, Grove. Keywords for his work: Contemplation of an archetype, rejection of all anecdotalism, deliberate monotony or atemporal music, essentialised minimalism, neo-primitivism, neo-folklorism, interest in painting, independence from fashion and avant-garde. 1962-1987 Prizes from the Rum. Composers' Association and the Rum. Academy, 2013 Dr h.c. of the George Enescu University of Art in Jassy. www.corneliu-dan-georgescu.de/eu

The tragedy of insoluble contradictions

Aurel Stroe's "View into the void"

As often happens with great personalities, a kind of myth has grown up around Aurel Stroe in recent years: His name inspires an almost mystical respect, and any critical comment is out of the question. As is well known, he is definitely associated with certain concepts such as constant innovation, morphogenesis, catastrophe theory, thermodynamic laws, incommensurability of tuning systems, etc. - the composer himself has spoken at length about his musical credo in this respect. Some of these concepts need a certain initiation in order to be properly understood - that is also part of the mysterious aura of a myth. But a certain limitation is also part of it: for other important aspects of Stroe's music receive less attention in comparison to the above-mentioned terms - aspects about which he hardly ever spoke - such as the effectiveness of the tone colours, the scenic plasticity of the "musical personages", the balance of the musical structures, the form and unfolding or dramaturgy and, in general, the meaning and expressivity.

Stroe himself wanted his music to have above all a purely cognitive value and rejected interpretations such as that it was archetypal, transcendental, Romanian, etc. He would certainly also have considered a discussion about the tragedy in his music to be dubious. All the more so as - even though a poetics of tragedy has existed since Aristotle and a philosophy of the tragic since Schelling [Szondi 1961:7] - a clear theory of tragedy in music remains an unresolved task to this day.

It is customary to view the idea of the implication of tragedy in music from different perspectives. With few exceptions, it is predominantly based on digressions in the field of literature or biography and thus remains limited to a certain anecdotal quality that is added to the music "from the outside". But is it also possible to understand sound "from its own regulation rather than from the rules of nature or society", to explore its autonomy and talk about an "ontology of music from aesthetic reason"? [Hendricks 2014:7].

When it comes to tragedy in Stroe, his operas inspired by Greek tragedies naturally come to mind first. However, we can also talk about "tragedies in abstracto" , about drama as a reference model of musical form [Stollberg 2014:48], because music possesses purely musical means to express causality, development, conflicts, ruptures, etc. Analysing the tragedy contained in instrumental music is a task that not only seems much more difficult, but may even be unrealisable. Trying to do so, however, is much more exciting and can shed more light on the intimate meaning of Stroe's music, which he himself wanted to conceal.

Adalbert Grote was born in 1957. He studied music education and musicology at the "Hochschule für Musik" Cologne, University of Cologne, Free and Technical University of Berlin, including C. Dahlhaus, R. Stephan and J. Kuckertz; dissertation: "Studien zu Person und Werk des Wiener Komponisten und Lehrers Robert Fuchs"; publications in: ÖMZ, Heine-Jahrbuch der Internationalen Heine-Gesellschaft, Festschrift Rudolph Stephan, Kongressberichte Bukarest 2009 und 2011, 2013, Festschrift Violeta Dinescu 2013; Numerous lectures at various institutions in Europe and the USA, including National and International Conferences of the College Music Society of America (2005-2015), Alban Berg Festival Hannover 2007 and International Symposium G. Enescu 2009/ 2011/ 2013 Bucharest; Guest Lecturer George Mason University, Fairfax/Washington D.C., VA, USA 2006/07; by invitation participation in the conference of the "Institute for Music History Pedagogy", Juilliard School, New York 2008; speaker at the International Symposion

"Between the Times" 2009/10/11/12/13/14/15; since 2012 permanent author at the

symposium and the publication series "Zwischen Zeiten" at the University of Oldenburg.

Since 2013 lecturing member of the "Tchaikovsky Society Germany".

2015 Appointment as "Member of the Committee for International Communication" and

"Session Chair Staff" of the "College Music Society of America".

Aesthetic and compositional interrelationships in a national and international context - Aurel Stroe's "Quintandre" (1984)

A musical wayfaring - Aurel Stroe's "Quintandre" (1984)

One year before Aurel Stroe accepted an invitation to give guest lectures at the University of Illinois in 1985 and subsequently settled in Mannheim, the composer wrote his quintet "Quintandre", which, like his "Wind Quintet" two years earlier and the "Nocturne" composed after "Quintandre", embarks on Stroe's typical search for new sound mixtures and individual compositional concepts. "Quintandre" is expressly dedicated to Edgar Varèse and his work "Octandre" (1923). Varèse's innovative sound experiments made him a pioneer of electronic music,

which Stroe first explored during a study visit to the USA at the end of the 1960s. In a juxtaposition of "Quintandre" and "Octandre", the lecture will deal in detail with Stroe's relationship to Varése's compositional innovations, as well as with the question of whether and to what extent Stroe's little-noticed

composition equally searches for new sound potentials that may be connected to his morphogenetic thinking derived from mathematics and biology. Heterophonic and polyphonic implications could also point to Romanian folk music or to a variant of his composing with different tuning systems.

Michael Heinemann was born in 1959 and initially studied at the Cologne University of Music (church music, organ), then musicology, philosophy and art history in Cologne, Bonn and Berlin. Since 2000 Professor of Music History at the Carl Maria von Weber Academy of Music in Dresden, 2010-2013 also at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin. Publications in particular on the reception of Bach and Robert Schumann (co-editor of the Schumann letter edition) as well as on a philosophically intended music theory.

Fresh and free. Stroe's fish music (not only after Morgenstern).

The seemingly absurd "setting to music" of concrete poetry implies a "second semantics" which, far more than in conventional songs and chants, has to refer to con- and paratexts in order to reveal the intention of composer and work. For it is neither an inability to speak nor a negation of music (as cancellation in the sense of Heidegger) that prompts Stroe to fall back on these models, but rather the attempt to do something against despair and depression when political action becomes pointless and silence impossible: The "voice" of the fish as a multiple refraction of a principle of saying "nothing", but articulating that particularly...

Eva-Maria Houben, born 1955 in Rheinberg on the Lower Rhine; studied at the Folkwang-Hochschule für Musik Essen (school music, artistic final examination), organ with Gisbert Schneider. Doctorate and habilitation at the Gerhard Mercator University in Duisburg under Norbert Linke. Teaching at various grammar schools, lectureships in musicology at the Gerhard Mercator University in Duisburg and at the Robert Schumann University in Düsseldorf. 1993 academic appointment as professor at the Institute for

Music and Musicology at the Technical University of Dortmund. Her research and teaching focus on music theory and new music. Eva-Maria Houben is associated with the Wandelweiser group of composers. Her compositions are published by Edition Wandelweiser (Haan) and her CDs are released.

Numerous publications on new music, including Adriana Hölszky, Violeta

Dinescu, Hans-Joachim Hespos, the Wandelweiser Composers' Ensemble

(MusikDenken, Antoine Beuger, Jürg Frey).

Aurel Stroe's "3rd Piano Sonata (en palimpseste)" - against the background of a symbolic and metaphor-theoretical approach.

Sounds and sound connections in the process can become similar to life processes without depicting them. Can this be said? And what does the concept of analogy achieve here? If - as Aurel Stroe said in a portrait of the composer at the TU Dortmund (10/11 April 2002) - the "tragedy [...] is not represented", but "really [occurs] as a tragedy of form itself", a language would have to be found that is capable of capturing the "pointing out" of musical structures and processes to "structures, connections, that is: to realities and possibilities around us and within ourselves" (Helmut Lachenmann). The lecture is dedicated to the possibilities of "metaphorical-transferring thinking", as presented by Simone Mahrenholz (following Nelson Goodman's symbol theory), among others, and, in addition to the structural analogy, also includes musical practice, which reflects the process of the performers' encounters and the musical performance situation.

Monika Jäger, born in Krefeld in 1971; studied Music and Social Sciences at the University of Wuppertal and TU Dortmund; Second State Examination as a teacher at the Studienseminar Münster; teacher for Music and Social Sciences at the Anna-Freud-Oberstufenzentrum Berlin; 2001/2003/2011 participation in the George Enescu Symposium Bucharest; 2008 doctorate "The compositional work of Dinu Lipatti as part of European modernism" (TU Dortmund); music didactic focus, among others: Contemporary Eastern European music, social functions of music, scenic interpretation, individualising and double didactic concepts.

Aurel Stroe: J.S.Bach - Sound Introspection (1986/87)

Aurel Stroe describes his version of the 14 canons BWV 1087 as "Sound Introspection", a self-observation, a look inside the sound. "Is an inner view something different from analysing external characteristics?" "Does that still sound like Bach? (And if so, would that be significant?)" On the basis of the composition and statements by and about Stroe, pupils on a basic music course (year 12) reflect on the expressiveness, methods and aims of arranging compositions and on what remains of the original.

Martin Kowalewski was born in Bremen in 1976. He first studied philosophy, psychology and German studies in Hamburg and then Oldenburg. His academic appointment is as a freelance journalist. His dissertation on "Space in music" provides a philosophical basis for the concepts of space in music. It also sheds light on the special use of space by heterophonic compositional styles. The thesis has already been defended. Publication is imminent.

Phenomenological aspects of the tragic in the music of Aurel Stroe

The concept of the tragic refers to contexts of action, but can also refer to an existential situation of the innocent but irredeemable individual. In my study, I understand the order of phenomena in music as an analogue to an existential experience in order to demonstrate the tragic as a decisive category for understanding Prairie, Prières (Prairie, Prayer). Stroe wrote the work during a one-year residency in Illinois. During this time, he took long walks. One day, the endless expanse of cornfields deeply irritates him. Then he sees a hut. Singing emanates from it. A group of believers is singing. This scene forms the basis of the composition. Stroe composes according to intellectual concepts. Among other things, he studied thermodynamics and catastrophe theory. Thermodynamics sees a - for humans tragic - end of the universe in the uniform distribution of matter (heat death), the most probable of all states. Ludwig Boltzmann theorised that the universe was already in this state, but that there were exceptions. A meadow in the wind can produce very chaotic but also homogeneous patterns of movement. It is possibly the starting point of a catastrophe scenario. A lot can happen and Stroe also gives a lot of space to chance in his composition, or more precisely to the performers. They initially appear as stabilisers, but are in danger of being lost in the hectic activity of the large orchestra. Without freedom of action, he provides sound centres for more complex events. After all, he needs three instruments at the same time to fulfil his role.

Laura Manolache was born in Bucharest/Romania in 1959. She studied musicology (1978-1982) and composition (1997-2002) at the University of Music in Bucharest. Participation in the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt (1990), DAAD annual scholarship holder (Cologne 1992-1993; Osnabrück 1999, 2003), as well as scholarship holder of the Romanian Academy - Foundation of the Menahem H. Elias family (Vienna 1996). From 1991 she was a lecturer at the National Music University of Bucharest, where she obtained her doctorate in 1995. From 2006-2012 she was also director of the "George Enescu" National Museum Bucharest. As a composer, she has written numerous works in various genres, which have been honoured with national and international awards and have also been published. Her music has been performed in Romania as well as in various other European countries, the USA and Japan. Her musicological publications include: George Enescu. Interviews (I. edition in 2 volumes: 1988, 1991 - Prize of the Romanian Composers' Association, 1988; II. Edition: 2005), Twilight of the Tonal Age (2001 - Prize of the Romanian Academy), Six Pictures of Romanian Composers (2002), Theodor Rogalski (2006).

Aurel Stroe - The work of art as a mirror of the world.

The artist - with a broad intellectual horizon - realised relatively quickly that, through the communication of tonal language, both coherent ideas and personal options on topics & debate of general interest, as well as perspectives for the contemplation and understanding of the world can be formulated. Thus, in his early 60s, Stroe learnt, among other things, the validity of the phrase "music is sound architecture". In this regard, he developed a computer programme - MUSGENER - which was used to calculate the structural form of several pieces. These include Arcade (1962), eight tone vaults of astonishing beauty, modelled on the basis of the Fibonacci series and the golden ratio and set to music by 11 groups of instruments. It is an example of the successful use of science as an instrument of contemporary musical art.

Sorin Petrescu was born in Timisoara in 1959. He graduated from the Academy of Music in Bucharest and has been the solo pianist of the Timisoara Philharmonic Orchestra since 1986. He has won several prizes at the National Competition of Romanian Professional Musicians and the Romanian Music Critics' Prize (1989). State Prize of the Romanian Composers' Association (1990), second prize at the piano competition in Mazara (1993). Recordings. In addition to his engagement with the Trio Contraste, he plays as a soloist with various European orchestras. 

Roberto Reale was born in Hanover in 1974. He initially studied horticultural sciences at the University of Hanover and graduated with a Diplom in 2000. In 2001, he began his master's degree in music and English studies at the University of Oldenburg. One focus of his musical education was composition lessons with Prof. Violeta Dinescu. In addition to his studies, he was involved in the musical design of various theatre productions at the Landesbühne Wilhelmshaven, the Landestheater in Detmold and the Theater der jungen Welt in Leipzig. Since 2004 he has been involved in the organisation and documentation of the Oldenburg Composers' Colloquium and since 2006 also in the annual Zwischen Zeiten Symposium in Oldenburg. In spring 2010, he completed his music studies (Magister in Musicology) in Oldenburg with honours. Since October 2010, Roberto Reale has been a research assistant at the Institute of Music in Oldenburg and is working on his doctorate under Prof. Violeta Dinescu and Prof. Dr Wolfgang Martin Stroh on the subject of "Elements of musical lament in the opera Œdipe by George Enescu".

Ulrike J. Sienknecht, born 1966 in Hamburg, studied biology, philosophy and educational science in Hamburg. State Examination ("The Phenomenon of Speciation in the Genus Orestias VAL.1839"), University of Hamburg, 1992. Doctorate in Biology (University of Hamburg, 1999) and scientific work at the Universities of: Hamburg (1990-1999), TU Munich (2000-2004) and Purdue University, USA (2004-2010). Numerous research stays abroad, often lasting several months (between 1991 and 2004), including Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, Philippines, Thailand, Spain, USA and Australia. Since 2010 research associate at the University of Oldenburg with an independent research focus on developmental biology and evolution.

An approach to the morphogenetic music of Aurel Stroe.

Aurel Stroe describes his music as 'morphogenetic' in reference to the mathematical 'theory of morphogenesis' by René Thom (1972). Morphogenesis describes structural changes that lead to the formation of shape during the development of an organism. Reflecting on this, Thom's theory addresses the problem of how discrete forms can develop from a homogeneous topological system. He defines elementary catastrophes in order to describe which changes in the structure of a system can lead to discontinuous effects occurring along a continuous 'morphogenetic landscape'. Similarly, Stroe is interested in the question of how a fundamental upheaval can be transformed into the formation of something new. In a figurative sense, how it is possible to move from a closed to an open system. Applied to the Oresteia tragedy, it is about the self-organising development from the 'closed castle of Argos', through the collapse of the polis and the central tragic moment, the murder of the tyrant, to the new polis democracy. Stroe uses various incompatible tonal systems in order to achieve transformations in the course of a piece by composing with several incommensurable tuning systems, such as in his Clarinet Concerto (1974-75). He uses a technique of controlled chance to generate breaks and transformations. In this way, Stroe experiments with the underlying interest in musically exploring what can emerge anew from a decay. Taking up Stroe's thoughts on morphogenetic developments, we would like to shed new light on biological morphogenesis here, based on elements of his music. At the centre will be examples of natural morphogenetic self-organisation. Although such morphogenetic processes take place during the embryonic development of every organism, they are far from being fully understood and are the subject of current research. Inspired by Stroe's work, we want to embark on a search to identify fundamental events in the biological system, such as 'elementary catastrophes' and 'tragic dilemmas'. Our intention is also to look to the future to see whether an inspiring atmosphere can be created. An atmosphere that could help to crystallise new questions that may need to be investigated (ideally in both directions) through the exchange of musical and scientific perspectives. We would therefore like to take up Stroe's idea and ask whether other aspects can possibly be recognised through a reciprocal opening. Aspects that would otherwise perhaps remain hidden in a specialised, limited perspective.

Michael Sukale was born in Berlin in 1940. He studied history, psychology and sociology in Freiburg and Mannheim (where he gained a degree in sociology in 1966) and logic and philosophy in Stanford, USA (where he gained his Ph.D. in 1971). After more than ten years of teaching and research in Princeton, Chicago, Washington, Jerusalem and Paris as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer, he returned to Germany in 1980, habilitated in philosophy and science in Mannheim in 1984 and taught as interim professorship, visiting professor or lecturer in Mannheim (1980/81 and 1989/91), Düsseldorf (1982/85), Constance (1985/87), Geneva (1987), Bamberg (1990/191) and Leipzig (1990/1991). He has been Professor of Philosophy and Foundations of Science at the University of Oldenburg since 1992 and is now Professor Emeritus.

Tragedy? Remarks on a difficult problem.

After a very brief reminder of what Greek tragedy was and how it developed, the question will be raised as to how tragedy and music can be combined and whether "tragic music" can exist at all. The lecturer will not shy away from making outlandish claims in order to trigger as lively a (controversial) discussion as possible.

Nicolae Teodoreanu, composer and ethnomusicologist, born in Bucharest in 1962; studied composition at the National University of Music and completed his doctorate at the University of Music in Cluj. Since 1990, he has worked as an ethnomusicologist at the "Constantin Brăiloiu" Institute of Ethnography and Folklore in Bucharest and has held teaching positions at music academies in Romania. Between 1994 and 2013, he received several scholarships for composition and ethnomusicological research in Germany, Austria and Romania. His music has been performed in Romania, Germany, Austria and France and his articles in the field of ethnomusicology and music theory have been published in various specialised journals. His compositional and musicological activity is an attempt to explore the psycho-cultural foundations of music, both on the stylistic-musical level and on the acoustic level. The purpose of his composing is the integration in modern composition of some elements from different musical traditions such as European folklore, non-European and Byzantine music.

Aspects of the tonal systems theorised by Alain Daniélou
are adopted in the music of Aurel Stroe

Some of Aurel Stroe's compositions are based on Alain Daniélou's speculations about tonal systems, which in turn are based on the naturalness of tonal scales, already refuted by Alexander John Ellis at the end of the 19th century. Despite the controversial premises, which presuppose insufficiently supported theories of perception, Daniélou developed an astonishing numerically symbolic theory of music (in the context of investigations using methods of comparative musicology), which gives rise to music by Stroe that is no less fascinating. However, Stroe's view of the incommensurability of "tuning systems" is aimed more at ontological questions than at solving grammatical-formal problems

Karl-Ernst Went, born in 1952, studied Protestant theology in Wuppertal and Göttingen and music in Hanover, majoring in piano and harpsichord. Scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation for both degree programmes. Regular collaboration with various early music orchestras. Course activities at home and abroad. Member of the ensemble "Hamburger Ratsmusik" for more than ten years: numerous performances in the old and new Federal States, for example at the Göttingen Handel Festival and the Franconian Music Summer. Regular CD productions and radio recordings. Participation in oratorio performances at home and abroad. Teaches harpsichord and basso continuo at the University of Oldenburg. Worked for decades as a research assistant at the library there. Increasingly involved in his own composing.

Silke Wulf studied philosophy and musicology at the University of Cologne. During her studies, she worked at the Thomas Institute (Research Institute for Medieval Philosophy) and at Schauspiel Bonn (sound engineering and assistant director). Her doctorate in Oldenburg on the subject of "Time of Music" in the writings of Augustine was honoured with several awards. Research assistant in Bremen. Teaching assignments at the Alanus University, Bonn and the Cusanus University, Bernkastel-Kues; guest lecturer in Portugal. Research focus: philosophy of music and aesthetic education.