Darmstadt School

Darmstadt School refers to a group of composers who attended the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music () from the early 1950s to the early 1960s in Darmstadt, Germany.

Initiated in 1946 by Wolfgang Steinecke (), the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, held annually until 1970 and subsequently every two years, encompass the teaching of both composition and interpretation and also include premières of new works. After Steinecke's death in 1961, the courses were run by Ernst Thomas () (1962–81), Friedrich Ferdinand Hommel () (1981–94), Solf Schaefer (1995–2009), and Thomas Schäfer (2009– ). Thanks to these courses, Darmstadt is now a major centre of modern music, particularly for German composers.

Coined by Luigi Nono in his 1958 lecture "Die Entwicklung der Reihentechnik" (Nono 1975, 30; Fox 1999, 111–12), Darmstadt School describes the uncompromisingly serial music written by composers such as Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, (the three composers Nono specifically names in his lecture, along with himself), Luciano Berio, Earle Brown, John Cage, Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Niccolò Castiglioni, Franco Evangelisti, Karel Goeyvaerts, Mauricio Kagel, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Giacomo Manzoni, and Henri Pousseur from 1951 to 1961 (Ielmini 2012, 237; Muller-Doohm 2005, 392–93; Priore 2007, 192; Schleiermacher 2000, 20–21; Schleiermacher 2004, 21–22; Whiting 2009), and even composers who never actually attended Darmstadt, such as Jean Barraqué and Iannis Xenakis (Malone 2011, 90). Two years later the Darmstadt School effectively dissolved due to musical differences, expressed once again by Nono in his 1960 Darmstadt lecture "Text—Musik—Gesang" (Fox 1999, 123). Nevertheless, composers active at Darmstadt in the early 1960s under Steinecke's successor Ernst Thomas are sometimes included by extension—Helmut Lachenmann, for example (Schleiermacher 2004, 23–24)—and although he was only at Darmstadt before 1950, Olivier Messiaen is also sometimes included because of the influence his music had on the later Darmstadt composers (Schleiermacher 2000, 20).

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