Olga Neuwirth facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Olga Neuwirth
|
|
|---|---|
_2002.jpg)
Olga Neuwirth in 2002
|
|
| Born | 4 August 1968 Graz, Austria
|
| Occupation |
|
| Parent(s) | Harald Neuwirth |
| Awards |
|
Olga Neuwirth (born August 4, 1968) is a famous Austrian composer, visual artist, and writer. She creates modern classical music. She is especially known for her operas and music theater shows. Many of her works explore important social and political topics.
Olga Neuwirth likes to combine different art forms in her work. She often works with writer Elfriede Jelinek. She also uses live electronic sounds and video in her music. For her opera Lost Highway, she turned a surreal film by David Lynch into a musical story. She has also written music for both old and new movies. The composer Luigi Nono has been a big inspiration for her music and her political ideas.
About Olga Neuwirth
Her Early Life
Olga Neuwirth was born in Graz, Austria. Her father, Harald Neuwirth, was a pianist. When she was seven, Olga started learning to play the trumpet. However, an accident injured her jaw, so she could not continue playing the trumpet.
Her Studies and Inspirations
As a teenager, Olga attended special music workshops. There, she learned about composing from famous musicians like Hans Werner Henze. When she was 16, she met the writer Elfriede Jelinek, who later won the Nobel Prize. They have worked together on many artistic projects since then.
At 17, Olga wrote her first commissioned piece of music. It was called Die gelbe Kuh tanzt Ragtime (The Yellow Cow Dances Ragtime). This piece was played at the opening of a festival in 1985.
She studied music and art in San Francisco, USA, and later in Vienna, Austria. She learned about composition and electronic music. She also wrote a master's thesis about music in films. In the early 1990s, she studied in Paris and worked at IRCAM, a famous music research center. During this time, she was greatly inspired by composers like Adriana Hölszky and Luigi Nono.
Her Adult Life and Advocacy
Since 2021, Olga Neuwirth has been a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. She is also a member of several important art academies.
Olga Neuwirth often thinks about the daily lives of composers, especially women. She believes women composers sometimes don't get enough attention in the art world. She has written many texts about this issue. She also speaks out on wider political topics. For example, she gave a speech in 2000, encouraging people to be aware of social and political changes.
Her Music Works
Olga Neuwirth has created many full-length music theater pieces. These include the video opera Lost Highway (2003), which is based on a film. Another work, Bählamms Fest (1993/1997), uses ideas from Leonora Carrington's work. She also created The Outcast, inspired by Herman Melville, and American Lulu, which is her own version of an older opera. She worked with Elfriede Jelinek on "Bählamms Fest."
Her opera based on David Lynch's film Lost Highway uses live and pre-recorded sounds and videos. It premiered in Austria in 2003. The American premiere happened in Ohio and New York City. A recording of the opera won a special award. The UK premiere was in London in 2008.
Olga Neuwirth's opera Orlando is based on a novel by Virginia Woolf. It was the first full-length opera by a woman composer to be performed at the Vienna State Opera. It premiered in Vienna in December 2019. Critics from around the world later chose it as the best premiere of the year.
She has also released many chamber music works. Chamber music is written for a small group of instruments.
Her Unique Style
Olga Neuwirth's music style is known for using many different techniques. She mixes various sounds and often questions what is normal in art and society. She calls her approach "art in-between."
Openness in Music
Her works often go beyond the usual rules of contemporary classical music. Since the late 1980s, she has tried to break free from how the music business categorizes music. She gets ideas from many places, including art, architecture, books, history, psychology, science, and everyday life. Her goal is to create unique and complex works.
For example, in her piece Le Encantadas o le avventure nel mare delle meraviglie (2014), she created a "fictional adventure novel" using many special sound effects. This piece was inspired by a story from Herman Melville and the sounds of Luigi Nono. The starting point for this music was a recording of sounds from a church in Venice.
In the 1990s, Olga Neuwirth started mixing different art forms. She combined theater, opera, radio plays, performance art, and video. She is interested in many ways to express herself. This can be seen in the titles of her works, like The Outcast, which is a "musicstallation-theater with video."
Innovative Ways to Present Music
Olga Neuwirth often tries to change how concerts are usually presented. She wants to create a "fluid form" for her shows. For example, during breaks at a festival in 1998, she had the sound of wind-up toys played through speakers in the concert hall. Visuals were also projected onto a screen, creating an immersive experience. Also, writer Elfriede Jelinek wrote special "prompt texts" for the audience to follow.
Her works have also moved from concert halls into public spaces. For instance, Talking Houses (1996) was a sound installation for shops in an Austrian town. Another work, ...le temps désechanté ... ou dialogue aux enfers (2005), was a sound installation in a square in Paris. For this piece, a special camera tracked people moving through the square. As more people passed by, the music changed. However, the police eventually had the sound installation turned off.
Working with Other Artists
Olga Neuwirth often works with artists from other fields. She has collaborated with architects like Peter Zumthor and Asymptote Architecture. She also works with computer music artists. She created an interactive art piece called Disenchanted Island with video artist Tal Rosner.
She is very interested in how music and visual art connect. She has also written texts and film scripts, made short films, and organized performances and photo series. In 2007, she took part in a big art exhibition called documenta 12. There, she presented a sound and film installation. Recently, she worked with artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster on a multimedia installation.
Music for Films
Olga Neuwirth has also composed music for many films. She has written scores for silent films like Symphonie diagonale (1924) and City Without Jews (1924). She also created soundtracks for modern films. Her music for the film Das Vaterspiel was shown at the Berlinale film festival in 2009. She also composed for Ich seh, Ich seh, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2014.
Selected Works
Most of Olga Neuwirth's works are published by Ricordi and Boosey & Hawkes.
Stage Works
- Körperliche Veränderungen and Der Wald (1989/1990), two operas with Elfriede Jelinek
- Bählamms Fest (1997/98), music theater based on work by Leonora Carrington, with Elfriede Jelinek
- Lost Highway (2002–2003), opera based on David Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway
- American Lulu (2006–2011), her own version of Berg's Lulu
- The Outcast – Homage to Herman Melville (2009–2011), a "musicstallation theatre" with video
- Kloing! and A songplay in 9 fits, Hommage à Klaus Nomi (2011), a music-theater evening
- Orlando (2019), opera based on Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography, for the Vienna State Opera
Concertos (for soloist and orchestra)
- Sans soleil (1994) for two ondes martenot, orchestra, and live-electronics
- Photophorus (1997) for two E-Guitars and orchestra
- locus...doublure...solus (2001) for piano and orchestra
- Zefiro aleggia...nell´infinito... (2004) for bassoon and orchestra
- … miramondo multiplo … (2006) for trumpet and orchestra
- Remnants of songs...an Amphigory (2009) for viola and orchestra
- Trurliade – Zone Zero (2016) for percussion and orchestra
Orchestra Works
- Clinamen / Nodus (1999)
- anaptyxis (2000)
- Masaot/Clocks without Hands (2013)
- Keyframes for a Hippogriff − Musical Calligrams in memoriam Hester Diamond (2019) for orchestra, countertenor and boys´ choir
Mixed Ensemble Works
- Elfi und Andi (1997) for speaker, e-guitar, double bass, bass clarinet, saxophone and two playback-CD’s. With texts by Elfriede Jelinek
- The Long Rain (1999/2000) A video opera with surround-screens for 4 soloists, 4 ensemble groups, live-electronic, after a story by Ray Bradbury
- Construction in space (2000) for 4 soloists, 4 ensemble groups and live-electronic
- Hommage à Klaus Nomi (2009) Chamber orchestra version
- Ishmaela's White World (2012)
- Eleanor (2014/2015) for a female blues singer, drum-kit-player, ensemble and samples
- Aello – ballet mécanomorphe (2016/2017) for flute, 2 trumpets, strings, synthesizer and typewriter
Chamber Music Works
- Akroate Hadal (1995) for string quartet
- Ondate II (1998) for two bass clarinets
- Hommage à Klaus Nomi (1998) for countertenor and small ensemble
- voluta / sospeso (1999) for basset horn, clarinet, violin, violoncello, percussion and piano
- ...ad auras... in memoriam H. (1999)
- settori (1999) for string quartet
- Zwei Räthsel von W.A.M. (1999) for coloratura soprano, alto, viola, cello, cymbals, tape, and live electronics
- ... ce qui arrive ... (2003/2004) for 2 groups, samples and live-electronic after Paul Auster
- In Nacht und Eis (2006) for bassoon, cello with ringmodulator
- Kloing! (2007) for computer-aided CEUS-piano and interactive live video
- Hommage à Klaus Nomi (2009) for chamber orchestra
- in the realms of the unreal (2009) for string quartet
- Quasare / Pulsare II (2017) for violin, cello and piano
- CoronAtion Cycle (2020) CoronAtion IV/Version I, a 9-hours-long live sound installation
Solo Works
- Marsyas (2003–2004, revised 2006) for piano
- Trurl-Tichy-Tinkle (2016) for piano
See also
In Spanish: Olga Neuwirth para niños
