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German Radio Goes American
| Article
# : |
16625 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1989 |
2,179 Words |
| Author
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Richard Kostelanetz
Richard Kostelanetz is a writer/composer living in New
York. His recent books include On Innovative Music(ian)s
(Limelight). His latest composition, Kaddish, was commissioned
by Westdeutscher Rundfunk. |
Ever since the beginnings of our cultural history, experimental American artists have gone abroad to work (and reap rewards) in ways not possible at home. What has long been true for advanced American art in general is now particularly true for radio art. The center for avant-garde American radio production for the past decade has been in Cologne, Germany, the home of Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the largest of the German stations.
Of the Americans producing programs for WDR, as it is commonly called, nearly all initially earned their reputations in arts other than radio: the composers John Cage, Malcolm Goldstein, Sorrel Hays, Alvin Curran, Charles Amirkhanian, Tom Johnson, Pauline Oliveros, and Charlie Morrow; the poets Dick Higgins, Jackson Mac Low, and Jerome Rothenberg; and the visual artists Alison Knowles, George Brecht, Stephan von Huene, Faith Wilding, and Bill Fontana. Some of the extraordinary programs made by them are heard from time to time over WNYC-FM in New York City. Most are available at Goethe House, where they may be heard on tapes in the library.
Ear-Play
The principal patron for this beneficence has been Klaus Schoning, a staff producer for WDR's Horspiel department since the 1960s. Horspiel, pronounced "her-speel," translates literally as "ear-play"; and within the bureaucracies of the huge German radio stations, such departments are distinct from "literature" and "feature." A comparable phrase here has been "radio drama," which has been defined as an acoustic art in which actors talk emphatically at each other, abetted by sound effects. One reason not to use that English epithet now is that the American artists working
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