Harald Muenz
BeethovEnBloc (2000)
Tape composition with the thirty-seven movements of the nine symphonies by Ludwig van Beethoven (EXTRACT only)

Realisation: studio of the author
Duration: 9‘26‘‘ (the SoundCloud track is a 4'41'' extract!)
Live premiere: Dec. 1, 2000, Cologne, Elektronisches Studio der Musikhochschule, Aulakonzert Neue Musik LXV
Broadcasting premiere: DeutschlandRadio Werkstatt, Dec. 29, 2000 (curator: Götz Naleppa)

BeethovEnBloc is my personal response to a monument of German “Leidkultur” [“culture of suffering” – an untranslatable pun on “Leitkultur” (“leading culture”), the political slogan introduced by the conservative party in Germany to encapsulate the idea of German culture as the dominant culture within multicultural Germany].  The composition’s only materials are the sounds of the thirty-seven movements of the nine symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.

After I had tested as many of the different renditions of the symphonies as possible, the recordings were first of all cleaned, balanced and timed.  For each symphony I calculated an average movement length from the durations of its individual movements. Subsequently I used time-stretching to bring all the movements of the symphony to this duration, but without altering the pitch.  This time-consuming transformation method sometimes caused rather extreme stresses or strains to the originals. Thus for each symphony I achieved a compact overlaid form of all its movements.  These nine blocks can also be performed separately

The next stage was once again to establish an average duration of these nine assemblages (and consequently of all 37 movements), so that – again without altering pitch – each individual complex could be brought to this average length of 9 minutes 26 seconds.  Finally I superimposed these nine structures and thus achieved a compact block of all the Beethoven symphonies.

The sound composition makes possible perceptual insights which “Ludwig van” would have been unlikely to grant  At first the continuous fortissimo can be quite hard for the listener, but then one is astonished by the transparency of the sound. Which of the 37 movements is at any moment the strongest?  Once one has come to terms with the volume, the superimposed dynamic fluctuations of this hallucinatory stream of sounds flood into the ear.  Finally one is able, by further focussing one’s perception, to pursue innumerable individual threads in this shining tapestry. 
(HM, translated by Susanna Eastburn)

BeethovEnBloc

BeethovEnBloc. Tape composition with the 37 movements of Beethoven's 9 symphonies (2000; EXTRACT)

Harald Muenz (he/him)
is a German-Italian transdisciplinary artist realising instrumental & vocal, peformative and radiophonic works with an artistic focus on phonetic composition & Ars Acustica.

Harald's compositions have been commissioned by Ensembles Mosaik, auditivvokal, hand werk, Apartment House, Modern, musikfabrik; by radio stations such as Hessischer Rundfunk, Westdeutscher Rundfunk, BBC, Deutschlandfunk, DLF Kultur, among others.
Harald's works have been performed and broadcast internationally and have been documented on several CDs (portrait CD nearly-fast with Ensemble Mosaik at Coviello).
Frequent collaborations with experimental poets (Florian Neuner, Mathias Traxler, Cristian Forte, Christian Filips, Roža Domašcyna, among others)
On the VR platform Second Life, Harald (aka Cuirec d’Erc) has realised several interactive sound installations and has been a member of the Avatar Orchestra Metaverse (aom) since 2017.
Harald is also active as a multilingual speech performer (trio sprechbohrer), author and lecturer.
Harald's music has been occasionally described by others as ‘worldly,’ ‘non-conformist,’ or ‘provocative.’

https://haraldmuenz.carrd.co/
Work list on http://composers21.com/compdocs/muenzh.htm

Artist residencies
1996 Künstlerhaus Schloß Wiepersdorf (Brandenburg/Germany)
2000 Villa Aurora (Los Angeles/USA)
2021 Künstlerhof Schreyahn (Niedersachsen/Germany)
2023 Atelier Galata (Istanbul/Turkey)

Studies
Composition at Music Universities in Cologne (J. Fritsch, K. Meyer, C. Barlow) and Stuttgart  (H. Lachenmann)
PhD in Composition from Brunel University London (J. Croft)
Phonetics at Cologne University’s Institute for Linguistics (G. Heike, G. Sachse)
„Cleaning the House“ Workshop by the Marina Abramović Institute

Teaching
2001-2005 Lecturer for Aesthetic Phonetics, Institute for Linguistics, University of Cologne (part-time)
2006-11 Artistic Director of Musikhochschule Lübeck's Studio for Electronic Music (part-time)
2005-16 Lecturer in Composition Brunel University London (full-time permanent)
2016 Decision to work as a full-time freelance composer again
2017-22 current Lecturer at International Ensemble Modern Academy Frankfurt/M. (IEMA; part-time)

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