New Music by Karlheinz Essl

Karlheinz Essl's legendary realtime composition, performed by the composer himself at the NIME 2106 Conference in Brisbane, Australia on a Yamaha Disklavier. Lexikon-Sonate is an interactive realtime composition environment for musical composition and live performances. It takes advantage of composition algorithms that has been developed by Karlheinz Essl since 1985. With this algorithmic music ge...

Free improvisation about Nietzsche and Wagner by OUT OF THE BLUE with Agnes Heginger (vocals) and Karlheinz Essl (live-electronics). Recorded live at the Essl Museum (Klosterneuburg/Vienna) on April 27th, 2016. Das Offene und Unerwartete ist Ausgangspunkt dieser Performance, die von Friedrich Nietzsche und seinem ambivalenten Verhältnis zu Richard Wagner inspiriert ist. Eine Auswahl seiner Texte,...

Parsifal-Kristall transforms the salvation choir from Wagner’s sacred festival drama by utilizing a new technique for his “art of transition”. The music of the finale, which dissolves all the dramatic tensions and conciliates all the contrasts of Wagner’s music drama, now runs backwards, beginning with the last crescendo and leading into clusters of interleaving layers of the musical material, as...

Sound scape "middle ages" from Karlheinz Essl's sound/video/performance OMNIA IN OMNIBUS (2015)

Sound scape "present time" from Karlheinz Essl's sound/video/performance OMNIA IN OMNIBUS (2015)

Granular synthesis processing of Heinrich Isaac's "Innsbrucklied" (15th century). Excerpt from Karlheinz Essl's sound/video/performance OMNIA IN OMNIBUS (2015).

Granular synthesis processing of Mönch von Salzburg's "Das Kühhorn" (14th century). Excerpt from Karlheinz Essl's sound/video/performance OMNIA IN OMNIBUS (2015).

Amazing Maze is a computer program written by Karlheinz Essl in 1993 ff. It automatically generates music by manipulating sampled instrumental sounds according to certain compositional strategies that are carried out in different structure generators. Each generator synthesizes its own characteristic sonic world. The compositional algorithms have been programmed in MaxMSP by taking advantage of my...

Performed and recorded by Karlheinz Essl on 14 Jan 2009 at Studio kHz. Having played the electric guitar as a rock-obsessed teenager, I re-discovered it 25 years later. In the meantime, I have studied composition and musicology and became heavily involved with electronic and computer music. Working as a composer writing complex musical scores I felt more and more the desire to re-connect to those...

Ausschnitt aus dem 2014 entstandenen KUNSTRADIO-Hörstück "Herbeck extended" - eine Hommage an den Lyriker Ernst Herbeck. Als Ausgangsmaterial diente eine Tonbandaufnahme mit der Stimme des schizophrenen Dichters, der aufgrund einer Gaumenspalte sich sprachlich kaum artikulieren konnte. Info: http://www.essl.at/works/herbeck-extended.html

This is a 5 hour recording of Karlheinz Essl's sound installation WebernUhrWerk. Every 15 minutes, a short Carillon phrase based on the twelve-tone row of Anton Webern is played. Be aware that most of the time this piece is silent! The original composition, however, is based on a generative computer program which you can download from here: http://www.essl.at/works/webernuhrwerk/download.html It w...

A computer program that automatically composes dodecaphonic Carillon music based on the twelve-tone row of Anton Webern's last composition - commemorating his sudden and unexpected death on 15 Sep 1945 as he was accidentally shot dead by an American GI. The program simulates a Carillon which plays a short musical phrase every 15 minutes which never repeats itself. More information and download lin...

Final part of Karlheinz Essl’s sound/video performance Omnia in omnibus, created for the 650th anniversary of the University of Vienna. Recorded live at Studio kHz on June 13th, 2015. Info: http://www.essl.at/works/OIO.html

Performed by Goska Isphording (harpsichord) and Anne Veinberg (toy pianos) during the Prix Annelie de Man on May 28th, 2015 at Het Orgelpark in Amsterdam (NL). In this piece, two toy pianos are combined with a two-manual harpsichord - an instrument with a long history and an impressive repertory, as opposed to the toy piano. Although both keyboards are so different in every respect, they are formi...

Erster Teil aus Karlheinz Essl KUNSTRADIO-Stück "Herbeck extended" über den Dichter Ernst Herbeck (1920-1991), der die meiste Zeit seines Lebens im psychiatrischen Krankenhaus Maria Gugging verbrachte. Was zunächst wie ein herkömmliches Literaturfeature beginnt entwickelt sich aber schon bald zu einem bedrohlichen Szenario, in dem die Stimmen, die Ernst Herbeck Zeit seines Lebens verfolgt haben, d...

Letzter Teil aus Karlheinz Essl KUNSTRADIO-Stück "Herbeck extended" über den Dichter Ernst Herbeck (1920-1991), der die meiste Zeit seines Lebens im psychiatrischen Krankenhaus Maria Gugging verbrachte. Im Nachlass Ernst Herbeck wurde von der Literaturwissenschaftlerin Gisela Steinlechner einen Fragebogen gefunden, den der Psychiater Leo Navratil aufgesetzt hatte. Die Fragen waren mit Schreibmasch...

Dritter Teil aus Karlheinz Essl KUNSTRADIO-Stück "Herbeck extended" über den Dichter Ernst Herbeck (1920-1991), der die meiste Zeit seines Lebens im psychiatrischen Krankenhaus Maria Gugging verbrachte. Ein Kommentar über Karlheinz Essls persönlichen Zugang zu Ernst Herbeck, gelesen von Andreas Wolf. Im Hintergrund wird allmählich Herbecks Gedicht "Das Leben" erahnbar, das im Zentrum des nächsten...

For WalkürenWalk, an electronic sound performance for computer and controllers, Essl has chosen a fragment of 30 seconds from Wagner’s “Ride of the Walkyries”, segmented into tiny sound grains which are overlapped and re-combined during the course of a live-performance. These “nano”-particles reveal certain substructures of the music like a view through a microscope. In his adaptation, the music d...

Tristan’s Lament seems to allude Tristan’s complaint in the third act, when he is sick to death awaiting his beloved and “best doctor”, Isolde. However, Essl has chosen a sequence from the prelude, and by a program written in MaxMSP he moves through the sound in slow motion, back and forth, quicker and slower, until the time flow stops. In every performance, the live improvised reconstruction crea...

Composed 2005 for the 60th anniversary of Anton Webern's death, performed by Isabel Ettenauer and Karlheinz Essl. Info: http://www.essl.at/works/webernspielwerk.html

Performed by students of Lars Mlekusch and Karlheinz Essl on March 9th, 2013 at the MUK Vienna. Auf einer USA-Reise im Jahr 2005 war der Colorado River für einige Tage unser Wegbegleiter. Sein unbeirrtes Weiterströmen, seine chamäleonartige Farbigkeit und sein ungeheure Kraft (von dem das Grand Canyon ein berührendes Zeugnis ablegt)erschienen mir als naturgewordene Metapher für eine Komposition, d...

Agnes Heginger's (voice) and Karlheinz Essl's (live-electronics) spontaneous interpretation of a poem by Hermann Niklas. Performed live at the Essl Museum Klosterneuburg (5 Dec 2012). Info: http://www.essl.at/div/outoftheblue.html

Sound environment of Xenia Hausner’s room installation „ÜberLeben”, shown at the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg (A) in 2012. Info: http://www.essl.at/works/suspended-suspense.html Eigens für die Installation von Xenia Hauser in der Rotunde des Essl Museums hat der Komponist Karlheinz Essl sein Sound-Environment „Suspended Suspense” geschaffen, das mit minimalsten Mitteln eine Atmosphäre unerträglic...

Performed by Karlheinz Siessl (euphonium) and Karlheinz Essl (live-electronics) at festival Klangspuren (2012). Some years ago I received an e-mail by a tuba player named Karlheinz Siessl who found it funny that our names are so similar: they only differ in the syllable "si". He suggested a collaboration and asked me to write a piece for his instrument. Shortly thereafter I invited him into my stu...

Agnes Heginger (voice) and Karlheinz Essl improvising on a poem by Walt Whitman. Performed live at the festival LOISIARTE on March 25th, 2013 in Langenlois, Austria. Info: http://www.essl.at/div/outoftheblue.html