Marcus Schmickler
Studio Piethopraxis

Vita

Marcus Schmickler, born in 1968, is a composer-performer of contemporary and electronic music. He resides in Cologne and Graz.

Schmickler merges computer music, ensemble composition, performance and scientific subjects. His multi-channel works have been performed on prestigious stages, creating unique auditory spaces. He explores techniques like Shepard tones and ring modulations, deepening his compositions through data sonification and otoacoustic emissions.

Schmickler writes on computer music and has won several prizes, including the Rome Prize. He taught at Bard College, at Calarts and at Robert Schumann Hochschule. His compositions have been performed by renowned ensembles worldwide.

CV Works

Calendar

24.07.19 › Stuttgart › Villa Massimo and Musik der Jahrhunderte present Schreber Songs (Don't Wake Daddy) feat. Neue Vocalsolisten and Zafraan Ensemble @ Theaterhaus
24.04.13 › Weiwuying › Richters Patterns Installation presented by Weiwuying International Music Festival @ National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts , TWN
24.04.18 › Düsseldorf › Bonner Durchmusterung @ Weltkunstzimmer (until April 26)
24.03.30 › Tongyeong › Richters Patterns Installation @Tongyeong International Music Festival (TIMF), KOR
24.02.16 › Düsseldorf › The Great Wayfinders Music for Tim Berresheim’s retrospective @ NRW Forum

Archive

Richters Patterns

For Large Ensemble, Computer and Film, premiered at Cologne Philharmonic. Richters Patterns, emerged as a collaboration between painter Gerhard Richter and Ensemble Musikfabrik, Marcus Schmickler and director Corinna Belz.
The composition 'extends' Gerhard Richter’s experiment of decomposing a reproduction of one of his 'Abstract Images' into vertical stripes around the domain of sound and time.
The music was not composed to an edited film, but instead Schmickler wrote the music in parallel with the film’s creation. Both, film and composition follow Richter’s method ‘divide, mirror repeat’ into the respective media, at times creating friction between images and sound. Thus listeners experience this music as if looking at a painting.

Schreber Songs (Don’t Wake Daddy)

Monodrama with scenic elements based on the life of Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge who was famous for his personal account of his own experience with schizophrenia and Freud’s account of paranoia.

Glockenbuch IV (Spectre Maria dei Carmini)

Glockenbuch IV is an immersive electroacoustic composition featuring original recordings and immaginary bell-towers originating from Venice, composed for La Biennale di Venezia. The work showcases original methods in analysis/resynthesis, statistical calculations of bell sounds, affording listeners an immersive auditory experience characterized by nuanced movement and doppler effect perception. Moreover, the incorporation of light into the performance establishes an evocative and conceptual synergy between technological elements and contemporary musical composition. The premiere of this work unfolded within the ambit of a 40-channel 3-D audio system."

Rave in the Style of G.M. Koenig

Solo exhibition at JUBG Gallery in Coloigne based on Realtime Autoencoders trained on Schmickler’s own music.

The Great Wayfinders (Höhlenmusik)

The Great Wayfinders Höhlenmusik is a multi-part music and multimedia composition, both a concert and an AV installation in a museum exhibition space.
The piece deals with music of a digital Stone Age (music as a resonance space of digital paleontology). Tim Berresheim's work serves as a backdrop and stage set that introduces and visually accompanies the thematic contexts of the piece.

Entwurf einer Rheinlandschaft (Draft of a Rhinelandscape)

Long-distance landscape performance, with long-range sound projection. For narrator, 5 solo singers, theatre-choir, singing choir, 2 conches, brass octet, percussion, electronic music, accordion orchestra, 2 boats, amateur musicians, fireworks. Dramatizing the concept of space, border, distance, proximity and distance, social distance, geographical distance, distance between cause and effect, as well as the state of liminality, in-betweenness.
90 min, Commisioned by Monheim Triennale

Marcus SchmicklerStudio Piethopraxis

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Marcus Schmickler
Studio Piethopraxis