Friedrich Goldmann - Oeuvre

Oeuvre

Goldmann wrote more than 200 works. They include chamber music, solo concertos, orchestral works including four symphonies, stage and film music scores as well as one opera, "R.Hot oder Die Hitze."

His oeuvre can be differentiated roughly by three creative periods. The official oeuvre starts around 1963 and develops until the beginning of the 1970s in several stage musics as well as chamber music and three "Essays" for orchestra. In these works he initially employed serialist and cluster techniques. Around 1969 Goldmann entered a phase in which he developed a technique of appropriating established musical forms (such as sonata, symphony, string quartet, etc.) and "breaking them open from within", thereby changing their impact and meaning (Stürzbecher 1979). This allows for highlighting the breaking points as well as integrating new musical material. Important examples of this phase are Symphonies 1 and 2 (1971 and 1976). Since the end of the 1970s a new tendency evolved that would dominate his third creative period, especially since the late 1990s: autonomous, "absolute" composition (Dibelius 1988, 286–88) that integrates all possibilities of contemporary classical music. Instead of working with discrepancies, as in "polystylism" for instance, Goldmann sought interactions and integrations of techniques and material. This approach seems similar to Wolfgang Rihm's "subjective composing", but differs by aiming at developing an "objective" musical language by re-evaluating earlier techniques with advanced knowledge, and measuring new methods by the standards set by historical techniques that stood the test of time.