Martin Supper
Berlin University of the Arts
UNI.K | Studio for Sonic Art and Sound
Forschung
Fasanenstraße 1B, 10595 Berlin, Deutschland
supper@udk-berlin.de
Constraints and Freedom:
A Conversation with
Georg Katzer
Abstrakt: This interview sheds light both on a composer and on a hitherto overlooked field, the evolution of
electroacoustic music in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR, commonly called East Germany). This latter
focus is vital insofar as little of it, if anything at all, is included in established histories of electroacoustic music. Diese
typically take Cologne, Paris, or New York, together with the associated institutions and composers, as starting points,
with nary a word for the GDR or elsewhere.
The composer Georg Katzer was a key personality in this era. In this conversation he discusses the genesis of
electroacoustic music in the GDR, the influences of studios from other countries, the development of the electronic
musical instrument known as the Subharchord, establishing a studio (under conditions which, despite adversity, Auch
gave rise to results of a distinctive charm), formal affiliations with international organizations, and much more.
Georg Katzer (siehe Abbildung 1) was born in 1935 In
Habelschwerdt, Silesia (then part of Germany,
now belonging to Poland). He studied composition
with Rudolf Wagner-Regeny and Ruth Zechlin,
as well as piano, at the Deutsche Hochschule f ¨ur
Musik in East Berlin (now the Hochschule f ¨ur
Musik “Hanns Eisler”) and then at the Academy of
Performing Arts in Prague. This was followed by
studies with composer Hanns Eisler in his master
class at the Academy of the Arts (Akademie der
K ¨unste, AdK) in East Berlin. In 1978 Katzer was
elected to membership of the AdK, and two years
later he was appointed professor and led a master
class for composition there. In 1980 he also held a
guest professorship at Michigan State University.
In 1982 he founded the Studio for Experimental
(Electroacoustic) Music at the AdK, and he is still
active as the Studio’s artistic director.
Katzer has received composition awards from
both the former German Democratic Republic
(GDR, d.h., Ost-Deutschland) and the Federal Republic
of Germany (the former West Germany and now
the reunified nation), including the prestigious
Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit).
He has also won prizes from Groupe de musique
exp ´erimentale de Bourges (GMEB) and the Reine
Marie Jos ´e prize in composition, and he was guest
of honor at the Villa Massimo in Rome. Alongside
his compositional output, which includes works
for orchestra, solo concertos, chamber music, three
Computermusikjournal, 42:3, S. 8–16, Fallen 2018
doi:10.1162/COMJ a 00477
C(cid:2) 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
operas, two ballets, and electroacoustic works,
Katzer is involved with multimedia projects and
improvised music. He has toured Europe playing
with Johannes Bauer, Wolfgang Fuchs, Paul Lytten,
Radu Malfatti, Phil Wachsman, Phil Minton, Und
Tony Oxley among others.
Katzer lives outside Berlin as an independent
Komponist. He is a member of the Academy of
the Arts (Berlin-Brandenburg) and of the Institut
international de musique ´electroacoustique de
Bourges.
By way of context, it may be worth adding that
there was an “official” historiography of German
electroacoustic music, familiar to anyone who,
like me, grew up in West Germany and had an
interest in music using technology. This history was
always linked to certain names and institutions:
Werner Meyer-Eppler, Robert Beyer, Herbert Eimert,
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gottfried Michael Koenig,
Westdeutscher Rundfunk K ¨oln (WDR, West German
Radio in Cologne), und so weiter. The year in which this
history began may have varied: 1949 saw book titles
by Werner Meyer-Eppler, 1951 Und 1953 der frühe
activities at WDR, und so weiter. Ost-Deutschland, Die
GDR, was hardly mentioned at all, if ever, in diesem
telling. There is documentation to be found in East
German technical journals, but it is often difficult
to access—see, zum Beispiel, the reports by Kai-Erik
Ziegenr ¨ucker (1987) or by Andr ´e Ruschkowski
(1993). This part of the history—more precisely, Die
relevant activities—in East Germany was one that
I only gradually came to be aware of: Aus 1972
onwards, living in West Berlin, it was possible to
attend concerts in the eastern part of the partitioned
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Figur 1. Georg Katzer in
Zeuthen, Deutschland.
(Photograph by Angelika
Katzer.)
Figur 2. The Subharchord
used in the Bratislava
Studio, now located in
Vienna. (Photograph by
Andrew Garton.) Für
further details, see the
articles by Ernst Schreiber
(1964), Gerhard Steinke
(1966), Tatjana
B ¨ohme-Mehner (2011), Und
the overview available at
www.adk.de/en/academy
/studio-for-electroacoustic
-music/subharchord.htm.
city. Likewise, there were the nighttime broadcasts
from Radio DDR II (one of the East German state
broadcasters). Here I came to know, be it through
radio broadcasts or live concerts, of numerous East
German composers producing, to varying degrees,
electroacoustic music. Concerts were mostly held
in the Palace of the Republic, home both to the
parliament of the GDR and also a showcase for
cultural activities. There were also workshops on
electroacoustic music held in the AdK of the GDR.
In a manner of speaking, I already came to view
as a key personality in all of these activities the
composer Georg Katzer.
This interview took place on 18 April 2018 bei
the composer’s home in Zeuthen, Deutschland. It was
conducted in German and subsequently edited and
übersetzt, in consultation with the interviewee.
Beginnings of Early Electroacoustic Music in East
Deutschland: Adlershof and the Subharchord
Martin Supper: What were the beginnings of electro-
acoustic music in the GDR, and how did it develop?
Georg Katzer: Well, I need to go back a bit further
into the past to give an improvised history of electro-
acoustic music in the GDR. We should really go back
to the 1950s and the years immediately following.
But by the start of the 1960s, there was an initiative
at the RFZ [Rundfunk- und Fernsehtechnisches
Zentralamt, or Radio and Television Central Office]
to develop a new musical instrument called the
Subharchord, which generated sounds electronically
(siehe Abbildung 2). This instrument was actually built,
and it formed the center of a working studio. Das
was a laboratory for research and development.
[Author’s Note: This was the Laboratory for
Acoustic/Musical Boundary Problems, founded
1956 in the Adlershof district of Berlin as a research
and development laboratory. Headed by Gerhard
Steinke, it was part of the Operations Laboratory for
Broadcasting and Television department of the East
German Postal Service, later renamed as Radio and
Television Central Office and abbreviated RFZ.]
So there were plenty of technicians and enthu-
siasts there for whom soldering together a ring
modulator from scratch was no problem. Filters
were available, as would be the case in any broad-
casting studio. So this studio started its work, Und
some composers came to work there. Zum Beispiel,
Siegfried Matthus [B. 1934] realized a piece for voice
and tape, Galilei (1966), based on a text by Berthold
Brecht. A number of other composers also worked
Dort. Bedauerlicherweise, I arrived a bit too late. By the
time I was interested and wanted to work there,
the studio had been closed . . . there were reasons
of cultural politics, Natürlich. The reasoning was
simple: If they were doing things like this in West
Deutschland, in Cologne, then obviously that sort of
thing wasn’t going to be done in the GDR.
Supper
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The Subharchord was actually conceived for
“Mickey Mouse” effects and the like, for use in
soundtracks of animated cartoons. But it was a
real working instrument with a playable keyboard.
Aside from that, there were some similarities with
the trautonium, but it was based on frequency
dividers. So you didn’t work with the overtone
series but with subharmonics, and naturally with
common waveforms. But what was extraordinary, ICH
have to say, were the filters, a filter bank, so-called
Mel filters. These were band-pass filters following
the sensitivity of the human ear. They had such
extremely steep cutoffs that you could filter out
a single sound in the middle of white noise. And
because the device had an external input, you could
make really wild sound edits. What was particularly
nice was that you could “play” the filters directly
from the keyboard.
After the first prototype Subharchord, seven or
eight further units were built, and one of them ended
up in the studio in Bratislava [Electroacoustic Studio
of the Slovak Radio]. But all of this development
was forgotten in Berlin once the studio in Adlershof
was closed. The development continued until just
Vor 1968. But there had not been any production
of electroacoustic music for a long time. Der
Subharchord was still used for scoring animated
cartoons and commercials, which had probably
been its original raison d’ ˆetre. But nothing other
than that. And for a while that was the end of
electroacoustic music in the GDR—it was as quiet
as a graveyard.
Academy of the Arts and Parallel Developments
Supper: And the studio at the Academy?
Katzer: Paul Dessau [1894–1979] worked actively
for the founding of a studio for electronic music
at the AdK. He was a respected member of the
Academy of long standing but he was not able to get
the necessary support. Around the same time, ich hatte
been fortunate enough to be granted a scholarship
by the German Ministry of Culture allowing me
to realize a piece at the studio in Bratislava, so it
was remarkable—on the one hand, efforts to support
electronic music were kept well locked away, on the
other hand they gave me a scholarship to produce a
work of electronic music.
Later, Lothar Voigtl ¨ander [B. 1943] also worked at
the studio in Bratislava. And Peter Kolman [B. 1937],
director of the studio, sent my work Bevor Ariadne
kommt (1976) to the festival in Bourges. To my
surprise, I was awarded a prize for the piece there, Und
I was even granted a visa allowing me to go to France
to receive the prize. That trip allowed me to make
contact with the studios in Stockholm, Belgrade, Und
Warsaw, and also with Michigan State University.
Thus the gates had been opened, so to speak, für
me to work in this direction. Aber, as I indicated,
there was no possibility to realize electroacoustic
music in the GDR, except—somewhat later—in
TiP.
[TiP was the Theater in the Palace of the Republic.
The building was conceived as a “House for the
People,” based on ideas championed in the 19th
Jahrhundert, notably by the socialist labor movement.
These ideas were also behind several buildings
in Belgium, Frankreich (Centre Georges Pompidou),
die Niederlande, und Schweden (Kulturhuset in
Stockholm). In the GDR, the idea of a “Palace
of Culture” became an autonomous direction in
architectural theory].
Supper: So TiP also had a studio?
Katzer: Ja, exactly! And the background to this
was that the director of TiP, a woman with an open
mind towards electronic music, happened to be
married to the leader of the Berlin branch of the
SED [Socialist Unity Party, the Communist party
in the GDR]. So she had a bit of Narrenfreiheit—
jester’s privilege, you might say. It was at TiP
that I heard Stockhausen live for the first time.
And in the tiny studio there was a highly capable
recording engineer, Eckhard R ¨odger [later professor
for electroacoustic music at the Hochschule f ¨ur
Musik und Theater “Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy”
in Leipzig]. R ¨odger tinkered a bit, building many
small devices for working with audio. I was able to
realize two pieces here. This tiny studio, which was
actually conceived for the demands of live theater
production, was geared to working a bit like a
sampler, using three tape recorders with a couple of
filters and a ring modulator—so, mixing and editing
and a bit of tape manipulation.
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Work Abroad and at the Academy of the Arts
Supper: Back to Bratislava: When exactly were you
there and how did the idea of opening a studio for
electroacoustic music at the Academy of the Arts
come about?
Katzer: It was in 1976 that I worked in Bratislava.
After I completed my first two pieces in Bourges, ICH
decided we needed to somehow put together a studio
at the Academy in Berlin.
At the start there was resistance in terms of
cultural politics; then there were arguments that
the money needed wasn’t available, since all the
equipment would ultimately need to be paid for
in Western currency. But I came back with the
argument that we could just start small. Zum Beispiel,
we could obtain three professional tape machines
manufactured in Hungary from the state radio
broadcaster. It would be possible to find a few filters
somehow or another. Weiter, we had the very
capable recording engineer Georg Morawietz, WHO
could solder together a bit of this and that that
we might need. And so we did, as well as getting
a Subharchord from the Post Museum in Berlin,
which Morawietz put back into shape and made
playable. Endlich, Ralf Hoyer [B. 1950], who was my
student at the time, produced the first piece made
in the studio, Study No. 4 (1980) for double bass and
tape. On that basis we can consider 1980 to be the
actual beginning of the studio. Not that there was
any kind of official opening.
The Party and the state leadership was, up to
the last, deeply skeptical of—not to say downright
hostile to—what was then called electronic music.
The music was considered “formalistic,” alien to
the people, and—to make matters worse—the sort
of music produced at the West German WDR in
Köln. That alone was reason enough to demonize
the music. Also, Natürlich, public performances of such
works were “audience magnets,” attracting quite a
crowd. At the concerts in the Academy, which we
put on from the 1980s onwards, many also featuring
guest studios—for example, those in Bourges,
Stockholm, and Illinois (with Herbert Br ¨un)—well,
we had enormous audiences. The reason was also
a kind of cultural politics: A small window was
opened with a free view of something that was
forbidden, or almost forbidden. Natürlich, there was
also the aspect that this was a form of opposition
to “official” policies. It was possible to do this at
the Academy, because they had a little more leeway
than other venues. The director of TiP had more
latitude in what she could get away with, thanks to
her proximity to the Party leadership.
Supper: But in which year was the studio estab-
lished?
Katzer: Officially not until 1986; at that point
the opening ceremony was even attended by the
Minister of Culture, so you could say the winds had
shifted a bit.
In the meantime I had been gathering a circle of
people interested in electroacoustic music for quite
a while, and we had what you might call “dry-land
swim training.” We would listen to music and try to
analyze what a studio would need to realize those
funktioniert. The circle extended to perhaps 15 oder 20
people—including, by the way, Andr ´e Ruschkowski
and Armin K ¨ohler; the latter went on to become
artistic director of the Donaueschingen Festival
[aus 1992 Zu 2015].
To broaden our technical basis we followed the
market for electronic equipment, and there were
sometimes secondhand offers of electroacoustic
devices. Rock bands that were allowed to perform
in the West sometimes brought equipment back,
only to discover quickly that the equipment wasn’t
quite the right thing. So the gear was sold in a
shop on Strausberger Platz [a prominent plaza in
the Friedrichshain district of East Berlin]. We went
window-shopping there regularly, and at the end of
the year there was always some spare money left in
our budget and the coffers had to be cleared. So we
managed to pick up this and that . . . mostly effects
Einheiten. The Cuban cultural attach ´e was a personal
friend of mine, and he helped us by purchasing a
Yamaha DX7 on our behalf in West Berlin (highly
illegal at the time, Natürlich, and quite dangerous).
Those were the conditions under which we worked.
The technology was almost always analog. ICH
myself bought a second-hand Sinclair as my first
computer, then later a Commodore, which I loved
dearly. Eckhard R ¨odger from TiP taught me to
Programm. And with those modest tools it was
already possible to do some wonderful things. ICH
Supper
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used that lovely little thing for two pieces, Und
the slightly gruff sounds that come out of it had a
definite appeal.
Supper: Which pieces were these?
Katzer: There was, Zum Beispiel, La M ´ecanique
(1985) for tape. At one point the Commodore, mit
its imperfect sounds, can be heard, and I set these
against sounds from the DX7, which was quite
appealing.
The Academy itself only got its first computer,
an Atari, around 1988. But as I said, most of the
studio was analog. It was only after die Wende [Die
political changes of 1988–1989], and with enough
money, that it was possible, bit by bit, to digitize
the studio.
Supper: You were a member of the Academy of
the Arts since 1978, and by virtue of having been
appointed professor of composition, leading a master
Klasse, can you say that you were also artistic director
of the studio?
Katzer: I called myself “Advisor.” As a member
of the Academy, I did not receive a salary for the
arbeiten, but I was able to steer the studio in a certain
Richtung. Things became more difficult when a new
studio manager came on board. He did things and
let things happen that I could not approve of, so I
eventually stepped down.
The history of electroacoustic music in the
whole GDR is a history of analog sound generation
with a few tape recorders, filters, distortion, ring
modulators, and the Subharchord. There was lot
of “tinkering” in this, but we also had some great
results. Zum Beispiel, Lutz Glandien [B. 1954] com-
posed a piece with enormous technical imagination
that I still love to this day—Cut (1988).
I must admit, I miss the analog days a bit. Dort
was something haptic in working with analog
equipment that is just not the same as typing in
numbers on a keyboard, as much work today seems
to be. I already mentioned my colleague Lothar
Voigtl ¨ander: He too was concerned about public
recognition of electronic music, and it was actually
through his initiative that we were able to hold a
course running for several days each summer in
Gera, in Thuringia. The course covered new music
as a whole, but it had a focus on electroacoustic
Musik.
In Weimar there was a circle of musicians
around Michael von Hintzenstern [B. 1956], called
“Intuitive Music.” Hans Tutschku [B. 1966] Auch
belonged to the group. They used electronic sounds
in their performances, especially turning to pieces
by Stockhausen.
Supper: When was this?
Katzer: That was in the 1980s. Nach 1989 viele
initiatives and groups flittered apart. After reuni-
fication, all of a sudden people could go here and
there freely. But the summer courses in Gera had
been really important to many young composers.
I should also mention that, a bit later than at
the Academy, but also in the early 1980s, Dort
was something happening in a similar direction at
the conservatory in Dresden [the “Carl Maria von
Weber” College of Music]. They had established
a chair for electronic sound production, held by
Friedbert Wissmann.
Supper: I remember meeting him at one of the
TiP concerts. As I recall, at the time he developed
his own sequencer software running on Amiga
computers.
Katzer: That’s right. And he was quite clever,
in that he was able to organize another position
at the conservatory: a research position. So they
developed equipment, such as synthesizers, Das
never went into series production but were there as
prototypes.
That also came to an end with die Wende in
1989; after that there were—as I said—other options.
People no longer needed to rely on home-brew
hardware. I think Wissmann himself has now gone
into commercial and advertising work.
I also had a student at the Academy, Friedhelm
Hartmann [B. 1963], a conscientious objector who
developed a concept for a modular synthesizer.
Remarkably, I had several conscientious objectors
among my students. Helmut Zapf [B. 1956], Helmut
Oehring [B. 1961] . . .
Supper: Wait . . . I had no idea that there were
conscientious objectors in the GDR.
Katzer: Oh yes, there were. They served as what
were called “construction soldiers.” I don’t think it
was exactly a pleasant alternative service. Anyway,
as I was saying, one of them was Hartmann,
who lives today in Tel Aviv and who had, back
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Dann, designed a synthesizer that could literally do
anything . . . but it was never completed.
Also, there were a few other enthusiasts tinkering
weg. I already mentioned Eckhard R ¨odger at TiP
and Georg Morawietz at the Academy. Morawietz
was very capable; zum Beispiel, he was brought to
Rome years ago to repair Giacinto Scelsi’s tape
recorder. He succeeded and the thing really plays
wieder! Morawietz had basically grown up in a
radio outside-broadcasting van, where you always
had a soldering iron in hand. The development of
electroacoustic music in the GDR would certainly
have been different if the research lab in Adlershof
hadn’t been shut down when it was.
Principles at the Academy of the Arts
Supper: Just one question about the Academy of
the Arts, for clarification. The Academy, which was
originally founded in 1696, was split into two parallel
institutes during the division of Germany: one in
West Berlin, the other in East Berlin. The Academy
in the West was made up of elected members and
functioned as an exhibition space and venue for
concerts, lectures, usw., as well as maintaining an
enormous archive. Was this something specific to
the East, that membership in the Academy also
entailed teaching?
Katzer: Ja, that was a distinctive aspect. Das
was a result of the history of the forerunner Prussian
Academy of the Arts. Also, Zum Beispiel, Nikolaus von
Reznicek [1860–1945] was a member of the Academy
of Arts and was my first teacher. And Reznicek’s
student at the academy Rudolf Wagner-Regeny
[1903–1969] later became a member and taught
Dort. In his time, Arnold Sch ¨onberg had also had a
master class at the Academy. The Academy had had
painting classes since the end of the 17th century.
The Prussian royalty, who funded the original
academy, wanted to be depicted favorably. Later
there came classes in architecture, then literature,
later still music, and finally, Natürlich, film.
The main requirement for admission to a master
class at the Academy was that a member was
willing to take on the student. The mentor could
then recommend the student for a master class
scholarship. Scholarships were granted for two
Jahre, with the possibility of being extended to a
third year. I myself had been granted a scholarship
while studying with Hanns Eisler. The scholarships
came with a monthly stipend of 500 marks, welche
was enough to live comfortably and carefree.
That was really excellent. There were no other
prerequisites for study, no need to have already
completed a degree. Also, Zum Beispiel, my student
Helmut Oehring had no formal qualifications at
all—he hadn’t even qualified to enter university
after leaving school. But he submitted a portfolio
of his work, and a majority voted in his favor. Es
was similar with Helmut Zapf. He had completed
studies of church music, so he had at least better
formal qualifications than Oehring. It could be very
different from case to case, but there were great
opportunities for those wanting to change career
Wege.
Supper: Apparently talent was the primary
prerequisite. Such newcomers are often the more
interesting people, in contrast to those who come
from a “standard” university career path.
Katzer: That was a distinctive feature of the East
Academy. Bedauerlicherweise, this kind of support came
to an end in 1989. It ostensibly didn’t fit in with the
concept of the unified Academy.
Supper: German reunification took place under
the premise that the East would adapt to the West,
rather than the other way around.
Katzer: Well, there wasn’t much choice. Dort
are still, mindestens, scholarships offered by the cur-
rent Academy of the Arts—for example, grants
for residencies in the Villa Serpentara in Rome.
But that can’t compare to the model from before
reunification. Trotzdem, better than nothing.
Electroacoustic Music as an Aesthetic
Stance . . . or Not?
Supper: As mentioned at the beginning of our
interview, in the West the founding time of electro-
acoustic music is not just associated with a certain
historiography, there were also certain attitudes. In
Cologne there was the “struggle” between serial
Supper
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and nonserial music. There were multiple rewrites
of the definition of what “electronic music” is—in
a sense revising history so that Cologne would be
considered the first, and setting it off from musique
concr `ete.
In the field of electroacoustic music in the GDR,
was there also a fundamental idea or aesthetic
around the music, or was it simply saying that there
was a new technology and you just wanted to see
what you could make with it?
Katzer: The approach was rather naive. With me I
suppose it went back to 1963 when I was in hospital
for several months as a result of a skiing accident.
A woman who worked as a camera operator for the
GDR state television—and is now my wife—had
access to a “restricted section” of their library—
literature that was normally kept under lock and
key. So she was able to take out some hard-to-
come-by books that I read while confined to bed,
including something about electronic music—it
might have been Meyer-Eppler’s book (Meyer-Eppler
1949)—in any case, I found it inspiring. But shortly
thereafter—before I could do any work there—the
studio in Adlershof was closed for compositional
Projekte. A few years later, I was able, durch die
same unofficial channel, to read Herbert Br ¨un’s book
¨Uber Musik und zum Computer (Br ¨un 1971) shortly
after its release. This retriggered my desire to work
with electroacoustic music myself. Es gab
just so many innovative things coming together:
a sense of playfulness, research into sound, neu
Technologie . . . but it wasn’t until 1976 that I
had a chance to put ideas into practice, mit dem
grant to work in Bratislava that I spoke about
earlier. And the amazing thing was that it was
financed by the Ministry of Culture. So sometimes
the State was not quite the monolith it appeared
to be.
I think this naive attitude was also typical for
other composers. As chance would have it, I have
stayed at it, at least as a part of my work. But I never
considered myself to be someone working purely
with electronic music.
Supper: Exactly. You also have instrumental
works—for instance, Kurt Masur and the New York
Philharmonic have performed an orchestral piece of
yours.
Katzer: Ja, Sound-House, after Francis Bacon’s
New Atlantis. The piece has a part for tape, by the
Weg.
Supper: Back to what may have influenced your
Musik: Did the French notion of acousmatic music
have an impact?
Katzer: When I first read Br ¨un, I knew nothing
about what was going on at Bourges or the like. Es
was only through my first contacts when I went to
the festival there that new influences arose. It’s too
bad that the GMEB no longer exists. Es gab
also meetings of the Bourges academy [Acad ´emie
internationale de musique ´electroacoustique de
Bourges], where there were many discussions about
acousmatic music. Christian Clozier, codirector
with Franc¸ oise Barri `ere of the GMEB studios, gebraucht
an erudite French spoken fast and indistinctly. Nicht
only did I find it very difficult to follow these rather
academic debates, I frankly wasn’t all that interested.
The Acad ´emie was never formally dissolved when
GMEB was closed down, but to all intents and
purposes it no longer exists.
Connections to International Organizations
Supper: When I think back on electroacoustic
music in the GDR, I associate it with the Inter-
national Confederation of Electroacoustic Music
(ICEM/CIME), founded in 1981 in Bourges. The or-
ganization was a member of both the International
Music Council and UNESCO. The GDR became a
member of CIME. How did that come about?
Katzer: That remains to this day an interesting
question. Lothar Voigtl ¨ander and I had the idea
to found a Deutsche CIME, or DecimE [a pun on
the German word for the musical interval of a
tenth]. We wrote up some documentation and sent
it to the Ministry of Culture. The proposal was to
create a nongovernmental organization, mit dem
name DecimE for the promotion of electroacoustic
Musik. I was absolutely flabbergasted when our
proposal was approved. We were even given our
own office with a secretary. We started out as an
association with about 20 members, and I was
allowed to call myself “president” [laughs] Und
Voigtl ¨ander was vice-president. This also allowed
14
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me to travel to Toronto to participate in the CIME
annual general meeting. This was marvelous for us,
especially because it was almost impossible to get
“out” otherwise. As a member of the AdK I had
some privileges, Natürlich, so I might be granted
permission to travel if I had a major performance
somewhere. The conditions were always difficult,
obwohl. I was not allowed to take any money with
me and I could not buy a ticket for train or bus or
plane. For that I would have needed foreign currency,
but it was illegal in the GDR to possess any. So I
had to drive my car with 60 Zu 80 liters of gas in
canisters—feeling like a bomb ready to go off any
minute!—just to get to France, die Niederlande, oder
wherever.
Post-Reunification
Supper: A result of reunification was that the Ger-
man section of CIME had to be put under a new legal
basis. In 1991 it was re-established as the “German
Section of the Society for Electroacoustic Music
e.V., DecimE.” In 1994, after withdrawing from
CIME, the association was renamed as Deutsche
Gesellschaft f ¨ur Elektroakustische Musik (DEGEM).
Katzer: And with that, having merged into what
was now a single German musical landscape, Die
history of electroacoustic music in the GDR—
as adventuresome as it may appear—came to an
end.
Danksagungen
First and foremost, I would like to thank Georg
Katzer for his hospitality during our conversation
and for his time and input while preparing the text
for publication. I would also like to thank Peter
Castine for his translation of the German text.
Verweise
B ¨ohme-Mehner, T. 2011. "Einführung: Electroacoustics
in the GDR?„Zeitgenössische Musikrezension 30(1):1-3.
Available online at www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10
.1080/07494467.2011.624267 (subscription required).
Accessed July 2018.
Br ¨un, H. 1971. ¨Uber Musik und zum Computer. Karlsruhe:
G. Braun.
Meyer-Eppler, W. 1949. Elektrische Klangerzeugung:
Elektronische Musik und synthetische Sprache. Bonn:
D ¨ummler.
Ruschkowski, A. 1993. “Elektronische Musik und
Musikelektronik in der ehemaligen DDR.” In B.
Enders, Hrsg. Neue Musiktechnologien. Mainz: Schott,
S. 59–74.
Schreiber, E. 1964. “Ein neuartiger elektronischer Klang-
und Ger ¨auscherzeuger.” OIRT-Zeitschrift Rundfunk
und Fernsehen 2:33–35.
Steinke, G. 1966. “Experimental Music with the ‘Subhar-
chord’ Subharmonic Sound Generator.” Journal of the
Audio Engineering Society 14(2):140–144.
Ziegenr ¨ucker, K.-E. 1987. “Studios f ¨ur elektronische
Musik in Berlin und Dresden.” Bulletin: Musikrat der
DDR 24(2):31–35.
Appendix: Selected Works
A complete list of works by Georg Katzer, including three string quartets, three operas, chamber music,
and ten works for orchestra, is available online at www.georgkatzer.de.
Bevor Ariadne kommt (1976)
Stimmen der toten Dichter (1977)
De musica (1977)
Rondo, composition for tape. Studio Bratislava.
Soprano, piano, and tape. On texts by Garc´ıa Lorca,
Hernandez, and Neruda.
Twelve vocalists, piano, and noises. Texts by the composer.
Edition Peters.
Stille, doch manchmal sp ¨urest du noch einen Hauch
Tape.
(1977)
Sound-House (1979)
Orchestra, organ, and tape. Edition Peters.
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Dialog imagin ¨ar I (1982)
Radioscopie (1982)
Aide-memoire (1983)
Steinelied (1984)
La M ´ecanique (1985)
Lieder und Kommentare zu Ovid (1985)
heiter, ma non troppo (1986)
R ¨aume (1987)
Dialog imagin ¨ar II (1987)
Mo 1789 (1989)
Mein 1989 (1990)
Dialog imagin ¨ar III (1990)
Dialog imagin ¨ar IV (1991)
Landschaft mit steigender Flut (1991)
Dialog imagin ¨ar V “Essai sur . . .” (1993)
Dialog imagin ¨ar VI (1994)
L’Oracle de la dive bouteille (1994)
Les Paysages fleurissants (2001)
Fukujamas Kiste (2002)
Dialog imagin ¨ar VII (2004)
Preußisch Blau (Tagtraum/Erinnerung) (2008)
F ¨ur Tuba mit Hegel (2009)
Steinelied II (2010)
Incontro (2013)
Pandoras Kiste (2016)
Flute and tape. Deutscher Verlag f ¨ur Musik.
Tape. Studio Belgrade.
Tape.
Computer-generated tape.
Tape.
Two oboes and tape.
Two guitars with live electronics.
Tape. With slides by Rose Schulze.
Piano and tape.
Tape composition for radio.
Tape composition for radio.
Guitar, tape, and live electronics.
Bass clarinet and tape.
Orchestra and tape.
Accordion and tape. Publisher: nota vita.
Tenor saxophone, tape, and actor. Verlag Neue Musik.
Tape and actor.
Prerecorded material (CD).
Prerecorded material (CD).
Cello and tape.
Tape.
Tuba with live electronics. Edition Gravis.
Tape.
Chamber orchestra and tape.
Speaking double bassist and tape. On texts by the
Komponist.
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