Martin Grubinger - The Century of Percussion

Martin Grubinger:

When Igor Stravinsky presented his latest work, Le Sacre du Printemps, in 1913, it was not only something new and different for his audience to hear but also a completely new harmonic and rhythmic experience for the musicians playing it. The last hundred years of the history of music have revolutionised the music world. And no instrument better demonstrates the changes that have taken place than percussion. The Industrial Revolution, two world wars, political and social upheaval, and quantum leaps in technology have changed our listening habits and directed the great composers of the last 100 years along new musical paths. As a part of this, the significance of rhythm underwent rapid change. Whereas it had previously been used merely as a framework, it suddenly became unleashed, emancipated and refined. Globalisation - feared by many and exploited by demagogues for political ends - provided the importance of percussion with tremendous momentum. Composers such as Stravinsky, Varese, Bartok, Messiaen, Xenakis, Rihm and Cerha were responsible for percussion attaining what can be described as, at any rate, an equal significance in classical modernity, as it had already had in a wide range of social traditions and indigenous musical genres. Ranging from the Taiko drums of Japan, the gamelan ensembles of South East Asia, the djembe and balafon masters of West Africa, the 20,000 carnival drums in Basel, all the way to the Latin American percussion strongholds of salsa, tango and Afro-Cuban music, and the jazz and funk of North America, percussion thrives on its universality. It recognises no borders or racial divisions and its diversity makes it unique.

At The Century of Percussion, our aim is to make the past 100 years of percussion a musical experience. In four acts, we want to take our audience on a journey and open up the wide and varied kaleidoscope of percussion instruments to them.

This project provides us with the opportunity of issuing invitations to musicians from the most varied of traditions and musical cultures, thereby creating a highly diverse range of impressions for our audience. Through the rendition of a well-conceived project, we aim to create a kind of collective work of art that will establish the historical and sociocultural links between fundamentally different worlds through a novel dramatic composition, guiding the audience smoothly through the most varied range of musical sensations from what has become a global society.

Martin Grubinger