EFIM – Hans Tutschku

Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar

Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Cycles of Intuitive Music

The ensemble was founded in 1980/81 to advocate for tabooed avant-garde music in the GDR, with a particular focus on the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Engaging with his cycles of Intuitive Music, Aus den sieben Tagen (1968) and Für kommende Zeiten (1968–1970), proved to be a kind of Big Bang that mobilized the group’s creative potential.

This is music that comes into being at the moment of performance. It follows a structure determined by the composer’s verbal instructions, which must be infused with the musicians’ own musical ideas and pulsating life anew in each interpretation.

Stockhausen’s goal was to connect the performers—like radio receivers—to the creative currents that he, as a composer, perceived.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the group had two rehearsal phases with Stockhausen and, in 2005, was able to record six pieces from Für kommende Zeiten on CD, with Stockhausen himself overseeing the sound direction.

Live Electronics: Real-Time Sound Design

From the very beginning, live electronics (real-time sound processing) has been a crucial factor, not only creating a wealth of new timbres but also enabling previously unimaginable communication processes between musicians. The mobile studio within the computer is used as a musical instrument. Technology no longer serves as a mere accessory but becomes an integral part of the instrumental interplay, combined with the spatial movement of sounds through a multichannel sound system.

Art and Literature as Inspiration

While the early years were primarily focused on purely musical projects, from the mid-1980s onward, impulses from Bauhaus, Dada, and other contemporary art movements were integrated into performances and happenings. Sources of inspiration for sonic reflections included graphics, paintings, collages, sculptures, artistic photography, and literary texts. The focus was on the relationship between the arts and their mutual interpenetration, often in direct interaction with poets, dancers, or visual artists creating simultaneously.

A key experience was the encounter with Bauhaus artist Kurt Schmidt (1901–1991), who explored the layering of two-dimensional spaces through moving abstract images in his Mechanical Ballet (1923). Likewise, the visions of László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) regarding the synthesis of form, movement, sound, light, and color as a total work of art inspired new projects combining dance, image, and video projection—even extending to the use of the domes of the Jena and Berlin Zeiss Planetariums.

The Search for Special Places

Special locations, where musicians and listeners alike find themselves in an unusual environment, inspire creativity in both performance and perception.

The discovery and conquest of new performance venues—often used for concerts for the first time—has been a defining aspect of the group’s work. In addition to traditional concert halls and churches, they have performed in parks, planetariums, the Sondershausen salt mine, the Park Cave in Weimar, and industrial monuments in various cities.

Since 1988, the ensemble has engaged in dialogue with the sounds of nature, staging numerous park music events and promenade concerts. Furthermore, they have created large open-air performances incorporating light, sound, and stage technology. These took place in unique settings such as a lava field in Mexico City, the Weimar-Ehringsdorf quarry, the English Garden in Meiningen, and the Ratssteinbruch quarry between Ilmenau and Manebach, drawing large audiences.