Dieter Kaufmann: Variety instead of Singularity
The niches of today could be the arenas of tomorrow
The globalisation of the musical market strengthens the strong and weakens the weak; it also endangers cultural variety. “Fair Music” strives for a globalised resistance against such mainstream tendencies in all genres. In place of “beautiful and rich”, this resistance strives for “creative and fair”.
Mainstream is the music of the past. The niches of today could be the arenas of tomorrow. The dangers of musical levelling in a progressively commercial climate cannot be confronted by words alone. There is a desperate need for alternative ideas. A music scene which is dominated by middlemen who are only concerned with quotas and market sales can only be helped by ingenuity and a striving towards new musical frontiers. This includes a joy in discovering new sonic landscapes and a steady courage to be consistently unpopular. Composers are, at the end of the day, bearers of mystery and secrets. Their productions are to be supported without populistically having to gauge their success based on quantity!
Dieter Kaufmann is a composer and academic teacher of composition and electroacoustic composition at Vienna’s University for Musik. In 1975 he founded - together with Gunda König - the “K&K Experimentalstudio” that made numerous tours internationally. He was president of IGNM Austria, the Society for Electro-acoustic Music, the Austrian Composer’s Union, and since 1992 is member of the board, since 2001 president of Austro-Mechana.
