Lorenz Rommelspacher's graduation concert "S_4_S (Song for Silence)" 15th June 2026

En bref

 

Le June 15th 2026
from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm

Hochschule für Musik Freiburg
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy-Platz 1, 79102 Freiburg
Foyer

Free admission, subject to availability

  

Composition: Lorenz ROMMELSPACHER

Artistic direction: Johannes SCHÖLLHORN

Organisation: Lorenz ROMMELSPACHER ; Johannes SCHÖLLHORN

Supports: Collège GLAREAN ; l'ITI CREAA ; UR 3401 ACCRA ; Université de Strasbourg ; Hochschule für Musik de Freiburg ; HEAR Strasbourg ; Université Franco-Allemande

Thesis title in Musical Interpretation and Composition: "Performing Space – Shaping Experience: Multimediale Strategien, Publikumserfahrungen und neue Zugänge in der experimentellen elektronischen Musik" (defense on June 16th 2026)

 

     As part of his PhD thesis, Lorenz Rommelspacher, a PhD student at the GLAREAN College, is giving a graduation concert.

     The starting point for S_4_S is the observation that absolute silence does not exist. Silence is understood here as an ‘absence of definite action’: a state that arises when sounds are not actively produced, yet attention remains.

     Philosophically and epistemologically, the work draws on the ideas of John Cage and Pauline Oliveros, whilst shifting their questions into its own compositional practice.

     S_4_S is fully composed and follows a clear dramaturgical arc. The compositional framework defines temporal sequences, states of listening and transitions between intensification and reduction. At the same time, the sonic outcome remains open-ended: the musical material arises exclusively from live-sampled and electronically transformed sounds generated during the performance.

     The audience and the performance space thus become central sources of sound. Sounds made by those present, atmospheric sounds from outside, and random acoustic events are captured in real time, processed and integrated into the musical structure. Each performance thus produces its own, unrepeatable sonic outcome.

     S_4_S thus understands composition as the shaping of conditions: it is not individual sounds that are predetermined, but the situation in which listening itself becomes a musical act and the relationship between silence, noise and music is continuously reshaped.

Biography

     Lorenz Rommelspacher lives and works in Cologne as a performer-composer, media artist and cultural studies scholar. He studied voice at the Cologne University of Music and Dance and at the Robert Schumann University of Music in Düsseldorf, as well as live electronics and creative performance at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam.

     His multimedia works span the fields of installation, performance and concert. The focus is not on the work as a finished object, but on the artistic event itself: situational spaces of experience that unfold between sound, the body and the surroundings. Rommelspacher is interested in how atmospheres arise, how spaces shape perception, and how art can open up avenues of understanding beyond purely cognitive categories. His works usually do not take place in traditional art venues such as concert halls or museums, but in spaces that carry their own unspoken stories – functional or transient places such as foyers, stairwells, bunkers, mines or churches.

     Alongside his artistic practice, he is the founder and director of guterstoff, a festival for experimental music and performance in Cologne, and is actively involved in various advocacy groups within the independent art scene. As part of his artistic-academic PhD project in composition and musicology at the Collège Glarean and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg, he is investigating categories of perception, reception and experience in experimental electronic music.