Wolfgang Heisig

Phonola in my Head

Nicht der Komponist von "As Time Goes By", sondern eine gleichnamige AG Leipzigs schloß sich zu Beginn des 20.Jh. dem angelsächsischen Klavierspiel‑Mechanisierungs‑Trend an und baute in marktgerechten Stückzahlen Phonolas als Vorsatzgeräte oder integriert in Markenflügel und Klaviere.

Zehn Jahre vor Beginn des 21.Jh. erhielt ich die Möglichkeit, ein solches Instrument ‑ eine Hupfeld‑Meisterspiel‑Phonola ‑ für die Uraufführung meiner Komposition RINGPARABEL erstmals zu nutzen. Inzwischen erwuchs daraus eine rege Konzerttätigkeit und die Gründung einer eigenen Notenrollen‑Edition.

Woraus resultiert der bis heute nicht nachlassende Reiz dieser ziemlich umständlichen Art Klaviermusik zu präsentieren?

Es ist die gesteigerte Zeit‑Rezeption, das besondere "As‑Time‑Goes‑By"‑Gefühl beim Phonola‑Spielen.

Weil die durch Papierrollenstanzlöcher pneumatisch ausgelösten Klaviertastenanschläge in ihrer vertikalen Gleichzeitigkeit und horizontalen Verschiedenzeitigkeit uneingeschränkt konfigurierbar sind und damit der Kopf frei wird für zeitspezifisch hochkomplizierte Musik.

Dies aber eben nicht mittels High‑End‑Computer‑Elektronik‑Chips‑Strom, sondern über Low‑Beginning‑Holz‑Luft‑Papier‑Muskelkraft.

Ein Kritiker der Süddeutschen Zeitung (R. Schulz) beschrieb das Phänomen Phonola einmal so: "Sie wirkt wie ein Doppeldecker auf einem Düsenjet‑Flughafen, der zu spät gelandet ist, aber liebenswert bockig auf seinen Stellplatz beharrt. Lochstreifen, mit denen die Phonola gefüttert wird, mimen das Computer‑Zeitalter. Und wirklich: Hier im schütter Unrationalisierten hört man noch ein Herz schlagen, eine Seele schwingt sich zum Flug."

The Pianola Journal – Vol.14, 2001, S. 27-31

Rex Lawson - An Interview With Wolfgang Heisig

Wolfgang Heisig is a composer and Phonola player living and working in the former East Germany. He perforates his own music rolls, and gives concerts in many parts of Europe.

RL:	Wolfgang Heisig, you are well known in the musical world as a composer and leading performer on the player piano. Your Phonola push-up piano player is a familiar sight at contemporary music festivals throughout Germany. Your career and musical enthusiasms embrace a very wide range of music. What brought you to music in the first place?

WH:	When I was a child, we had an Ibach upright piano in the family living room, and I began tinkling the ivories when I was about 7 or 8 years old. To begin with, I wanted to play the ‘hits’ that I heard every night on the radio from West Germany, and I was rather pleased with myself when I managed to play an entire boogie-woogie in front of my class at school. Alas, the teacher forbade any repeat performances in the strictest terms!

RL:	Clearly you were an anarchic composer in the making. Did you also come across the player-piano at that time?

WH:	No, that was later. I remember the date exactly. It was 11 January 1978, when Deutschlandfunk, one of the radio stations in the ‘West’, broadcast a musical portrait of Conlon Nancarrow, produced by Walter Zimmermann. They played his Blues, and Studies nos 12, 24, 25, 21 and 40b. It wasn’t until ten years later, when I visited Jürgen Hocker, that I saw and heard an actual player-piano for myself. I wrote Ringparabel, which was my first composition for Phonola, in 1990, and I played it in Münich as part of J.A. Riedl’s ‘Klang-Aktionen’ concert series.

RL:	So what was it about the player piano that aroused your particular interest?

WH:	Well actually it’s the piano player that I use for my concerts, a Phonola push-up manufactured by Ludwig Hupfeld, although I am of course interested in the player piano in general. For one thing, the mechanical way in which the player action works on the piano keys gives it its own distinct musical ethos. Quite apart from the structure of any music on roll, it’s a style of musical reproduction that has many unique qualities, and this fascinates me. Also, the very anachronism of the player piano is a real source of delight - a 100 year old semi-automatic instrument with not a trace of electronic circuitry, but one on which I can, for example, play a composition that has been written only ten days before, and which has been sent by email to my completely electronic PC. Of course the violin is an older instrument than the piano, and yet it is still used for contemporary music, and indeed the advent of the computer has allowed composers much more freedom in the way they write violin music. But the player piano is many instruments in one, and for me it forms a bridge between the unrestricted artistic freedom to organise musical structures, while adhering to the generally accepted musical limits of tone-colour, duration and pitch.

RL:	How did these underlying musical principles lead you towards particular compositions?

WH:	Some of my works come from special musical ideas, which I was able to put into practice with the help of the player piano. For example, in Ringparabel, I used a 5-note motif that is inverted, reversed, augmented, diminished, varied, transposed and so on, and which can be played simultaneously in up to 8 different tempi. In my Etüde Kwic & Kwoc, the opening theme of the Bach A minor Violin Concerto is played by an imaginary pianist, whose finger becomes dislocated, so that his performance ends up in disaster. I n Kode, I transcribed a number of different coding systems into musical form, including bar codes, Morse code, braille and scansion signs. The artistic results are twofold - a synthesis of music and graphics. Other works I have written are Se Io Ho Ben La Tua Parola Intesa for violin, 2 clarinets and Phonola, Heislvertonungen for speaker and Phonola, Cageface for speaking Phonola-player (or Phonola-playing speaker!), Castles for slide projector and Phonola, Lettrismen for Phonola without piano, and Écriture Automatique for Phonola and pneumatic percussion.

RL:	All these works are for Phonola rather than any other type of player piano (or piano player). So one might say that you are a ‘Phonolist’ rather than a Pianolist. Is there a particular reason for this, and do you prefer the Phonola?

WH:	As I’m sure you know, in the German language our nouns have three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. For some reason the Pianola is neuter, Das Pianola, and the Phonola is feminine, Die Phonola. So of course I love my Phonola! But you might say that the Phonola is the sister of the Pianola. I live not far from Leipzig, where the Phonola was built. Indeed, the factory still stands, though it is used for other things. I daresay if I lived in London or New York, I would play the Pianola. Technically speaking there are hardly any differences. You will remember that you and I both took part in a concert on 7 June 2000 at the Gasteig concert hall in Münich. Amongst other things, we performed Nancarrow’s Studies nos 40b and 44, on your Pianola and my Phonola simultaneously. We played in perfect harmony, just like sisters!

RL:	Well, I was an only child, so I’ll take your word for it! Since this interview is becoming a little personal, let’s take the opportunity to find out something of the man behind the music. Tell us about your life, your career, your family. Do you really have sisters?

WH:	Yes, I have three sisters, who get on famously, and two brothers as well. I was born in 1952 at Zwickau, where Robert Schumann lived. After military service in Gotha (near the Steck piano factory), I went in 1972 to study piano and composition at the Musikhochschule in Dresden, and I worked over the years as a bank teller, church choirmaster, bar pianist, music therapist and high school music teacher. I am married to a general practitioner who specialises in neurology and psychiatry, and we have two sons, plus various animals, including a very affectionate donkey. Since 1990 I have been giving Phonola concerts in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. I also construct musical sculptures, and these and the scores of my compositions, which can be highly graphic, have been exhibited all over Germany, including Berlin and Kiel, and even as far away as Riga in Latvia. In 2000 I became a member of the Free Academy of the Arts in Leipzig.

RL:	All this and the perforation of music rolls as well! You have a busy life. I saw your roll perforating machine when I visited you two years ago, and it impressed me by its cleanliness and accuracy. Not a drop of oil on the floor! It’s a single punch machine, isn’t it? Can you tell us how it works?

WH:	Yes, there’s a single punch that moves across the paper, with two PC-controlled stepper motors for the ‘x’ and ‘y’ axes. The punch head works pneumatically, with compressed air, and I use continuous computer paper with sprocket holes at the edge, which is fed through a paper splitter and trimmed to size after the notes have been perforated. The machine was designed and built by local firms in Dresden, with the aid of a government grant after the re-unification of Germany.

RL:	I know that you publish your own series of music rolls, which includes many of your own compositions. But apart from your own music, which other compositions feature in your catalogue?

WH:	The collected works of Conlon Nancarrow are my most important project. I never grow tired of studying these masterpieces, and performing and re-perforating them from my corrected scores. Other composers whose works I have arranged for player-piano, or who have written music specially for the instrument, include Tom Johnson, Gavin Bryars, Josef Anton Riedl, Jakob Ullmann, Lyonel Feininger, Charles Ives and Erik Satie.

RL:	It’s a considerable achievemant, and I wish you good luck with your roll sales and forthcoming concerts. As a final question, what is your vision of the future of the player piano and its music?

WH:	Well, the most immediate future for my own Phonola is a series of four concerts at the ‘Klangrausch’ festival in Leipzig in July 2002, and then I have to prepare a series of Wagner recitals for the Dresden Music Festival, as well as a concert with soprano, featuring the ‘5 Canciones Negras’ by Xaver Montsalvatge. But speaking more generally, I feel that player piano music occupies a small but important corner in contemporary musical life, and it should be safeguarded. We have a duty to preserve our musical heritage, and this is just as important as the active encouragement and support of new and imaginative composers for the future. It would be good to establish a European player piano centre, where a library and archive could be housed, which everyone could use, where push-ups could be sold, repaired and rented, and where all the worthwhile music rolls of the world could be brought together, digitally scanned and then perforated on demand. That’s my vision!

RL:	Wolfgang, thank you very much for talking to us. Let’s hope that together we can put some of your ideals into practice.