Unter dem Radar: The GDR and the contemporary Lied

Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover/Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany


The event cycle ‘Unter dem Radar’ (Under the Radar), featuring multiple art and musicological focuses, illuminates the phenomenon of the Lied in the GDR. For this it brings together the Lied classes from four German music academies and the girls’ choir Mädchenchor Hannover with composers and music historians.

In the run-up students of these Lied classes at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK), Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler Berlin, Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden and Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover (HMTMH), as well as Mädchenchor Hannover will work on thematic programs focusing on the GDR Lied repertoire as well as three new composition commissions by Georg Katzer, Steffen Schleiermacher and Iris ter Schiphorst. In May 2019 these programs will be presented to the public in Hanover. Interspersed between the individual concerts will be lectures by musicologists who are proven experts in the field of GDR music history. Juxtaposing the art Lied (that was dismissed in GDR musical discourse as a ‘private peripheral phenomenon’) with the mass Lied (that was politically and ideologically laden and aimed at making a much larger public impact) is expected to shed light on the fundamental conditions of Lied creation in the GDR. Public rehearsals, a panel discussion with witnesses of the period as well as a theatrically conveyed historical report on the composition of a mass Lied open up the musicological exploration to the interested audience. Following on from the weekend in Hannover parts of the artistic program and musicological contributions will shift to the Hitsacker Summer Festival (Sommerliche Musiktage Hitzacker) – which in 2019 will also be focalizing its location on the former inner German border with the heading ‘grenzenlos’ (Borderless) – and later to the Semperoper in Dresden. The invited Lied classes will present their contributions at each of their home academies. Finally, a symposium report is then planned for the musicological lectures. Alongside the musicological reappraisal of the body of GDR Lied material and the process of making it accessible to today’s listeners the project promotes cooperation between artistic and musicological research as well as between music academies from former and new German federal states.


Winter Semester 2018/19
Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, the Berlin Academy of Music, Germany

May 17, 2019
Richard Jakoby Saal, Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, Germany

May 18 and May 19, 2019
Großer Hörsaal/Large Hall, Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover, Germany

Summer Semester 2019
Universität der Künste Berlin, Germany

Summer Semester 2019
Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden, Germany

July 30, 2019
Konzertsaal/Concert Hall, VERDO Kultur- und Tagungszentrum Hitzacker (Elbe), Germany

November 2019
Semper Zwei, Semperoper Dresden, Germany


Further Information:
hmtm-hannover.de