Hermann Nitsch

Hermann Nitsch was an Austrian avant-garde painter, composer, and performance artist who worked in experimental and multimedia modes. He was a co-founder and most visible of the notorious movement known as the Viennese Aktionists. With his project Orgien Mysterien Theater ("the Orgiastic Mystery Theater"), Nitsch immersed his audiences in scenes and symbols heavily charged with meaning: religious imagery, crucified bodies, butchered animals, buckets of entrails, and blood (that often coated his performers), enormous tunics, large canvasses, cartloads of paint, enormous brass and percussion orchestras, and even live sex. Though better known for the visual spectacle of his works than the music that accompanies them, Nitsch was also a prolific and well-documented composer -- there have been more than 150 of his "Actions" performed all over the world. He also authored nine symphonies and volumes of sonatas for harmonium and church organ, as well as smaller chamber works. Given the visceral presentations of his art with their images of blood and dismemberment assaulting audiences and performers alike, his music -- from acoustic to electronic to industrial -- plays an intensely important role in the experiences Nitsch seeks to create. In an interview he said: "Influenced by the classical antique tragedy, by Wagner and Scriabin, I have tried to develop a Gesamtkunstwerk (a total work of art, a term particularly associated with Wagner's operas) since I was 19 years old…. My theater stages real events. Real incidents are registered with all senses. By means of the sense of smell, the sense of taste, and also the eye, the ear, and the sense of touch." Likewise, he has been deeply influenced by the Second Viennese School and its composers Arnold Schöenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Nitsch was born in 1938 in Vienna. He received formal artistic instruction and training first as a painter at Wiener Graphische Lehr und Versuchsanstalt in Austria. Already obsessed with the music of the great classical masters, he began composing works for his earliest actions in 1962. After taking part with his Actionist companions in many happenings -- several of which resulted in arrest -- he released his first album, Akustisches Abreaktionsspiel (Teil 1) to accompany a radio play action; it was recorded by Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Köln, Germany. His own performances on organ, and the scores for his art installations and live actions, were seldom recorded early on. In 1971, he acquired a castle in Prizendorf. (It has since become his home and the host location for the Hermann Nitsch Museum.) His second offering was Requiem Für Meine Frau Beate issued by Edizioni Morra in 1977. The following year, he issued the score for 1974's Das Berliner Konzert (featuring all of the Aktionists) on Edizioni Lotta Poetica, Studio Morra. Musik Der 60. Aktion, Berlin 1978, Galerie Petersen was released by Dieter Roth's Verlag. Island: Eine Sinfonie in 10 Sätzen was met alternately with acclaim, confusion, and outrage upon its recorded appearance in 1980; it was followed a few months later by the double-length Das Orgien Mysterien Theater - 5. Sinfonie. Nitsch's Aktion activities took him to many different countries, where his work was greeted with shock, outrage, and sometimes protests by animal rights and religious activists. He was often branded a blasphemer and a pornographer, but his work resonated with younger audiences influenced by the art movements of the past and post-punk and avant-garde music. 1984 saw the release of the score for his Musik Der 80. Aktion and the recital Klaviersonate. Nachtstück Für Harmonium. For the remainder of the decade, various symphonies and scores were released, as was as his first recorded organ concert, Orgelkonzert - Das Zürcher Konzert, and a 20-volume retrospective of his harmonium compositions with Die Tiefe Des Alls (Das Harmoniumwerk 1983-1989). During the '90s, Nitsch exhibited often in addition to composing. His first premier of 8. Symphony was held at the Museum Für Angewandte Kunst, in Vienna. Two separate volumes of his score for Musik Der 80. Aktion were released in 1991 and 1995, respectively by Dom America. In 1996 and 1998, Alga Margen released scores for Musik Der 60. Aktion, Berlin 1978/Musik Für Rita Nitsch Geburtstag and Musik Der 66. Aktion. In the late '90s, Nitsch established a relationship with curator Gary Todd and his Cortical Foundation and its attendant Organ of Corti label that had been releasing early archival works by Terry Riley and other vanguard composers. The realization of Nitsch's masterwork, Das 6-Tage-Spiel: Des Origen Mysterien Theaters ("The Six Day Play") was captured on tape and an eight-disc box of the fifth day's performance was released to global acclaim in 2000. (Subsequent releases of various selections from other days in the performance also appeared.) A very limited-edition suitcase containing all six days of recordings, a reproduced score, and a video from the performance and an exhibition catalog was made available for a short time. The Cortical Foundation also issued four volumes of Nitsch's collected harmonium works and his eighth symphony before Todd was badly injured in a freak accident, went into a coma, and passed away a few years later. Two more Nitsch recordings were released in 2001: Klaviersonate Für Arnulf Rainer on Welt Am Draht, and Orgelkonzert - Pfarrkirche St. Ulrich Im Greith in a private edition. Sinfonia Punta Campanella in 4 Movimenti was released by Fondazione Morra in 2005. The following year, Nitsch's own publishing house released a 20-disc box of Das Orgien Mysterien Theater 120. Aktion Das 2-Tage Spiel (the complete score and recordings of a two-day play). The following year, while Nitsch was working at home in Austria and Europe, Edition Kröthenhayn released the retrospective Das Aktionstheater Des Hermann Nitsch Zwischen Herkunft Und Zukunft ("The Action Art of Hermann Nitsch from Past to Present") in a box, combining music, video, text, and photographs. In 2008 an archival recording of Nitsch performing his drone/minimalist Die Geburt Des Dionysos Christos on the organ at Prinzendorf from 1986 was issued as a triple LP by Vinyl on Demand. While many critics regarded Nitsch's obsession with the classical masters with suspicion, he silenced most of them with Für Anton Bruckner/Bruckner v Reloaded for Preiser Records that same year. Alga Margen got back into releasing work by Nitsch in 2009 with the six-disc score Musik Der 122. Aktion Das Orgien Mysterien Theater. The artist's stature as a composer grew across the classical world -- he had long been recognized by numerous musical vanguard movements -- when Gramola released Hermann Nitsch/European Philharmonic Orchestra/Peter Jan Marthé: Sinfonie IX "Die Ägyptische" the following year. Dead Mind followed with 17.09.2009 Orgelkonzert, Pauluskerk, Tilburg. In 2015, Nitsch was scheduled for a major Aktion at the Museo Jumex in Mexico City. After an online petition garnered more than 5,000 signatures in protest (because of alleged animal cruelty) the exhibit was suspended. What remained was the score, Sinfonie Für Mexico City, performed by Ensemble Students of the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, directed by Andrea Cusumano and recorded at Museo ExTeresa Arte Actual. It was issued by Germany's Tochnit Aleph label. In 2016 and 2017, two different organ concert recordings were released (Berlin 2016, and Orgelkonzert Jesuitenkirche 20.11.2013 from Vienna on Trost), followed by Streichquartett in 4 Sätzen from Tochnit Aleph. In 2018, Trost produced a recording of the score for Orgien Mysterien Theater: Musik der 135. Aktion, Kuba. Tochnit Aleph followed it with the debut recording of the grand-scale Traubenfleisch 2007-2017 symphony. It was performed at the Nitsch Museum in Mistelbach on September 2, 2017 by the Klangvereinigung Wien orchestra with a choir formed for the occasion by Cusumano. Nitsch died on April 18, 2022, at the age of 83.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo