Info (english version)
Matthias Kranebitter, born 1980 in Vienna, studied first at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in the class of Dieter Kaufmann, later German Toro-Perez, in Electroacoustic Composition, in the class of Klaus Peter Sattler in Media Composition, as well as piano with Christiane Karajeva. After graduating these studies he moved to Amsterdam where he continued his education at the Conservatory in the postgraduate course Contemporary Music Through Non-Western Techniques with Rafael Reina and composition lessons with Fabio Nieder. Returning to Austria in 2009 he took lessons with Alexander Stankovski and Beat Furrer at the University of Music in Graz.
about the music:
The sound fetish of contemporary music has had its day, and that is why I am no longer interested in the search and expansion of sonic material. On the one hand, I am rather interested in new forms of musical expression, not in an expressionistic or even pseudo-romantic notion, but in the sense of a hyperactive, schizophrenic flitting media society and trash culture, with its attention-disrupting flood of information. On the other hand, I am fascinated by both musical cliches and tonality, in the sense of everyday noise, as well as so-called “anti-music”, the dilettante or the failure itself, which I perceive as a crucial aesthetic category of the recent past, whether through the reality documentary boom or self-expression experiments via YouTube clips. But not in the sense of the sublime feeling of a voyeur, rather in the sense of the beauty of authenticity. In a conscious attempt to integrate these elements in my compositions, the underlying idea is no longer the destruction of tradition, which already took place in the modern era, and not the same procedure with the modern music, which itself has already become a new tradition, but a disturbance or destruction, which only deals with itself, thus being perceptible and comprehensible for outsiders, too. This is precisely what I see as the role of the composer, since an elite discourse (eg about the “inner nature” of sound) only lets the composer interact as an artist with society to a very limited extent, this kind of interaction, that makes art essential.
Matthias Kranebitter, 2011
2003 prize winner at the Antonin Dvorak Remix Contest of FM4 and the Volksoper Wien with a/dvorak/symphony/nr9.rmx
2005 prize winner at the competition for contemporary choir music of the Austrian Composers Union ÖKB with the piece breathing – für Chor und Live Elektronik
2005 Theodor Körner Prize of the City of Vienna
2006 1st prize at the Gustav Mahler Composition Competition with kreise – für tiefes ensemble
2007 Composition Prize of the Munich Symphonic Orchestra for his orchestra piece safiatan
2009 2nd prize at the composition competition of the Zurich Jazz Orchestras with ragzigzag
2009 1st prize at the Holland Symfonia Project at the Gaudeamus Music Week Amsterdam with the orchestra piece sustainedsurprise-haydnsymphony94.remixed
2011 nominated composer at the Impuls International Composition Competition Graz, commission for a new piece for the Klangforum Wien for 2013
2012 nominated composer for the ISCM World New Music Days in Belgium
