Scherchen works

Hermann Scherchen (Berlin, 1891 - Florence, 1966) was a musician, publisher, writer, and educator widely regarded as a modern music and acoustic technique pioneer. He was also my maternal grandfather. His latest venture and the focus of my research was the establishment of the Hermann Scherchen Experimental Electroacoustic Studio in Gravesano in 1954, a creative island after a peripatetic career across continents, marked by the dramatic events of the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War.

In the summer of 2015, I undertook the task of converting all the Gravesaner Blätter, a quarterly music magazine published by Scherchen between 1955 and 1966, into digital format. I did this at the home of Myriam Scherchen, my maternal aunt, who kept Scherchen's legacy alive by establishing the Scherchen Foundation and the now-defunct record label Tahra Records, which she founded with her partner René Trémine (1944-2014). At the same time, I have compiled a list of the magazine's contents for easy access.

Subsequently, I continued my research at the Akademie der Kunste in Berlin, which keeps Scherchen's archive, which resulted in the photographic work Gravesano Album. The installations Gravesano Studio (Scale 1:5)Workers on the Roof, and Scherchen Circles (2015) completed this project phase, which I titled Hermann Scherchen: Alles hörbar machen (Scherchen's motto, which translates as "for everything to be made audible.")

Exhibitions

Hermann Scherchen: Alles hörbar machen I
Studio Dabbeni, Lugano, 19.09—07.11.2015

Hermann Scherchen: Alles hörbar machen II
Galerie Barbara Wien, Berlin, 01.12.2015—30.01.2016

Luca Frei, Hermann Scherchen - Alles hörbar machen. An introduction


Further reading

Pierre Schaeffer, Hermann Scherchen: Quand un homme consacre sa vie à la musique, 1967 (video)

Dennis C. Hutchison, Performance, Technology, and Politics: Hermann Scherchen's Aesthetics of Modern Music, 2003

Carlo Piccardi, Ermanno Briner, Hermann Scherchen, Myriam Scherchen, “La linea retta di Hermann Scherchen,” Musica/Realtà, 2017