« HOME

The Center

Fellowships

Workshops

Events

Digital

2006-2007 Fellows

Hans Thomalla

Stanford University
Department of Music

Hans Thomalla is a doctoral candidate in composition at Stanford University. He holds a Diploma from the Musikhochschule Frankfurt, and he worked as a dramaturge for the Stuttgart Opera. He describes his compositional approach as “analytic composition”, studying musical language – the complex relations of sound, concept and meaning – in the course of a piece itself, rather then articulating structures in a predefined musical language.

Project Summary

Thomalla’s dissertation, fremd/Medea/strange, is the central scene of a projected five-scene opera based on the myth of Medea and the Argonauts. It focuses on the myth’s aspect of existential “Fremdheit”, foreignness. The encounter of the two different worlds of the Greek colonialists and the untamed “barbarian” pinpoints a central contradiction of Western thought: the conflict between nature and concept, a conflict intrinsic to music itself. The myth of Medea cannot be simply “set into” music, as if music would be an unresisting means for narration. The process of self-alienation experienced by the Argonauts, and Medeas construction (and later in the piece: destruction) of identity will increasingly entrain musical language itself, deconstructing all layers of musical material, meaning and form.