Hans Tutschku
Fanny P. Mason Professor of Music, Director of the Harvard University Studio for Electroacoustic Composition (HUSEAC)
(on leave, Spring 21)
Composition
tutschku@fas.harvard.edu
Music Building G-3
617-495-2314
Tutschku has composed music for film, theatre, and ballet as well as instrumental and electroacoustic music. He has also conceived several sound installations and published articles on sound diffusion. A main focus of Tutschku’s work is improvisation with live-electronics, and he tours regularly with his Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar.
Tutschku studied electroacoustic composition in Dresden, and between 1989 and 1991 accompanied Karlheinz Stockhausen on several concert tours for the purpose of studying sound diffusion. In 1991 he attended the international one-year course in sonology at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where he worked primarily in the field of digital sound processing.
He spent one year studying at IRCAM in Paris (1994), and in 1995 participated in composition workshops with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough. Tutschku taught electroacoustic composition at IRCAM in Paris from 1997–2001 and at the conservatory of Montbéliard from 2001–2004. He finished a DEA (master in musicology) at the Parisian Sorbonne and completed his PhD in Composition with Professor Dr. Jonty Harrison at the University of Birmingham in UK in 2003. The same year he was the Edgard Varèse Gast Professor at the Technische Universität Berlin.
Tutschku has composed music for film, theatre, and ballet as well as instrumental and electroacoustic music. He has also conceived several sound installations, interactive sound sculptures, and published articles on sound diffusion. A main focus of Tutschku’s work is improvisation with live-electronics, and he is regularly invited to give lectures and workshops on this topic. He has toured more than 30 countries with his Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar, and with the Ensemble, has realized many multimedia productions, often creating the projected images and choreography for dance as well as the music.
Tutschku joined the faculty in 2004 and has since overseen the total renovation of the HUSEAC studios, which were completed in 2005. He also conceived the 40-loudspeaker diffusion system HYDRA, which has been presented in numerous concerts on campus and in Boston. He has also served as a jury member of several international composition competitions and is the recipient of many international composition prizes: Bourges, Hanns-Eisler-Preis, CIMESP Sao Paulo, Prix Ars Electronica, Prix Musica Nova, and Prix Noroit. In 2005 Tutschku received the culture prize of the city of Weimar. 2013 he held a Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and 2014 a Stipend from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission.