Swiss composer Katharina Rosenberger holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition from Columbia University, under the mentorship of Tristan Murail. Since Fall 2008, Katharina holds the position of Assistant Professor in Composition at the Department of Music, University of California, San Diego, USA.
Much of her work manifests in an interdisciplinary context and is bound to confront traditional performance practice in terms of how sound is produced, heard and seen. Her compositions, installations and interdisciplinary operas have been featured at festivals such as the Weimarer Frühlingstage, Germany, Festival Archipel, Festival La Bâtie, Geneva, Zürcher Theaterspektakel, Switzerland, Festival Les Musiques, Marseille, Zoo Bizzarre, Bordeaux, New Media Art, Yerevan, "atélier trideni plus", Prague, EMF at the Chelsea Museum, New York, Shanghai New Music Days and Shanghai International Electro-Acoustic Music Week, China, and the October Contemporary in Hong Kong.
Katharina Rosenberger has been the recipient of the "Mediaprojects Award/Sitemapping" (2011/2005) of the Federal Office of Culture, Berne, Switzerland, the Hellman Fellowship, San Francisco (2010), the 2010 Sony Scholar Grant, the Reid Hall Fellowship, New York (2007) and the Camargo Foundation Fellowships, France (2007) as well as the "Londoner Werkjahr" of the Zuger Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr, Switzerland (2001). In 2011 her Portrait CD "TEXTUREN", released on HatHut Records, got awarded with the Copland Recording Grant.
Work list
Iphigenia in Aulis (1997)
Instrumentation: for soprano, tenor, bass, speeker, choir and orchestra (2.2.2.2/2.2.2.1/4perc/hp/12.10.8.6.2)
Texts: Euripides
Text editing by Stephen Dooner and Katharina Rosenberger.
Duration: 55' 00" Manuscript
le 11 passioni dell'anima (2000)
Instrumentation: for brass quintet, a pantomime artist and 11 sculptures
Duration: 28' 00" Manuscript
E.E.Cummings Miniatures (1999-2001)
Instrumentation: for voice and piano or voice and percussion
Texts: E.E. Cummings
there are so many tictoc (1999) voice, piano 1'30
dying is fine(but Death (1999) voice, piano 1'45
l(a (2001) mezzo-soprano, percussion 1'00
n (2001) mezzo-soprano, percussion 1'10
Instrumentation: for improvising e-guitar and large ensemble (fl, cl, sx, bn, 1,1,1,0, 2 perc, pf, 1.1.1.1)
Duration: 14' 00" Manuscript
Xylodessia (2001)
Instrumentation: for percussion quartet
Duration: 10' 00" Manuscript
WAX - Soundscape for theatre (2002)
Electronic music
For a theatre piece about Emily Kempin Spyri.
Duration: 55' 00" Manuscript
aPhasis (2002)
Instrumentation: for soprano, alto flute, bass clarinet
Texts: Rob Holloway
The title stems from the Greek words "Aphasia" and "Apheresis". The original meaning of Aphasia is "speechlessness", this is often translated into English as "loss of language". The leaving out of a vowel or syllable at the beginning of a word, either for causes pertaining to language history or because of metric or articulation reasons, is referred to as "Apheresis".
The dealing of language in aPhasis reflects these processes with the explosive, blurting out of word clusters, which are deconstructed as the piece progresses. This process is musically embedded by the voice in a sharply contrasting sound image comprising wordless, archaic sounding 'vocalese' passages, which are hummed or interpreted with a half-open mouth. The accompanying instruments - written here in a new version for bass clarinet and violoncello - negotiate the tonal space between these two dynamics.
The libretto comes from the pen of British poet Rob Holloway.