Composer Herbert Brün Dies at 82
 Herbert Brün Photo credit Yehuda Yannay |
Herbert Brün, a pioneer in applying computers and electronics to the composition of music, died on November 6 in Urbana, Illinois. He was recognized within and beyond the field of music as an eloquent and original thinker, a contributor of ideas relating to composition and systems theory, language, thought, performance, and everyday life. He was 82 and lived in Urbana.
Mr. Brün was Professor Emeritus of Music Composition at the University of Illinois School of Music. He formally retired in 1988 but continued to conduct a seminar in experimental composition until his death.
Erik Lund, Chairman of the Composition Department at the University of Illinois, described Brün as “a profoundly innovative individual. “Brün’s contributions to acoustic, electroacoustic, and computer music were pioneering in every respect,” Lund explained “Professor Brün was a devoted teacher and mentor, teaching until just days before his death. His presence at the University of Illinois in particular will be greatly missed.”
Scott Wyatt, Director of the Experimental Music Studios at the University, called Brün a “teacher and philosopher in the most provocative sense. His writings and teachings regarding composition, the function of art in society, the awareness and construction of language, syntax and differentiation gave many of us intellectual challenges that shall remain relevant to current and future generations. His contributions, creations and provocations were many – and he shall be missed.”
Both Wyatt and Susan Parenti, a close associate of Brün’s, describe the composer’s preoccupation with the concept of intention. “His definition of a composer was that someone is a composer when they attempt to make something happen which would not happen without them and their attempt,” Parenti explained. “This definition freed it from the idea that you had to be a composer in acoustics. You didn’t have to be a composer in music, even; you could be working in many media, but still be one of his composition students.”
Brün saw performers as people who “selected from alternatives as a way of demonstrating their intentions.” Brün considered himself a performer not only because of his experience as a pianist, but also because, under this broad definition, he felt that as a teacher he was performing, as well.
In the late 1970s, Brün started a “performance lab” at the University of Illinois because he was concerned that students were not dealing with performance issues in their private lessons. “A performer would play something,” Parenti described, “and the listener would give instructions on a different way to play the piece.” Some of the “composer/performers” involved in the performance lab formed the Performance Workshop Ensemble in 1978. Jeff Glassman, a member of the current Ensemble, explains that the group progressed from “primarily music” to more mixed-media work as the years progressed.
Another of Brün’s focuses was the use of language to accurately convey intention. In his 1970 book For Anticommunication, Brün defined “communicative language” as “an accumulated language based on obsolete and present paradigms” that “cannot speak for those of us who think and dream in another paradigm.” In other words, according to Parenti, “the language you inherit from the current culture shapes your intention to the current available thinking.” Brün described the arts as a “measuring meta-language about the language that is found wanting.” Parenti remembers that in composition lessons, Brün paid a great deal of attention to “the language that you used to describe an initial idea. He saw the composition process as parallel to the describing process. He wouldn’t let you get away with language that you didn’t intend.”
She describes the School for Designing a Society, which Brün co-founded with Parenti and Mark Enslin in 1993, as an outgrowth of some work they have been doing in the Performance Workshop Ensemble under Brün’s guidance. “We have been using composition in relation to accessibility — we learned how to write skits, lectures that would turn into performances. We aren’t making things simple, but rather we are trying to make people sympathetic to the complexity of composition.” At the School, which was named after a course taught by his wife, Marianne Kortner-Brün, the instructors and their students have taken the notion of a “social” approach to performing/composing and applied it to a higher level. “The School is based on the premise that just like one can compose a music piece, you can also ‘compose’ the social structure you’re in,” Parenti explained. The School has been full-time since 1997, and has 25 to 30 students of high school age and older. Brün taught at the School for two hours a day until three weeks before his death.
Parenti teaches at the School for Designing a Society, performs and composes as part of the Performance Workshop Ensemble, and works with Patch Adams to reform our current healthcare system. She also recently published a book of plays, The Politics of the ‘Political’ and Other Plays. She credits Brün with giving her the motivation for working in multiple “languages.” “In lessons, he would jump from language to language. He was very interested in cybernetics, in creating an interdisciplinary language. He gave you a vocabulary.”
Herbert Brün was born in Berlin in 1918. He left Germany for Palestine in 1936 and studied piano composition in Tel Aviv and at the Jerusalem Conservatory of Music. Further studies included a scholarship at Tanglewood and at Columbia University (1948-50). Brün’s composition teachers included Eli Friedmann, Frank Pelleg, Wolf Rosenberg, and Stefan Wolpe.
Brün wrote modern music for acoustic instruments, small and large chamber ensembles and orchestra. But he also became a central figure in melding electronics and computer technology with music, and his teaching and writings in English and German influenced that development.
From 1955 to 1961, Brün conducted research concerning electro-acoustics and electronic sound production and their possibilities in musical composition at studios in Paris, Cologne, and Munich. In addition, during this period he also worked as a composer and conductor of music for the theater, radio, and television. He also gave lectures that were broadcast on Bavarian Radio in Munich (where he met his wife, Marianne Kortner), and led summer courses in Darmstadt.
After a lecture-tour through the United States in 1962, Lejaren A. Hiller offered Brün a professorship at Urbana, primarily to do research on the significance of computer systems for composition. While continuing to write pieces for traditional instruments, he used computers to generate sound, which he integrated into his compositions. He collaborated with Heinz von Foerster on interdisciplinary courses in heuristics and cybernetics at the Biological Computer Laboratory (1968-1974). He wrote widely on the function of computers in music and on the place of music in society and politics.
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, Brün was invited repeatedly to be composer-in-residence at universities and festivals in the U.S. and Europe. In 1970, he was one of two participants from the United States, invited by UNESCO to their symposium Music and Technology. He served a co-host of the 1975 International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) at the University of Illinois, and his computer-generated graphics were featured in the Computer Music Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, summer, 1981. He delivered the keynote address at the 1985 ICMC in Vancouver.
Brün’s awards include the Norbert Wiener Medal, an award from the American Society for Cybernetics, and first prize from the International Society of Bassists. In January, 1999, Brün was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Department of Classical Philology and Art of the Johan Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. One week before his death, The Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) voted unanimously to present Brün with their Award for Lifetime Achievement. It will be presented at the National Conference at Louisiana State University in March, 2001.
In addition to his wife, Professor Brün is survived by two sons, Michael and Stefan, both of Urbana, and a sister, Erika Brün of Haifa, Israel.