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The 6th International Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition launches its call for entries For the 6th time, the Ludwig van Beethoven Department of Piano in Music Education at the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna is inviting to the Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition. In the previous five editions, young composers from over 65 countries submitted around 960 compositions. Since its first edition in 2010, the competition has been committed to promoting contemporary piano literature for children and young people. The task is to write a piano work in a contemporary tonal language that is easily realizable for piano lessons and thus provides young players with adequate artistic access to the music of the present. The Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition is distinguished by its particularly transparent and fair selection process. From the multitude of submissions, a selection of anonymized pieces will be presented in a multi-day judging process by students from the Ludwig van Beethoven Department of the mdw and will be publicly discussed by a renowned, international jury. The upcoming edition gladly welcomes Michael Jarrell, Elena Mendoza, Isabel Mundry, Miroslav Srnka and Marco Stroppa as jury members. The competition prizes are €6,500, €4,500 and €3,500. The award-winning pieces will be published in cooperation with Universal Edition. Audio recordings of these works will also be published on the mdw media library. Composers up to the age of 40 are invited to submit pieces digitally. The deadline for submissions is 20 September 2024. The performances, the public judging process and the decision will take place from 4-7 February 2025 in English in the Fanny Hensel Hall of the mdw and online via live stream. Information about the modalities and procedure of the competition as well as the possibility of submitting can be found at: https://mauricio-kagel-composition-competition.com/ A video of the live stream of the last public final in February 2022 can be found at: https://mediathek.mdw.ac.at/mauriciokagel2022. 6th International Mauricio Kagel Composition Competition Submission period: 20 September 2023 to 20 September 2024 Finale & judging process: 4-7 February 2025 Endowment: €6,500, €4,500 and €3,500 as well as the publication of the work in cooperation with Universal Edition Submission: https://mauricio-kagel-composition-competition.com/ Contact for questions and press mauricio-kagel-kompositionswettbewerb@mdw.ac.at

Hi Guys. We have started a publishing company in germany, and are currently looking for composers in concert band music, symphonic wind music, to sign up with our publishing company. In europe is a huge market for wind orchestra music and ensemble work for winds, as we have thousands of amateur and professional orchestras always on the look for new music. Please send us a work, in midi or sibelius format, and we will have a listen. If your work is accepted, a publishing deal will be discussed and all works will be recorded by our inhouse orchestra. please email me at idicusmusic@gmail.com if you have interest in our offer, and for more details please feel free to ask We are looking for new composers to add to our German catalog Wish you well and all success in making music!

How does chance impact your compositions, and your compositional decisions? Does it impact their form? Their harmony? Their themes and development? Or is every note in your compositions carefully thought out such that it is exactly as you intended it, and such that no other note might be substituted in its place to your satisfaction?

How do you name your pieces? How do you decide what to name a composition of yours? Do you decide on a piece's name before you start composing it, after your start composing it, or after you finish composing it? Do you think the name you give a certain piece is important? In what does that importance consist? Does a piece's name influence how it is perceived? How? These questions apply especially to short pieces that may not have a clearly recognized form. They may be called by various different names like bagatelles, studies, etudes, etc. But they also apply to some extent to larger forms. But multi-movement works like "string quartet", "symphony", "piano trio" seem to usually be named either after the instruments they contain, or the number of instruments, or the form. But even if they employ the names of the instruments or the number of instruments in their construction, these names have come to have a connotation of form too. Thus I cannot write a short piece for string quartet and call it my "String Quartet No. 1" (or can I?). Tradition has it that a string quartet should follow a certain form and have several fully developed movements. But I can still compose a short piece For "string quartet". But that leaves the problem of naming it. I think a short piece FOR "string quartet" (i.e. for the same combinations of instruments the description of which has come to be used as the name for a certain type of multi-movement composition for it) thus suffers the "injustice" of having to be named while a full string quartet does not have to and can simply be called a "string quartet". But is it important to name a piece? Might one not even bother to name a piece? Does an unnamed piece suffer in any way? Does it even come to be neglected? Would a named piece direct greater attention to itself? To test the inherent theory in this last question, perhaps we can compare Beethoven's named piano sonatas like the "Pathetique", "Moonlight", "Waldstein", "Appassionata" and "Hammerklavier" and the attention they have received with other equally great nameless piano sonatas by Beethoven like Op. 110 & 111. Do the named sonatas enjoy greater success with performers and audiences? Or perhaps it is the other way round such that the sonatas that enjoy greater fame have come to be named? Should one follow a tradition of naming pieces? Or should one create one's own names? I have used some names to describe certain types of pieces (like "soliloquy" and "maxim"). I think I have done it in order to retain my freedom in composing and not to have to follow (or possibly be accused of ignoring) the traditions created by already given names.

I compose many pieces for solo instruments. Whenever I want to upload them, I am faced with the problem that there is no specific section for solo instruments other than piano. As a result, I am being forced to upload them either in the piano section or in the chamber music section (mostly the latter). If we could have a specific section for solo non-keyboard instruments, I think it would be great. Maybe it would even generate more interest in composition for solo instruments. Thank you.

What I am getting at is that nowadays too often originality comes at the cost of intellectual coherence and greatness. Originality becomes only due to novel sounds and effects. This kind of originality would be something that, for example a deaf Beethoven would not value, let alone pursue. So, is the kind of intellectual greatness that is distinctive of a Bach partita for solo violin/cello, or a Beethoven quartet, or a Mozart quintet for example, still possible and attainable in composition today without the sacrifice of any originality, where the originality would not be superficial (as in mere sound) but in intellectual depth and style, in pure musical greatness of the inward kind?