Hans Ulrich Obrist: A Brief History of New Music

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a Swiss critic and curator, since 2026 at Serpentine Gallery, London. His first contact to the world of arts happened when he visited Swiss artists Fischli & Weiss at their studio when they were busy with their now famous video Der Lauf der Dinge. Later he met Gerhard Richter in his studio and traveled through Europe from interview to interview for around six years, in 1993 he started the arts association „museum in progress“. Since then there was probably no artist of relevance he didn’t talk to. Composers and musicians have always been part of it. He recorded nearly 2000 hours of interviews; he called this project „an endless conversation“. 

 This book, A Brief History of New Music from 2015, contains a sort of „best of“ from those interviews. Partitioned into sections „Avant-Garde Composers“, „The Birth of Electroacoustic Music“, „Minimalism & Fluxus“ and „Modern Masters“ there are 17 interviews, among them Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, Iannis Xenakis, Robert Ashley, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono, Brian Eno, Ralf Hütter and Caetano Veloso. Every single one of these interviews is carefully prepared; Obrist knows what the interviewees did, he knows about their background, and he knows what to ask them. But he also knows when it’s better to let them talk, which sometimes can lead to highly interesting statements nobody could have planned before.

Some of the interviews — especially the ones with Stockhausen and Reich — are extremely interesting and concentrated (I used a lot of the Stockhausen interview here), Brian Eno has some interesting things to say about songwriting, Steve Reich’s tape compositions and their influence on his own Music for Airports, some other interviews are a little bit so-so, sometimes — like with Arto Lindsey — one gets the impression that this guy is in a bad mood or not willing to talk much. Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hütter says exactly what he wants to say and not a syllable more, in the end he comes up for the umpteenth time with his fairytale of 168 weekly working hours at their studio. (But to be fair: What he’s talking about is in fact the phenomenon that a creative artist has always something going around in his head about projects, may it be in the foreground, may it be on the second track, but it never stops, it’s always there.) And as Obrist knows this phenomenon, his most-asked question is: „What project are you working on currently, and are there any projects you would like to do and couldn’t realize yet?“ The answers to this question are usually the most interesting ones. 

Of course the interviews are edited, but anyways, reading „spoken word“ can sometimes be a bit stressful. But it’s worth the effort. My only complaint: The introductions to the interviews are printed in a nearly unreadable small face. As there is no lack of space, this is simply annoying. 

Hans  Ulrich Obrist:
A Brief History of New Music
JRP/Ringier Kunstverlag, Zürich 2015
ISBN 978-3-03764-190-3
Book in English language, 300 pages