New Simplicity

New Simplicity is a term from the new music describes a style direction. A definition is difficult insofar as the term is no fixed "school" or grouping referred to in the new music, but rather a composition attitude. In most cases, the term is also not used by the composer himself, but marked by musicologists ( since the late 1970s) or music journalists to describe this phenomenon.

In addition to the atonal music, twelve-tone technique or the fully deterministic Composing in serialism there have always been composers such as Karl Amadeus Hartmann and Allan Pettersson - to name just two - a stronger tonality committed in their composing, " simpler " way of composing more developed.

After the end of serialism around the end of the 1960s, then a more specific focus on lighter more comprehensible music was noticeable. While composers such as Helmut Lachenmann tended to the extremes of musical expression, there was at the same time composers who incorporated traditional elements again. This refers to all kinds of musical parameters, but served the overriding will of the " intelligibility " which is established primarily through emotional musical gestures. Since you can compose " easy " by various means, both composers of minimal music as well as the neoclassical or neo-romanticism were associated with the term. The degree of use of means of the new simplicity, such as the integration of tonal sounds or traditional forms of work varies depending on the composer and his work.

As a representative of the new simplicity are in the broadest sense, among other Arvo Pärt, Peter Michael Hamel, Hans- Jürgen von Bose, Wolfgang Rihm, Wolfgang von Schweinitz and Manfred Trojahn. But there are also works by Rihm, who just do not " easy to understand " announce.

There is now a new generation of "New Simple ", one of which Matthias Pintscher and Jörg Widmann are the best known names.