max brand 
composer, musician, producer, dramatist, librettist, filmmaker, theoretician and 
visionary 

- max brand, artistic figure between borders: born in 1896 to a jewish family in 
lívov, in the northern region of the multinational austro-hungarian empire; upper 
middle-class childhood in vienna; voluntary service in the imperial army; a polish 
citizen from 1918 to the time when he was granted austrian citizenship; 
sympathizer with the communist party of austria; in 1937 forced to emigrate to 
switzerland via prague; in 1939, fled from paris to new york by way of brazil; in 
1946 became an american citizen; in 1975, returned to austria; in 1980, died in 
langenzersdorf, near vienna. relegated to obscurity by music historians and 
critics, his life can be treated only as an individual case considered from 
several perspectives - but in particular as that of a pioneer in the production of 
electronic music 

- between the late romantic and electro-acoustic eras
a contemporary of arnold schoenberg, alban berg, kurt weill and ernst krenek, max 
brand completed his compositional studies under franz schreker in vienna and 
berlin. against the background of futurism with its celebration of speed, 
technological innovation and revolution (and working against currents of communism 
and anti-semitism), he wrote his first pieces under the influence of schoenberg's 
circle. in 1927 fritz lang directed "metropolis", al jolson appeared as "the jazz 
singer" in the first sound film, and walter ruttman created his cinematic work, 
"berlin: the symphony of a great city". brandís quest for a truly "modern opera", 
which would make use of these and similar 1920's technology and intellectual 
trends in music and theater production, resulted in his greatest success: "hopkins 
the machinist", a machine-opera which featured dramatic, cinematic staging and 
also offered its audience a moral lesson, was a musical admixture of late-romantic 
operatic impressions, machine sounds, and jazz, and enjoyed tremendous success in 
germany. upon his emigration to prague, brandís cultural involvement in vienna - 
including the ballet-mime theater, productions for the vienna opera and the 
raimund theater - had to be abandoned. the majority of his early works were left 
behind in prague when he set off for the united states. while his stay in brazil 
brought about collaborations with heitor villa-lobos, his musical work in new york 
from the 1950ís onward was characterized by lack of success. 

in 1959 brand, then over 60 years old, turned in a completely new direction which 
was at the same time was consistent with his earlier concepts: in order to create 
electronic music, he had robert moog, then at the beginning of his career, build a 
special synthesizer, a prototype of the moog series which later became ubiquitous 
in the world of pop music. the resulting works - "notturno brasileiro" (1959), 
"die astronauten" (1962), and "ilian 4" (1974) - failed to achieve success, and 
today they are rarely performed and recorded and are unavailable. 

in 1975, the patriarch, who was in many matters conservative, fled the "american 
way of life" and returned to europe. most of his sound equipment was destroyed en 
route, and this precluded his continuing to work in the area of electro-acoustics 
for at least a year. before his death in 1980, many tapes of sound material were 
reworked, mixed together, or destroyed. 

- visionary and outsider 
in 1926, in the magazine "anbruch" max brand wrote, "new prospects for the future 
exist solely in the possibility of being able to reproduce works regardless of 
whether they can be performed today, and independently of imprecision and human 
inadequacy. we already have an idea of the importance that these machines must 
take on when we consider their superiority in terms of practicability and 
versatility in the realization of works in the future. 

"whether we want to or not, we live in an era of electronic technology - the 
legitimate heir of the previous age. and it is this 'continuum', which is like the 
'continuum' of electronic vibrations, which has made me devote myself to 
exclusively electronic music for many years now. for it is these vibrations 
(insofar as they are not used for the transmission of news) in which traditional 
music is conceived and which speak to us in their own unmistakable sounds. goethe, 
who began "faust" with "the sun sounds its tune of old" and not with "the sun 
shines", was surely aware of these cosmic sounds!" 

in 1973 brand turned from settings for orchestra to the reduced effectiveness of a 
one-man sound studio, in which he alone handled all of the functions of sound 
creation, production, mixing, reproduction and archiving. independent of scores 
and performance, he attempted to free himself from the material conditions of 
music production, without however giving up his personal goal of creating works 
which may be presented in live performance. today one may visit his studio, which 
contains roughly 10 hours of sound material, at the hamak museum in langenzersdorf 
(near vienna).