The Oeuvre Inspired by Utopias: On the Centennial of Klaus Huber (1924―2017)

Abstract

The legacy of Swiss composer Klaus Huber (1924–2017) can be presented as one large ecumenical, social, cosmopolitan utopia, based on the ideas of thinkers, mystics, and poets from different eras and countries. Christian humanism, pacifism, and faith in the transformative power of utopian ideals inspired the activities of this artist, who was unswerving in his commitment to a complex and austere musical language, incompatible with any kind of “prettiness.” Employing various techniques from the avant-garde arsenal, including unconventional methods of sound production and microchromatic intervals, especially third-tones, Huber would sometimes insert quotations from an “ideal” music of the past into the fabric of his works as signs of higher, enduring values; he himself called such quotations “windows of hope” (for the entry into the utopian Kingdom). In the late 1980s, a peculiar new line emerged in Huber’s oeuvre, related to the prose, poetry, and biography of Osip Mandelstam — a poet who “even in the most terrible conditions managed to preserve the light of utopia.” Since the early 1990s, elements borrowed from Arab culture have established themselves in the system of Huber’s style; his experiments in implanting the “oriental” into the “western” and the “Islamic” into the “Christian” counteracted the tendency to demonize Arab-Muslim culture and testified to the Christian and European artist’s desire to understand the truths of another world religion and enrich his worldview with the values of another great culture. The “Mandelstam” and “West-East” lines merged in the largest composition of Huber’s late period, the opera Schwarzerde (Chernozem — Black Earth, 2001). Keywords: Klaus Huber, utopia, “window of hope,” Ernesto Cardenal, Ernst Bloch, microchromatics, Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, Osip Mandelstam, opera Schwarzerde, Armenia For citation: Hakobian, L. H. (2025). The Oeuvre Inspired by Utopias: On the Centennial of Klaus Huber (1924–2017). Contemporary Musicology, 9(2), 151―186. https://doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2025-2-151-186