Experimental–Innovative–Multimedia. Portrait of Musik der Jahrhunderte
Founded in 1978, Musik der Jahrhunderte (MDJ) is today one of the most important international organizers and producers of contemporary music in Europe.
Musik der Jahrhunderte (MDJ) is one of the most important international players in the production, interpretation and organization of contemporary music. At the center of its work is the management of the Neue Vocalsolisten and the realization of the ECLAT festival–two central players in the world of contemporary music.
MDJ is responsible for up to 80 world premieres a year. They reflect the major cultural-political issues of the day as well as current technological developments in the arts. Increasingly, hybrid formats are shaping the program, and with them the dissolution of (stage) space, perspectives and functions through the use of digital media.
MDJ is based in the Theaterhaus Stuttgart and actively shapes the cultural life of Stuttgart and Baden-Württemberg. It reliably brings the current developments of contemporary music with all its interdisciplinary aspects to the state capital. MDJ’s cooperation and networking with the region’s creative artists is therefore important.
MDJ is internationally networked with festivals and performers. Curious and willing to change, MDJ is constantly expanding its network, which often results in internationally radiant co-productions. In exchange with colleagues, new artistic perspectives and synergies of know-how and resources are constantly opening up.
Since 2020, MDJ has regularly supported Eastern European artists who live in exile, threatened by the aggression of cynical autocrats as part of the democracy movement. Starting in the fall of 2022, the digital platformB invites free artistic development beyond national appropriation and instrumentalization, and provides space for individual artistic expression as well as interdisciplinary discourse.
MDJ initiates groundbreaking new music education projects and was instrumental in the founding of the Netzwerk Neue Musik Baden-Württemberg.
MDJ is led by artistic director Christine Fischer. She is assisted by a small, highly motivated team.
Musik der Jahrhunderte has a total area of 900m² in the Theaterhaus Stuttgart. This includes two rehearsal stages (P1: 200m² and P2: 70m²). In P1, among other things, the concerts and performances of the series »Südseite nachts« take place.
Between 1999 and 2003, the new Theaterhaus with four theater and concert halls for 1011, 440, 300 and 140 spectators, rehearsal and administration rooms, storage facilities and workshops for the resident cultural institutions was built in the skeleton of the listed monument Rheinstahlhalle.
Musik der Jahrhunderte organizes the international festival ECLAT in Stuttgart every February and is present in Stuttgart’s concert life with concise concerts and music theater. Together with partner organizations from the Stuttgart cultural scene, Musik der Jahrhunderte organizes the festival Der Sommer in Stuttgart at the end of the concert season. With the concert series Südseite nachts, Musik der Jahrhunderte gives experimental chamber music forms a stage several times during the season.
ECLAT Festival New Music Stuttgart is young, innovative, interdisciplinary–to be experienced annually in the first week of February in the Theaterhaus Stuttgart and since 2021 live on the WorldWideWeb. ECLAT offers a platform to young composers and artists as well as to the established ones.
The next ECLAT festival will take place fromfrom February 4 to 8, 2026
Further information is expected from September 2025 at:
www.eclat.org
Since 2007, the festival has offered young composers from the city and the region in particular a promising platform for experimental music. The Neue Vocalsolisten and Ensemble Ascolta are regular participants.
In this concert series of Music of the Centuries, poetic space is given to the weird, experimental and unexpected. The Neue Vocalsolisten, Ensemble Ascolta and guests invite you to artistic events and informal exchanges in a concentrated and informal atmosphere on the south side of the Theaterhaus. The venue is the versatile large rehearsal stage P1.
In parallel to its organizing activities, MDJ is responsible for the management of the Neue Vocalsolisten. The seven singers are particularly active in the field of vocal chamber music and contemporary music theater. Their work has significantly shaped the genre of »vocal chamber music theater«. As part of these various tasks, MDJ initiates and commissions up to 50 world premieres every year.
To the website of the Neue Vocalsolisten
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If you would like to learn more, please contact us by email (musik@mdjstuttgart.de) or telephone +49 (0)711 62 90 510.
Founded in 1978, Musik der Jahrhunderte (MDJ) is now one of the most important international organizers and producers of contemporary music in Europe. With a willingness to take risks, MDJ supports and promotes developments in new music in the digital age, as well as its increasingly close and complex interconnections with other arts.
The Stuttgart conductor Manfred Schreier founds Musik der Jahrhunderte (MDJ).
Founding of the Neue Vocalsolisten as a 12- to 16-voice special ensemble for the solo vocal music of the 20th century.
Christine Fischer, the current artistic director of MDJ, takes over the management while still studying music.
Hans-Peter Jahn, the editor for New Music at SDR (now SWR), integrates his independent event organizing activities with MDJ. Since then, the Festival Tage für Neue Musik Stuttgart has been carried out by MDJ in cooperation with SWR. Hans-Peter Jahn serves as the Artistic Director of the festival until 2013.
The ensembles of MDJ distinguish themselves in the field of music theatre, notably with Philip Glass’s operas »Einstein on the Beach« at the Stuttgart State Opera and »The Fall of the House of Usher« at the Stuttgart Hofkonzerte, as well as operas by Monteverdi and Mozart.
In the 1990s, the festival METAPHER for new vocal music, the concert series KOORDINATEN, and the series noise for ethno and electronic music complement the program.
The Tage für Neue Musik Stuttgart will henceforth be known as the ECLAT Festival neue Musik. This change is accompanied by a programmatic shift, moving away from extensive composer portraits towards a platform for the latest developments in contemporary music. Increasingly, world premieres define the program.
The Neue Vocalsolisten transform into a chamber music ensemble without a conductor, consisting of seven voices ranging from high soprano to countertenor and down to basso profondo. Premieres for MDJ and numerous festivals worldwide will henceforth define their work.
From the instrumental ensemble VARIANTI, which operated under the umbrella of MDJ, the independent ensemble Ascolta emerges.
MDJ moves to Pragsattel into the new Theaterhaus Stuttgart. The spatial conditions, with two of its own rehearsal stages and four event halls of varying sizes in the Theaterhaus, significantly enhance MDJ’s diverse activities.
On behalf of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) and its German section, MDJ organizes the World New Music Festival under the title »grenzenlos« (»borderless.«) Artists from over 60 countries, representing diverse musical cultures, create a 16-day program featuring concerts, music theatre, lectures, sound art, workshops, and a children’s and youth congress on new music. Performances take place at the Theaterhaus and in numerous unusual indoor and outdoor locations throughout Stuttgart.
Together with colleagues from the region, MDJ founds Netzwerk Süd as one of 15 educational projects in Germany as part of the Federal Cultural Foundation’s New Music Network. Educational activities in collaboration with 30 municipalities in the Stuttgart metropolitan region form a focal point of MDJ’s organising activities over four years. The highlight is the ‘Zukunftsmusik’ festival in October 2010.
MDJ initiates the Netzwerk Neue Musik Baden-Württemberg (Baden-Württemberg New Music Network). The Landesjugendensemble für Neue Musik (State Youth Ensemble for New Music) is founded under this umbrella and the ‘ad libitum’ composition competition organised by the Winfried Böhler Kulturstiftung is continued.
The artistic director Christine Fischer and Björn Gottstein, new editor for new music at SWR, are taking over the artistic direction of ECLAT as a tandem.
Christine Fischer assumes sole artistic responsibility for the ECLAT festival. MDJ’s cooperation with SWR, which is contributing two concerts by its orchestras to the festival, curated by Dr Lydia Jeschke, will continue.
To mark Helmut Lachenmann’s 80th birthday in November 2015, MDJ initiates a 24-part concert series across Europe. Nine projects are documented by filmmaker Wiebke Pöpel for a DVD series.
The highlight of »Lachenmann Perspektiven« (»Lachenmann Perspectives«) is an international festival in Stuttgart in November 2015–a collaboration with the Stuttgart University of Music, the Stuttgart State Opera and SWR.
MDJ, in collaboration with the Akademie Schloss Solitude, the Independent Dance and Theatre Scene Stuttgart, the Produktionszentrum Tanz und Performance, Theater Rampe, and the Cultural Office of the City of Stuttgart, organises the interdisciplinary festival DIE IRRITIERTE STADT as part of TANZPAKT Stuttgart. Artists from 27 countries, together with residents of Stuttgart, present 25 performances, actions, installations, and concerts in various locations across the city.
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the development of new digital formats. The »Magical Spaces« go far beyond simply filming a concert stage, creating new artistic experiences through shifts and overlaps in perspective, delays, collages, video animation, multidirectional listening situations, and interaction. The online festival ECLAT 2021 thus became an international model for virtual events. ECLAT 2022 took place entirely in a hybrid format.
MDJ expands its commitment, begun in 2020, to artists from Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. Platform B emerges as an open digital space for production and discourse, where participating artists can develop their own virtual spaces and projects while engaging in hybrid exchanges with European creatives in the context of post-Soviet debates.
The New Vocal Soloists are the first ensemble ever to be honoured with the Premio della critica musicale ‘Franco Abbiati’. The prize has been awarded annually in various categories by the Associazione Nazionale Critici Musicali since 1980/81. It was named after the music critic of the daily newspaper ‘Corriere della Sera’ Franco Abbiati (1898–1981).
The ‘Affairen Project’ continues with Balkan Affairs–a collaboration between the Neue Vocalsolisten and six composers from six republics of the former Yugoslavia. The compositions were created in response to the effects of the Balkan wars, which continue to characterise the societies there to this day.
Even more ‘affairs’: In Poetry Affairs, the Neue Vocalsolisten will premiere works by five poets and five composers from ten different European countries as part of the ECLAT festival. The multifaceted relationships between language and music will be explored in eight large-scale performances, situated between concert, installation and music theatre.
The German Academy of Rome Villa Massimo is coming to Baden-Württemberg for the first time. The festival ‘Summer of the Arts. Villa Massimo as a guest in Stuttgart’ is a co-operation between architekturgalerie am weissenhof, Bund Deutscher Architektinnen und Architekten BDA Baden-Württemberg, Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Literaturhaus Stuttgart, Musik der Jahrhunderte, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Städtebau-Institut Universität Stuttgart, Weissenhofmuseum im Haus Le Corbusier.
In 2025, the Neue Vocalsolisten are celebrating a special double anniversary: founded 40 years ago, they have been working in a permanent chamber music formation for 25 years. Since then, they have shaped contemporary vocal music like no other ensemble in the world, premiered over 700 works and shaped a new genre with their often interdisciplinary work between concert, performance and music theatre: vocal chamber music theatre.
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