Hauschka
Volker Bertelmann (born 1966) is a German composer, pianist and former rapper who mainly performs and records under the name Hauschka. He is best known for his compositions for prepared piano.[1][2] He won an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award for his work on All Quiet on the Western Front (2022).
For other uses, see Hauschka (disambiguation).
Hauschka
Volker Bertelmann
Germany
Electronic music, avant-garde, hip-hop (early)
Musician, composer
1992–present
God's Favorite Dog
Early life[edit]
Bertelmann was born in Kreuztal. He grew up in the village of Ferndorf in the district of Siegen-Wittgenstein, North Rhine-Westphalia. The fifth of six children, he discovered piano playing at the age of eight at church service. He began studying classical piano and continued taking lessons for the next ten years.[3]
Bertelmann formed his first rock band when he was fourteen. During the following years he was commissioned to compose music for television and sang in a number of other bands. After leaving school he moved to Cologne, where he began studying medicine and then switched to a course in business economics, but gave up both in order to concentrate on music.[4]
Career[edit]
1992–2003: Early career[edit]
In 1992, Hauschka and his cousin formed the hip-hop duo God's Favorite Dog, who became known above all for their tracks Love and Pain and Sway. They released an album on Sony Music's Epic label and went on to perform nationally and internationally, among others as a support act for Die Fantastischen Vier. The duo split in 1995 to pursue other directions.[5]
After a period of drifting, Bertelmann moved to Düsseldorf and started making music again, drawing on his years of classical piano training. He composed pieces for piano and released them under the alias Hauschka; he wanted to use an Eastern European-sounding pseudonym and found Bohemian composer Vincenz Hauschka as a reference.[6]
2004–2006: Prepared piano beginnings[edit]
The first Hauschka album Substantial was released in 2004 on the Cologne label Karaoke Kalk, followed in 2005 by The Prepared Piano on the same label. On this second album Bertelmann explored the possibilities of the prepared piano by wedging pieces of leather, felt or rubber between the piano strings, wrapping aluminium foil around the hammers, placing small objects on the strings or joining them together with guitar strings or adhesive tape.[7]
2007–2010: Room to Expand, Ferndorf and Foreign Landscapes[edit]
In 2007 Bertelmann signed a recording contract with 130701, an imprint of FatCat Records, through which his album Ferndorf was released in 2008.[8]
Following a concert performance with the Magik*Magik Orchestra, Bertelmann decided to integrate other musical instruments into his compositions, and in January 2010 the resulting works were performed in San Francisco by an orchestra led by Minna Choi. With Ian Pellicci as the sound engineer, they were recorded in John Vanderslice's Tiny Telephone Studios. Volker Bertelmann then recorded the piano tracks at Studio Zwei in Düsseldorf, and the album Foreign Landscapes was released on the 130701 label later that year.[9][10]