Marcus Schmickler
Studio Piethopraxis

Vita

Marcus Schmickler works in contemporary and electronic composition, combining computer-based and instrumental music with a research-oriented approach. His multichannel works have been performed on international stages and explore the formalization of psychoacoustic and perceptual phenomena such as Shepard tones and data sonification. Schmickler writes on topics related to computer music and has received several awards, including the Rome Prize of the German Academy. He has taught at Bard College, CalArts, the Robert Schumann Hochschule, and the IEM in Graz. His compositions have been performed internationally by renowned ensembles. He lives in Cologne and Vienna.

CV Works

Calendar ‘25

20.12. › Dortmund, @Künstlerhaus
19.12. › Graz, Gendyn ∂ Institute (A Crypt) Institute for Sonic Welfare @DOM im Berg
- Premiere-
21.09 › Stuttgart The Great Wayfinders I-IX (Höhlenmusik) @ Doppelte Käseplatte, Kunstmuseum-Stuttgart
20.09 › Stuttgart The Great Wayfinders I-IX (Höhlenmusik) @ Doppelte Käseplatte, Kunstmuseum-Stuttgart
- Premiere-
11.07. › Vienna Sky Dice (Mapping the Studio) @ Parken
13.06. › Vienna Lecture-performance: ‘Genesis of a Music - Composing with Harry Partch’ as part of The Atlas @ WUK
09.05. › Graz, Crossroads Algorithms presents Sky Dice/ Mapping the Studio @ Kultum

Archive

The Great Wayfinders (Höhlenmusik)

Composer Marcus Schmickler and artist Tim Berresheim present a new chamber opera, premiering on September 20 and 21, 2025, at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart as part of the museum’s double anniversary celebrations.

The Great Wayfinders I–IX (Cave Music) explores the meaning of digitality through the lens of cave research—casting a speculative gaze from the future back onto our present. Schmickler and Berresheim imagine that we are only at the dawn of a new epoch: the digital age. Centuries from now, today’s beginnings may appear as the “digital Stone Age,” awkward and archaic in hindsight.

Schreber Songs (Don’t Wake Daddy) / Stuttgarter Fassung

Chamber-Opera based on the case of Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge who was famous for his personal account of his own experience with schizophrenia and Freud’s account of paranoia.

Rave in the Style of G.M. Koenig

Solo exhibition at JUBG Gallery in Coloigne based on Realtime Autoencoders trained on Schmickler’s own music.

Richters Patterns

For Large Ensemble, Computer and Film, premiered at Cologne Philharmonic. Richters Patterns, emerged as a collaboration between painter Gerhard Richter and Ensemble Musikfabrik, Marcus Schmickler and director Corinna Belz.
The composition 'extends' Gerhard Richter’s experiment of decomposing a reproduction of one of his 'Abstract Images' into vertical stripes around the domain of sound and time.
The music was not composed to an edited film, but instead Schmickler wrote the music in parallel with the film’s creation. Both, film and composition follow Richter’s method ‘divide, mirror repeat’ into the respective media, at times creating friction between images and sound. Thus listeners experience this music as if looking at a painting.

Glockenbuch IV (Spectre Maria dei Carmini)

Glockenbuch IV is an immersive electroacoustic composition featuring original recordings and immaginary bell-towers originating from Venice, composed for La Biennale di Venezia. The work showcases original methods in analysis/resynthesis, statistical calculations of bell sounds, affording listeners an immersive auditory experience characterized by nuanced movement and doppler effect perception. Moreover, the incorporation of light into the performance establishes an evocative and conceptual synergy between technological elements and contemporary musical composition. The premiere of this work unfolded within the ambit of a 40-channel 3-D audio system."