Every prize is a triumph of justice for those who receive it but proof of grievous injustice for those who are passed over — at least for the moment. There can hardly be a more terrible feeling for a composer than the dread fear, once expressed by Gustav Mahler, that his own day will only come after his lifetime. No form of recognition is more important than that which comes while the artist is still alive; and no better explanation and justification need by raised for the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize than the words spoken by Karlheinz Stockhausen — not necessarily a laureate to the taste and sensibilities of the Prize's eponymous donor — when he referred to it as 'a gift from heaven'.

In words of thanks, Stockhausen expressed his feelings in 1986: 'When I received Dr Sacher's latter informing me that I had won the Ernst von Siemens Prize I was filled with gratitude and a great sense of relief. Over the last few years I had, in my artistic levity, spent far more money than I actually possessed: first for the publication of my scores (for ten years I've had my works printed by a small shop in Cologne-Mühlheim), and then under pressure from the "new crew" at Deutsche Grammophon, who insisted that I pay the fees to the performers and broadcasting companies for the release of tape recordings of my own music. (I had to do this for the tape of SAMSTAG from LICHT although I didn't even have the money.)'

Patronage and the State

Of the 1120 cultural foundations listed by the German Foundation Documentation Center (Maecenata Management GmbH, April 1996), the three Siemens foundations are among the most important in their respective fields (the other two are devoted to science and the visual arts). These are not 'operative' foundations but ones that choose instead to preserve and promote. Cultural foundations, or what Bernhard Freiherr von Loeffelholz refers to as 'institutionalized patronage', will grow in importance as culture becomes more difficult to finance. These problems already loom large on the horizon today. True, the German Constitution solemnly places the state's obligations toward culture on a par with the rule of law, but these obligations are increasingly being called to question and even de facto ignored. Many cultural institutions are already feeling the pinch, or soon will. But wherever and whenever they come into conflict with other interest groups on a political level they will always receive a smaller slice of the fiscal cake. For not only can social matters always be shown to outweigh cultural concerns, they also function as political fodder, especially when discussions of cultural policy degenerate into haggling over budget items. Rather than emphasizing the essential benefits of art — its value for the renewal of society and for stimulating creativity — the debates tend to hinge on its ancillary roles in the economy. The inevitable result is that institutions of culture are ludicrously compared to other facilities: the opera house to Broadway, the art museum to Disneyland.

It is therefore all the more urgent, in a state overburdened with entitlement claims and bloated expectations, that culture be promoted by the private sector. But in an age when many private initiatives — especially those from commercial sponsors — focus entirely on headline-making events or publicity stunts, the Ernst von Siemens Prize can only look like an anachronism. His Foundation was a gesture of acceptance from the grand bourgeoisie toward an art form that had achieved autonomy during the belle époque. Its 'benefits' were never and can never be quantified or subsumed in the bottom line of a corporate balance sheet.

More than a quarter of a century has passed since the grandson of Werner von Siemens, the company's founder, established his Prize on 20 December 1972. Ernst von Siemens's belief that the economy is indebted to the arts and to the stimulus of culture was more than lip service. This 'heir' from a great patrician family was committed to the ethos of human achievement, and he regarded artistic achievement as an expression or manifestation of the same creative impulse. At no point in his life did he view his Prize, or allow it to be abused, as an advertising vehicle. In the narrow social system of an affluent petty bourgeoisie (not a form of society conducive to the arts) this stance encountered and has continued to encounter resistance, frequently in the form of vaguely culture-critical backstabbing cobbled together from economics and aesthetics.

Recognizing a Lifetime Achievement

The Siemens Prize has often been compared to the Nobel Prize. One simple explanation for this lies in the magnetism of large figures: the public eye — and especially the eyes of journalists — are fixated on the impressive size of the award (it now amounts to 250,000 marks), which has tended to narrow or distort an appreciation of the goals of its donor and the intentions of its Board of Trustees. Time and again the Trustees have been exposed to the criticism that the Foundation is pluming itself (or trying to do so) with the names of great musicians. In reality the laureates, these critics continue, have no need for so much money.

Just how hasty and even mindless this objection is, notwithstanding its frequent socio-critical garb, is abundantly revealed by György Ligeti's expression of gratitude, in words as fraught with misgivings as they are brimming with self-confidence: 'I have a somewhat ambivalent attitude to honours and prizes: an artist does his work as well as he can, and it need hardly be mentioned that he wants his products to be understood and accepted. But success, no matter how welcome, is not the goal of artistic activity. What really counts is the pleasure of creating — of having ideas and of putting these ideas into material form in paintings, books and scores. In the case of music, it means giving tangible shape to something imagined in abstracto in the mind's ear.'

Asked whether he felt he deserved to receive the Prize, Ligeti replied that 'the joy more than outweighs the sense of shame' — a sense of shame which today, evidently, only artists are expected to feel. With regard to the prize money, the composer added that 'usually one receives a prize of this magnitude at an age when one doesn't necessarily need the money; but as others do, one tends to give most of it away'.

The Stature of the Performer

Another point of contention is that the Prize is also awarded to performers who, no matter how undeniable their stature, don't need it for the simple reason that they earn far too much already, particularly in comparison with their 'creative' counterparts, the composers. Yet it was Richard Wagner, then still struggling to find recognition, who in a letter of 20 July 1850 wrote the following words to that darling of fortune, Franz Liszt: 'Remember how I used to envy you in your special field precisely because you were an artist in the tangible sense of the word, an artist who imparts meaning in the present moment.... It was in no way my intention to flatter you; I merely gave expression, half unconsciously, to what I now happen to know: that the only true artist is the performer. All our scribblings, all our sharps and flats are merely a matter of volition but not of ability. Only in performance is there ability — and hence art.'

The principal concern, not only of the Prize's donor but also of its jury, has been to honour those performers who feel a sense of responsibility toward music's present and future — artists who use the powers at their command to swim against the current and to challenge, and thereby improve, audiences with unorthodox programmes. It need only be mentioned that Heinz Holliger and Maurizio Pollini, to choose but two examples, immediately put their prize money to use on behalf of contemporary music, thereby reconfirming their commitment to the art.

Epochal Figures

The Ernst von Siemens Prize is not a tool for the welfare or solicitude of composers and performers. It does not reward the hopes vested in a musician but the achievement he has brought forth. The list of composers among its laureates — from Benjamin Britten, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Boulez to Elliott Carter, Witold Lutoslawski and Karlheinz Stockhausen, from Hans Werner Henze and György Ligeti to Helmut Lachenmann, Görgy Kurtág and Mauricio Kagel — is a declaration of allegiance to 'world music'. None of these composers was uncontroversial; some of them remain controversial today.

By honouring such conductors as Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado, such pianists as Rudolf Serkin and Maurizio Pollini and such string virtuosos Mstislav Rostropovich, Yehudi Menuhin, Gidon Kremer and the Arditti Quartet, the Prize has been bestowed on epochal figures who stand far above the levelling tendencies of our democratic age. Like the Nobel Prize, the Erasmus Prize, the Sonning Prize and the Shakespeare Prize, the Board of Trustees of the Siemens Prize rewards a lifetime achievement regardless of the expectations of the public. All the same, this brings to mind a thought expressed by Clytus Gottwald in his laudatory address for Pierre Boulez: there are, in a humanistic sense, lifetime achievements for which even such a generous and highly remunerative award as the Ernst von Siemens Prize can only be symbolic.

In making its decisions, the Board of Trustees has never felt beholden to the goals of the donor, still less to any of the interests of the company that bears his name. Least of all does it have to accommodate the ideas and demands of the 'zeitgeist' — whether this means honouring controversial composers or granting the award to women musicians. Today, after all, we can question whether it is a work's controversial side that supplies the added aesthetic value which merits or compels conferral of the Prize. Faced with these thoughts and reservations, suggestions and reproaches, the jury has resolutely followed the maxim of the English royal family: "never explain, never complain."

Promotion and Provocation

When the Foundation revised its statutes on 10 August 1987 it assigned itself a second purpose which, though frequently overlooked, is no less important and far-reaching. Not only was the Prize now to be awarded to composers, performers or musicologists in recognition of special achievements 'in order to promote their artistic activities and to direct valuable works of art to the attention of the general public' (to quote section 3 of article 2), it also serves, to a degree hardly appreciated today, to 'support the emergence and ongoing education of the young generation of musicians' (art. 2a). These latter funds are awarded to institutions, ensembles and individuals.

New Goals

Today, more than a quarter of a century later, the idea of the Prize can no longer be deduced solely from the original intentions of its donor. Ernst von Siemens stood at the end of an era — the years that witnessed the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany. No matter how conservative his initial goals (conservative in the sense of, to use a phrase long fallen into disrepute, preserving cultural values), he certainly created a stir. The Board of Trustees, as already intimated, may not always have acted to his taste, but it has never strayed from his purpose. Ernst von Siemens thus stimulated new developments outside his original artistic purlieus — and thereby provided the dynamism indispensable to any prize.

Today the Board of Trustees is made up of leading composers, experienced cultural managers and musicologists. Its members are thus well-versed in both the theoretical and the practical sides of music. If I may be allowed to say so, it views itself as a spiritual meeting ground and marketplace for artists and intellectuals who prefer not to go through life with a heavy tread and blinkered eyes. They have proved their ability to conduct a dialogue. This, in our dazed and confusing world, may not lead to solutions, but it does point out new directions, making the Siemens Prize a beacon illuminating the path of music in our time.

Jürgen Kesting