Otto Laske
Biography
Otto Laske is an internationally known composer and published lyric poet. By education, he is an epistemologist and cognitive scientist turned psychologist who has widely published in the field of musicology (see the Bibliography). Laske was born in Olesnica, Silesia, today part of Poland. In the 1950's and '60's, he was part of the Frankfurt School for Social Research (Ph.D. 1966 with Th.W. Adorno) and the Darmstadt Summer Courses (1962-1966), where he studied with Boulez, Koenig, Ligeti, and Stockhausen, and privately with Konrad Lechner. After his immigration to the U.S. in 1966, he pursued further musical studies with A. David, R. Ceeley, R. Cogan, and R. Kolisch (M.Mus., New England Conservatory of Music, 1968). During the early 1970's, Laske was part of the Instituut voor sonologie in Utrecht, directed by G.M. Koenig. There, he laid the foundations for what has become known as "cognitive musicology." He continued his cognitive studies in computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University (1975-77), and in interactive computing (PLATO System) at the University of Illinois (1978-79), where he was a colleague of J. Beauchamp and H. Brun. Laske taught composition and musicology at McGill University, Montréal, P.Q.; the Instituut voor sonologie, Utrecht, The Netherlands; the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA; and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the 1980's, he also taught computer science at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA.
Together with C. Roads, in 1981 he founded the New England Computer Music Association, later renamed to New England Computer Arts Association (NEWCOMP), and served as its Artistic (Co-) Director til 1991. During this time, he and Curtis produced 65 concerts both in Boston and in Europe, and held the annual NEWCOMP Computer Music Competition, supported by a group of internationally known composers.
Laske's musical work comprises nearly 70 compositions for tape and instruments as well as voices (see the List of Compositions), most of them produced by way of computer programs. Of these, his vocal music is least known. His music has been performed nationally as well as internationally. He has also published a large number of papers on musicology in international journals, and several volumes of poetry in English and German (see the Bibliography). A Festschrift in honor of his work, entitled Otto Laske: Navigating New Musical Horizons (edited by J.N. Tabor) has been published at the Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, USA, in 1999. A collection of his German poetry, Brunnentür des Wunsches, is to be published by Rind & Schlegel, Munich, Germany. A publication of his German writings on music is in preparation by N. Schueler, Greifswald, Germany.