“Éliane Radigue said that when you listen to slow music, it becomes a game of overtones rather than fundamentals… I can relate to that. I like thinking about the colours of things, the overtones, and everything that happens in the detail of the sound rather than just moving things on.”
Anian Wiedner
Physical, Temporal, and Harmonic Space: those are the three pillars that define the musical thinking of German-born, London-based composer and organist Anian Wiedner. A recent graduate of the Royal College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Anian has written for a diversity of ensembles including EXAUDI, Plus-Minus Ensemble, Münchner Flötenduo, ORA Singers, and Fidelio Trio, among others. His work has been performed across Europe, supported by academies including Festival Mixtur, Impuls Academy, and the Dartington International Summer School, and various scholarships from the Finzi Trust, Guildhall School Trust, and the Help Musicians Fast Track Award. His music has been recognised as a Silver Medal winner by the Worshipful Company of Musicians and a winner of the RCM Large Ensemble Composition Competition. As an organist, he holds experience as Musical Director at All Saints, Poplar and previously as Director of Music at St. Mark’s, Wimbledon. Anian has additionally premiered and recorded a number of works from the contemporary repertoire, with his recording of Jonathan Cole’s Templum released in 2023 by October House Records.
Anian is currently preparing for an organ recital on 22 May at All Saints, Poplar, London, featuring compositions by Anian, Eluned Davies, Simon Holt, and Haris Kittos. Ahead of the recital, Finn Mattingly caught up with Anian near his hometown in upper Bavaria to explore transdisciplinarity, temporal slowness, spatial perception, and expression…
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Finn/PRXLUDES: Anian, you possess a very diverse background as a composer, organist, and improviser — where did this journey begin for you, and what brought you to London?
Anian Wiedner: The first instrument I actually played was the violin, which I played throughout school and a little bit after. I didn’t take that to a very high level, and the first thing I did professionally was organ performance. That is what I studied at college at first, as well; I applied to the RCM [Royal College of Music] as an organist because I wasn’t quite as confident as a composer at the time. I grew up in the countryside and was always very well supported by my family on all my musical endeavours, but there weren’t many opportunities to engage with contemporary music. I took up the organ when I was a teenager. I was playing piano first, but started playing the organ because I thought, “Wow, that’s so cool and so loud.”
I started playing services when I had been learning the organ for maybe just over a year — so quite early on. Then I found out about the RCM and applied there. I just took a chance; I didn’t think I was necessarily going to get in, but I thought it looked cool. I was young and wanted to explore the world. It wasn’t necessarily that I definitely wanted to go to London, but I was taken by what I saw on the internet for the RCM. I had never been to London before my audition. I went to my audition and somehow got in. That was the only place I applied for, and that was where I wound up studying.
Did your interest in composition stem from your organ studies?
I already did some composing while I was at school and was always really interested in writing music and creating new things. I was quite lucky that my school orchestra performed some of my compositions. They were quite simple — let’s put it that way — but it was a good experience.
However, I think the thing that really got me invested was actually the history course at college. The first year was just the history of music after 1945, and it featured lots of music that I had never heard of before. It was taught by lots of different people, and started with minimalism, which wasn’t necessarily my thing at that time. I think the music I really liked was by Arvo Pärt, whom I had known before and really loved. Then what really started resonating with me was music by Saariaho and Sofia Gubaidulina, and later on, Messiaen and Ligeti. These are the classics of contemporary music, which I didn’t really know but then had to study in depth. That was really important for me.
I took another chance and applied for second study composition in my first year. I was told that I wasn’t quite at the right level for it and would have to work really hard if I wanted to do it. I decided that I would do it. I think lockdown really helped me because I had lots of time. I couldn’t really play the organ or practice that much, so I could really dedicate time to composing.
I had some support and a lot of encouragement from Jonathan Cole — who is now the Head of Composition and was my composition teacher later on — to take up a joint principal study from my second year onwards. That is when things started changing. Getting in touch with him also got me more interested in the side of playing contemporary music because he needed someone to record his organ piece, Templum, for the Research Excellence Framework (REF), for which the RCM needed to submit.
I recorded that piece at the beginning of my second year. It is a really amazing piece consisting of four pitches that cycle around very slowly over 40 minutes. It was something I hadn’t encountered before — incredible simplicity done in such a beautiful way. It involved taking the harmony and spacing these four notes in such different ways. I think that really shaped the way I think about harmony and sound. That shaped the outlook I have now.
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Right at the beginning of your bio, when you talk about artistic interests, you mention an interest in “the spatial possibilities of music through physical, temporal, and harmonic space”. What are these three pillars for you, and do they intersect in your practice, or exist more separately?
I think they absolutely do intersect. For me, it is important to feel the music around us. I think this comes from being an organist because I play in various spaces, such as churches of different sizes, and I have to adapt my playing. If I improvise, I have to adapt everything to the room and the acoustics. Different harmonies work in different spaces.
The harmonic side of things has a lot to do with overtones and spectral elements. I like very particular harmonies that make you feel like there is infinite space in the room — things like little beatings that feel open, as if they open up both the fundamentals and everything above. There are very specific sounds that make you feel like there is something there.
So in a way, it’s about using harmony as a way to illuminate spatial perception — and then how does that third pillar, temporality, work in your practice?
In order to be able to perceive both the harmonic space and the acoustic space, you actually need a lot of time to get to the core of it and to immerse yourself. For anyone who has ever listened to my music, I tend to write very slow music. For anyone who has ever played my music, they know that even more. My tempo markings tend to be between 32 and 48 beats per minute… Forty-eight is really my fastest music. I think that makes it understandably quite difficult for some players because feeling those slow beats is quite hard, but it is important for me to give it that time.
Éliane Radigue said that when you listen to slow music, it becomes a game of overtones rather than fundamentals. She prefers slow music for that reason. I can relate to that. I like thinking about the colours of things, the overtones, and everything that happens in the detail of the sound rather than just moving things on. For the same reason, I write very static music. I move harmony very slowly; I don’t just jump around trying to get from point A to point B. I like being somewhere in between. I like things being transitional.
So would you say the development of your music is less about a change of material, and more about a change of perception or an expansion of the same material?
Yes. Absolutely.
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Let’s touch back to the organ — starting with Jonathan Cole and your performance of lots of contemporary music. You play both your own music and the music of other composers, and you premiere many new works. Where do you see the line between composition and interpretation? How does that role change when you are writing for yourself versus someone else?
It is definitely very different when I play my own music, because then the line between composing and performing is blurred. When I write for myself, I tend to write very improvisatory music that is very free. I know how different organs can sound; and I want the freedom to choose different stops, to explore things while I am playing, and to make it a dialogue between me, the organ, and the space. I come up with a rough concept and then give myself the freedom to do what I want in the performance, which I think is a very beautiful thing to do.
When I play something by other composers whom I know, it is an exciting challenge to try to understand their thought processes. Other people compose and work differently than I do, and I don’t always understand what they are doing initially. However, playing their music helps me understand how they work and how their harmony functions. At the same time, I feel the responsibility: it is not necessarily stressful, but there is a weight to it. I feel like I have to fulfill my duty to my friends, colleagues, and mentors. If I play someone else’s music, I don’t want to let them down; I want to do their pieces justice. That is why I take a lot of time to learn everyone’s pieces properly.
If I play music by people I don’t know, I don’t feel that same burden and I become a bit freer. That same feeling of freedom happens once I have lived with a piece by someone I do know for long enough, but that process needs to happen. For me, it is important to explore repertoire widely — from contemporary works to Renaissance and Romantic music. It is important to trace that legacy, find repertoire that works well on different organs, and see what I can take from that for myself.
When you’re writing music for other performers, where do you leave room in the score for interpretation?
It is very different when I write for others, because I am something of a control freak. There are composers who are much worse than me — but I like to control the sound. I am not that fussy about rhythms, even though they might look specific on the scores; and I am fussy about the pulse, but not necessarily the minute details of it. However, I am very particular about sonic detail. That is what I leave open in my organ music — but I am very specific about bow positions for strings or instructions for wind instruments. I want a specific sonic picture, so my scores tend to be quite detailed.
But, at the same time, I like it when performers do something with it. I am not a control freak in rehearsals at all. When I have the luxury of having lots of time with a performer ahead of time, I leave room because I know I can trust them. I have heard them make all the different sounds, and I know something incredible will come out. I can just give them the outline of what needs to be there, and they will create what I want.
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Let’s discuss your work with dance and silent film. I’m particularly interested in dance and how that translates to your concepts of physicality and slow development. How do those elements combine?
When I have worked with dance, it has been a different process. My music has been similar, but the choreographers I have worked with — for instance, at the London Contemporary Dance School — focused very much on physicality. In the end, the music provided a physical sound world for it. The music was blasting loudly through the speakers, involving an amplified double bass with electronics.
It was quite visceral. The dancers were not part of the same rhythmic world; they were acting on their own counts and were synchronised by breath. The music gave them something to bounce off of, but they were doing their own thing in a way that was equally physical. You could tell they were really engaging with that sound world. Layering those things on top of each other really makes a difference. It wouldn’t have been the same without the music, and the music wouldn’t have been the same without the dance.
What drew you to dance specifically in the first place?
It is a very beautiful and expressive thing: everyone moves their body in some way, and I think dance is a heightening of what we do anyway. We all express ourselves through movement. I love all things theatre — anything that expresses emotions and communicates. I love the exploration of sound and its physicality, but I also find it interesting when we can communicate things through music. On one hand, you can have pure sound; such as a sonic spectrum or abstract sound. On the other hand, you can have someone saying ”stop”, which is pure communication. There is a whole spectrum in between — and I think that is where dance sits. Dance is ambiguous because you can express something without knowing exactly what it is.
I was working a lot with vocal music last year, and that was interesting because when you use words, you immediately express something. I find it interesting to fragment that to see how it can move into a more abstract space. If you then speak something clearly, you are back at a direct style of communication. It is fascinating because of what it does to the perception of the listener.
Speaking of vocal music: you’ve recently written lots of choral music, such as ‘Choral – Süßer Nagel’, written as part of the ORA Singers Graduate Composers programme, which combines biblical imagery with the work of Paul Auster. What drew you to his work?
I found a book by Paul Auster called Invisible when I was a teenager in my local library, in my hometown in Miesbach, Germany. It was an incredible read and I was absolutely mindblown — probably more by the structure than the content. It moves between first-person, second-person, and third-person narratives. At some point, it tells you that none of what you read actually happened and that all the names have been changed. It is done in a way where you think, “Whoa, what just happened?”
A couple of years later, I read 4 3 2 1, which has a similar structural approach. The life of a boy named Archie is told from a single starting point that then moves in four different directions. It is amazing to see how the circumstances of one’s life change. Paul Auster’s entire output has had an impact on how I think about structure and how I approach art in general. He has very beautiful views on artistry.
I was asked by the ORA Singers to write a piece as part of a composer scheme [ed. the ORA Singers Graduate Composers programme]. They like pieces that are reflections on old Renaissance pieces or vocal polyphony. I based my piece on Vere Languores by Tomás Luis de Victoria. Victoria’s music generally sets text from Isaiah, which deals with the death of the Messiah and how that redeems humankind. This caught my interest — how someone’s pain and death can lead to redemption. I wanted to look at that in a dialectic way, looking at that from a modern point of view.
I came across this Auster poem Choral and thought it felt quite current. It is about war, personal wounds, and death, but it doesn’t give that redemption. I thought it was an interesting way of looking at pain from two different sides. You can choose which side you want to look at. I took a lot of the harmonic material from the Victoria piece, even though it is hard to see now. It starts with a direct quote and has a couple of those very tonal, “in-your-face” bits. The rest is stacked, altered, and twisted. In the performance space, the singers were positioned around the room, with two sopranos singing the Auster text.
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What upcoming projects do you have?
I am about to do a “mini-tour”, in which I am playing in Valley (Germany), in All Saints, Poplar, as well as in St John on the Wall, Bristol (as part of the Mainly Slow Organ Music series). All concerts have slightly different programmes, but I will be premiering some new music by my former teacher, Simon Holt, as well as my friend Eluned Davies. I have also written some new music for the concerts myself.
I will be playing three short pieces of mine from a cycle called Orgeltöne which gradually explore the build-up of registrations and stops on the organ. I am also preparing to play a new work of mine, Anima, in Bristol. It is for organ and electronics. I recorded the wonderful organ in All Saints where I usually play and practice. I took those recordings and detuned and manipulated some of them electronically so that when I play the organ in Bristol, I have a much larger spectrum of notes to play with.
I think it is going to be a lot of fun — I am not entirely sure whether it will work completely yet, but my idea was to expand the organ. There are lots of extended techniques you can do on it, but I am always a bit scared of those because I had a bad experience with them before. My idea is to manipulate the sound so it feels like the organ has overtones and microtones. It makes it feel grander, with some added “sparkles.”
I am also writing for an ensemble in Italy called Sinthomo Ensemble. It is a piece for bass flute, toy piano, and percussion — a rather unusual combination that really sparks the imagination.
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Learn more about Anian Wiedner’s upcoming recital at All Saints, Poplar, London – free entry:
Learn more about Anian and his practice:
- https://anian-wiedner.com/
- https://soundcloud.com/user-411479621
- https://www.instagram.com/anian_wiedner/
References/Links:
- Jonathan Cole – Templum (October House Records, 2023)
- Laurie Spiegel, ‘In Memory of Éliane Radigue (1932-2026)’ (2026), e-flux
- Paul Auster, Invisible (Faber, 2009)
- Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1 (Faber, 2017)
- Tomás Luis de Victoria – Vere languores (1572)
- Paul Auster, ‘Choral’, from Wall Writing (Figures, 1976)
