Sophie Emilie Beha, 2023 A Catalyst in Tune with the Times – 50 Years Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation

Ernst von Siemens was many things – including a catalyst for the arts. By establishing the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation in 1972, he made projects and careers possible – far beyond his own lifetime. The grandson of company founder Werner von Siemens, Ernst was born on 9 April 1903, just southwest of London in Coombe House, Kingston Hill. He spent his childhood and youth on the family estate, the Heinenhof in Potsdam, surrounded by ten acres of parkland and two lakes. As idyllic as this might sound, Ernst von Siemens was but 15 years old when Germany and its allies lost the First World War. “Behaviour:
good;
attention and diligence:
sufficient;
Obersekunda exam.”Just a few months earlier, he had received his school report from the Real-Gymnasium in Potsdam which read: “Behaviour: good; attention and diligence: sufficient; Obersekunda exam [11th grade].”
After graduating from high school, Ernst von Siemens went to Munich to study “a technical subject,” as stipulated by his father Carl Friedrich. He opted for physics. Ernst von Siemens was diligent: Just five years later, he wrote his dissertation on spectral measurements. At the same time, he contracted polio – the consequences of which he would suffer for the rest of his life, but he did not let this get him down. Two years later, at the age of 26, Ernst von Siemens took his first step into professional life, naturally in the family business. As the years went by, the passionate mountaineer and hiker also continued his professional ascent: In 1941, he finally became general representative of the company ¹ In 1941, Ernst von Siemens also became director of the newly formed Wernerwerk for radio equipment and components with over 8,000 employees. Two years later, he was appointed to the Managing Board of Siemens & Halske.   – in the middle of World War II, i.e. at the most difficult time imaginable. The Siemens company was classified “a key part of the war effort” by the National Socialist regime. This also meant that tens of thousands of forced labourers were employed in production during the Second World War. These were skilled workers, unskilled workers from Eastern and Western Europe or concentration camp prisoners ² From 1942 to 1945, Siemens employed inmates from Ravensbrück, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen, Groß-Rosen and Auschwitz. Production facilities were maintained near the large concentration camps especially for this purpose. .

In the immediate post-war period, the Siemens Group initially tried to limit the damage. From the late 1950s, the company, under the leadership of Ernst von Siemens complied with the demands of the Jewish Claims Conference for reparations, paying compensation to former Jewish forced labourers ³ Siemens paid out DM 5m to Jewish forced labourers in 1962 and DM 2m in 1966. . Over the decades, the company made efforts to take its responsibility for crimes committed during World War II.
The Second World War left the House of Siemens in ruins. ⁴ Of the total losses, confiscations and expropriations accounted for Reichsmark 310 million.
Ernst von Siemens took over the fiduciary management of the entire company one month after the end of the war, after his cousin Hermann, the eldest grandson of the company founder, was interned by the Allies in the American occupation zone. Thanks to the strategic course he charted, the electrical company succeeded in rebuilding under his leadership. But Ernst von Siemens was more than a major industrialist driven by a Prussian sense of duty.
Bettina von Siemens, his niece-in-law, recalls ⁵ Bettina von Siemens was born in Berlin in 1942 and grew up in Switzerland. In 1966, she married Peter von Siemens, the nephew of the Foundation’s founder. For many years, on the eve of the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize ceremony, she has invited the Board of Supervisors and the Board of Trustees to her home for dinner and a joint exchange of ideas. : “Uncle Ernst could be imperious and aloof, but also very charming, modest and reserved. He was an interested conversationalist and a real personality. As soon as he entered the room, you felt his presence.” Ernst von Siemens commanded respect – both in the company and in the family. Someone who knew exactly what he wanted. And in 1972, he wanted a foundation to promote music.
Music had always been one of his passions. This was even evident in his work: Ernst von Siemens was Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Deutsche Grammophon GmbH and initiated the Siemens Studio for Electronic Music in Munich. On the evening before his death on 31 December 1990, he was still listening to an operetta in Starnberg Hospital. The former Chair of the Board of Supervisors, Heinz Friedrich ⁶ Heinz Friedrich was the first dtv publisher, President of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, and from 1984 to 1995 served on the Board of Supervisors of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. , wrote of him in 1994: “Throughout his life, music was at the centre of Ernst von Siemens’ artistic existence. He drew strength from it. It inspired him, it lent colour to his matter-of-fact, self-disciplined nature. […] He needed music like he needed air to catch his spiritual and mental breath.”

Establishment of the Foundation
In keeping with his self-image as a preserver and promoter of culture, Ernst von Siemens established the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, based in Switzerland, on 20 December 1972. The Swiss law governing foundations allows parts of its revenue to flow into the Foundation’s assets. This does not work under corresponding German law. In Switzerland, the Foundation was entered in the commercial register on 1 February 1973, with its registered office in Zug.
The Foundation is a non-profit organization. According to its statutes, it is dedicated to the “training and further education of up-and-coming young artists in the field of music, among other things through grants to institutions and individuals active in the field of music”. As well as to the “exchange of ideas between Swiss, German and other music artists and musicologists” and the “awarding of prizes to producing or reproducing music artists and musicologists”.
The Foundation began its work in early 1973. The very first people to work for the Foundation were employees of Ernst von Siemens in Munich. In addition to their main Siemens job, they worked for the Foundation and were paid for this work by Siemens AG. Another reason for choosing the Munich location was the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. For the music prize, Ernst von Siemens had come up with a special construct: Officially, it is the Academy that awards the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. In this way, Ernst von Siemens wanted to prevent Siemens AG from being intertwined with his Foundation. It was to be independent. For these reasons, to this day the president or a member of the Academy of Fine Arts is also the Chair of the Board of Supervisors of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation ⁷ Since 2018, the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts and the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation have jointly elected the chair of the Board of Supervisors. Until then, only the Academy could do this. .

Board of Supervisors & Board of Trustees
The Board of Supervisors is made up of at least five members, who may be re-elected every four years, but may not be older than 75 years of age. The Vice Chair is always a member of the Siemens family delegated by the Werner Siemens Foundation ⁸ The Werner Siemens Foundation was established in 1923 by the sisters Charlotte von Buxhoeveden, née Siemens, and Marie von Graevenitz, née Siemens. Its purpose was to provide financial support to the descendants of the Siemens founders who had fallen on hard times due to political and economic upheavals in Germany and Russia. This Foundation is now dedicated to the promotion of science. .
The founder, Ernst von Siemens, was himself the founding chairman of the Board of Supervisors but opted not to interfere in the Foundation’s funding policy and decisions. For this reason, in addition to the Board of Supervisors, there is a second body, the Board of Trustees, which decides on the awarding of prizes and grants. Time and again, Ernst von Siemens would be asked to participate in decisions regarding content, which he refused every time – despite not always agreeing with the Board of Trustees’ decisions: This became particularly clear when the Music Prize was awarded to Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1986. Despite all attempts to persuade him, Ernst von Siemens did not come to the award ceremony, thus expressing his view of the prize winner.
From 1982, his nephew Peter von Siemens took over the family seat on the Board of Supervisors as Vice Chairman, whom his uncle instructed to pay particular attention to the Foundation. He was succeeded in 2012 by his wife Bettina von Siemens and in 2017 by their son Ferdinand von Siemens ⁹ The family members each left the Board of Supervisors when they reached the upper age limit of 75. . Ferdinand von Siemens had already been a member of the Board of Supervisors previously, since 2009. The other members of the Board of Supervisors often come from the financial or legal sector and share one thing in common: they are interested in music. The Board of Supervisors is responsible for the Music Foundation and manages, or rather increases, its assets. It also appoints the Board of Trustees and specifies the funds available to it each year.
The Board of Trustees decides on prizes and artistic funding as well as their monetary value. In the past, it consisted of five to eight, now five to ten “personalities who are experts in the field of music”, i.e. composers, music managers, performers and musicologists. The term of office of the Board of Trustees is three years. The decisions of the Board of Trustees are made unanimously (even if, according to the statutes, a majority decision should also apply).

The Beginnings
The very first meeting of the Board of Trustees was held in Munich on 30 March 1973. Cultural patron Walter Strebi was elected to the position of Chairman, and Siemens AG Director Siegfried Janzen to the position of Secretary. Criteria for awarding the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize were also defined:
The prize was to be a sign of recognition, not promotionThe prize was to be a sign of recognition, not promotion, to be awarded independently of the nationality of the recipients. After a discussion weighing up some twenty potential candidates, the first Music Prize, endowed with 100,000 Swiss francs, was finally awarded to Benjamin Britten in 1974 ¹⁰ “Benjamin Britten held the international music world […] in thrall as, undeterred by the frantically outbidding avant-gardes, he went his own way, composing, making music, traveling the world with his singer friend Peter Pears, at his seaside home in Suffolk.” – Laudatio by Martin Hürlimann . In addition to the main prize, individual projects were also supported from the beginning. Since a rising number of applications were received for project funding, two meetings of the Board of Trustees were held each year from 1976, mostly on the premises of Siemens AG or in private homes of the Board of Trustee members.
The current profile of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation – with its focus on contemporary music – was not part of the original purpose of the Foundation. In the beginning, the Foundation supported the entire musical spectrum: from Bach cantatas to amateur choirs to the Orff archive – or, as recently as 1995, the restoration of an historical church organ. According to musicologist and Board of Trustees member Ulrich Mosch ¹¹ Musicologist Ulrich Mosch has been a member of the Board of
Trustees since 2017. , this broad orientation was “both a blessing and a curse”. Although the Foundation supported a wide range of projects, it did not focus on one particular area.
Very much in accordance with the statutes, one focus of funding was on young talent: support was given, for instance, to boys’ choirs, youth orchestras, music schools, summer courses, children’s choirs and conducting classes. Even with adolescents, attention was paid to quality and applications were rejected, for example, due to “limited renown” or “lack of significance”. So as to be able to support individuals as well – on the condition they use the money exclusively for the “initial and further training” of young musicians – the statutes were even amended in 1975.
From the very beginning, the Foundation strove to be highly visible beyond the German-speaking countries. Trusted individuals were appointed to investigate and report on the music scenes of various countries – first in the countries of close European neighbours, and later on other continents too. The appointees were also to promote the Foundation, in the hope of having a greater variety of applications to choose from at the next meeting of the Board of Trustees. This move proved only moderately successful – especially in the early years. In 1981, when there were fewer applications than ever before, a collaboration with personalities from musical life, such as the British music critic and librettist Paul Griffiths, was established in various countries, and the focus was expanded to include South America and Canada, among others. A year later, it expanded to the Asian continent, and in the Board of Trustees, the largest possible complement of eight members was leveraged.
It is noticeable that in the early years, a relatively large number of grants in Switzerland were awarded to institutions in Zug – where the Foundation itself is based. And because of the initially still small number of applications, some grants seem somewhat arbitrary from today’s perspective, without a conceptual thread or recognizable guidelines. In 1976, for example, both the then lay choir Neubeuern and the Aston Magna Foundation, a former American organization for the support of early music, received funding. However, that changed.

Focus on New Music
Amongst others, the conductor and patron Paul Sacher ¹² “I had a lot to do with Paul Sacher. He was very accommodating. You sensed he had a natural respect for the creative spirit.” – Wolfgang Rihm  was key to this shift. He played a decisive role in shaping the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. But also in its very inception: For, even if it cannot be clearly proven, it was probably Paul Sacher who gave his friend Ernst von Siemens the idea of setting up a foundation in the first place. “I don’t know exactly how Sacher got him to do it, none of us do,” says Bettina von Siemens. In any case, Paul Sacher thought highly of him: “I was impressed by the personality of the founder Ernst von Siemens,” Sacher wrote, “and admired his generosity and commitment to music and musicians. He was a passionate soul, strong and unwavering in his convictions.” A member of the Board of Trustees from 1975, Sacher was also the one who steered the Foundation’s course toward New Music. Not on his own, however. A glance at the history of the Music Prize already reveals a certain contemporary horizon: After all, the first two prize winners were Benjamin Britten and Olivier Messiaen – both composers of the 20th century. And none other than Pierre Boulez won the main prize in 1979 ¹³ “These forces that I feel inside me and that emanate from me – […] I just bring them to light – I try to make these forces become reality through my actions, to give them a form. […] [F]or me, research […] is the most resistant and sometimes the most insane form of utopia.”– Pierre Boulez’s acceptance speech at the 1979 award ceremony.  and was subsequently a member of the Board of Trustees for 19 years. “With Boulez on the Board of Trustees, a certain focus emerges quite automatically,” says musicologist Hermann Danuser ¹⁴ Musicologist Hermann Danuser was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1996 to 2017. . From the early 1980s, funding was increasingly directed at applications relating to New Music – while at others less so. Projects that not even ten years earlier had been worth 20,000 Swiss francs in funding for the Board of Trustees were now out: “[T]he performances of predominantly old baroque music (J. S. Bach) do not require special funding,”, stated meeting minutes from 1982, for instance. The reasons for the contemporary focus are thus primarily “ human resource-related”. Since contemporary music, especially, was in decline after the Second World War, it was specific need of support. This stance finally became particularly obvious to the outside world in 1986 with the controversial award of the Music Prize to Karlheinz Stockhausen. A young Wolfgang Rihm was to give the laudatory speech ¹⁵ “Now, a laudatory speech is not the place for settling scores, but I would have to cover my mouth to hold in what ails me. Let me put it positively: The fact that Karlheinz Stockhausen is receiving the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize 1986 means we can foster the hope that the – not only journalistic – treatment of creative minds and their works will be taken to the next level.” – Laudatory speech by Wolfgang Rihm . Rihm, in turn, was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1993 to 1999 ¹⁶ From 1993 to 1999 Wolfgang Rihm was a delegated member of the Academy of Fine Arts on the Board of Trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. , taking on this role again from 2006. With regard to the Foundation’s heightened profile towards New Music, Hermann Danuser speaks of a “great inner logic”. To this day, this emphasis is not anchored in the various statutes, but rather an unwritten law.

The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
The main prize is the centrepiece of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. It honours a person’s musical life’s work, its quality, originality and aesthetics. It is awarded once a year at irregular intervals to composers, performers and musicologists.
The list of award winners abounds with musical greats. And this leads to an exciting interaction: some foundations operate in a one-sided way where the receiving side does not need to give anything back. In the case of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, however, the prize winners pass on their prestige and the associated charisma to the Foundation. This was already known in 1977; the minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting state: “The more significant the name, the greater the advertising effect for the Foundation.” And Wolfgang Rihm also emphasized this reciprocal effect: “The Foundation is justifiably proud to have such prize winners. Because through these prize winners, it remains present and relevant in history.”
By 2023, a total of 25 composers, 21 performers, and three musicologists had received the Music Prize, although not every prize winner can be clearly assigned to one category. However, it is easy to detect a tendency here (even if not specified in the statutes), and this was something also decided in 1988 in a meeting of the Board of Trustees: “In the selection of future prize winners, composers should be given priority over performers. Reasons: Firstly, the creative element is thus originally and most effectively taken into account – in the sense of the actual mission of the Foundation; secondly, it must generally be assumed that composers need the financial endowment more than famous performers since it directly promotes creative work.”
Even though the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize is to be awarded “irrespective of the recipient’s nationality,” there were repeated reminders at Board of Trustees meetings, especially in the earlier decades, to now award the prize to a German composer when non-Germans had been honoured in previous years.
Not every prize winner comes from the field of New Music – even if this characteristic focus was otherwise already anchored in the work of the Foundation. A few examples: The first honoured musicologist, H. C. Robbins Landon (1992), was a Mozart and Haydn scholar. Nikolaus Harnoncourt (2002) is considered a pioneer in the field of historical performance practice. And Anne-Sophie Mutter (2008) and Peter Gülke (2014), while unquestionably committed to contemporary music, do not place it at the centre of their work.
Often candidates are discussed for several years until they finally win the prize. The greatest discussions were probably about Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis. In 1985 Boulez wrote a letter to the Board of Trustees urging them to make Stockhausen the prize winner, announcing he would resign from the Board of Trustees “if there were any prejudice against it” – and thereby enforced his will ¹⁷ Karlheinz Stockhausen was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1986. . And from 1993 on, Xenakis was discussed again and again in a lively manner – ultimately without success. This leads to another question, because when looking at the list of the honourees, it is also obvious who is missing. In retrospect, it is difficult to understand why such influential figures as Sofia Gubaidulina, John Cage, Steve Reich, Krzysztof Penderecki, Tōru Takemitsu, Alfred Schnittke or Arvo Pärt (to mention just a few names and to limit ourselves to the composers) did not receive the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in the end.
The selection suggests that certain flowers were left by the wayside and not included in the magnificent bouquet. Or more to the point: The entire spectrum of contemporary music was not promoted equally – even though it is in the nature of things that, with one prize winner per year, many others simply cannot be honoured. The traditional, more firmly anchored in bourgeois musical thinking, was nurtured and cared for, but the alien, experimental, mechanical, sonorous less so.

Wide-Range of Funding
On the other hand, there is a wider range of project funding – because there is no need to agree on a prize winner. The majority of these are composition commissions. In 2018, a total of 45% of the funded projects – financed fully or in part – were composition commissions. However, concerts, festivals, music theatre, academies, competitions, (musicological) publications, symposia, mediation and digital projects, or CD productions are also supported. “You don’t promote a very narrow aesthetic, but young people where you feel there’s creativity behind it that promises something for the future”Applications come predominantly from countries and regions where a particular funding focus has emerged: primarily from German-speaking countries, from European countries (increasingly from Eastern Europe), and in the U.S. primarily from New York. Very few grants go to countries from the African or South American continents. Over time, the application catchment area has continued to expand and now includes countries from all continents.
From 1990 onwards, the Composer’s Prizes were also awarded to two, and later to three candidates. The main prize has often been criticized for its lack of gender diversity – with this prize it is different: in 1993, Sylvia Fomina was the first woman to receive the prize. “This prize has an incredible impact on a composer’s life”Over the years, 67 men and 21 women have been honoured in this category – several of them Composers of Colour. And the geographic spread is also far more diverse than for the main award. “You don’t promote a very narrow aesthetic, but young people where you feel there’s creativity behind it that promises something for the future,” says Ulrich Mosch. In order to still also capture the present, the Foundation enables the prize winners to make high-quality recordings of their pieces. “This prize has an incredible impact on a composer’s life,” says Thomas von Angyan, Chair of the Board of Trustees ¹⁸ Thomas Angyan, former artistic director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Vienna, has been a member of the Board of Trustees since April 1988 and its chairman since 1996. His predecessor was the Swiss music manager Ulrich Meyer- Schoellkopf, who was a member of the Board of Trustees from 1984 to 1996. . On the one hand, economically, since it gives the composers the opportunity to work for a year without economic pressure. And on the other, through the “enormous reputation” of the Foundation: “So when someone receives the Composers’ Prize, they get the stamp of the extraordinary.” For Thomas von Angyan, this is like a “knighthood.” In order to support ensembles in their further artistic and structural development, a prize endowed with EUR 75,000 was created for this purpose in 2021. So far, the Foundation has helped ensembles from Lithuania, Poland, England, Austria and the USA to develop further.

On their Own Initiative
The räsonanz – Donor Concerts move away from the typical premiere concert format. Since 2016, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation has initiated and funded a concert of revivals every year. The Donor Concerts are organized by musica viva, a concert series care of Bavarian Radio, and Lucerne Festival. The choice of concert venues reflects the Foundation’s dual nationality: Munich and Lucerne. Michael Roßnagl initiated the räsonanz series focusing on important contemporary works with “large instrumentations and grand gestures” ¹⁹ Music manager Michael Roßnagl was secretary of the Board of Trustees from 1995 to 2021, and Björn Gottstein has been his successor since 2022. . The programs include orchestral works that are particularly costly for a revival because of their large instrumentation. Often these were compositions with complicated requirements, such as Georg Friedrich Haas’ limited approximations for six pianos and orchestra microtonally detuned against each other. “räsonanz” also resonates with the wish expressed by Pierre Boulez: “Do something yourself!”“Do something yourself!”
From 1995 to 2009, there was also another concert series initiated by the Foundation in Berlin’s Magnus House. The natural scientist Gustav Magnus bought the building in 1840 and founded Germany’s first physics institute there. Around him gathered, as Werner von Siemens wrote, “a powerfully stimulating circle of talented young natural scientists,” which later gave rise to the German Physical Society ²⁰ The Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft e. V. (German Physical Society) is the oldest national and, with its over 55,000 members, also the largest professional society of physicists in the world. It was founded in 1845. . The prize winners presented their concerts to invited guests from the worlds of culture, business and politics – and especially to the press. The broadcaster Sender Freies Berlin recorded the concerts, thus making the work of the Foundation accessible to a broader public. Here, too, a programmatic change of course can be traced: While the program initially featured Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Henry Purcell, in recent years the focus has been on composers from the 20th and 21st centuries.
In 2017, the Foundation also initiated the Progetto Positano scholarship for young composers together with the Berlin-based ensemble mosaik. Every year, two scholarship holders can live and work for four weeks at the Casa Orfeo of the Wilhelm Kempff Cultural Foundation on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Following their stay, works by the composers are presented by ensemble mosaik in a concert. So far, scholarship holders have included Julia Mihály, Sara Glojnarić, Georgia Koumará, Andreas Eduardo Frank and Kaj Duncan David.

Spotlight for the Foundation
Just as contemporary music became increasingly important over time giving the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation a profile, the same is true of the Foundation itself in terms of public perception. In its first twenty years, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation was hardly known at all – partly because its founders did not attach importance to hype and great publicity. Nevertheless, the desire for greater press resonance was like a recurring refrain from the very first meetings of the Board of Trustees. In the beginning, the music prize was awarded at the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts. But then the decision was taken to make the event more public moving it to Munich’s Cuvilliés Theater, the Herkulessaal, and ultimately, starting in 2016, to the Prinzregententheater with the award being presented to composer Per Norgard ²¹ “Throughout my life, I […] have always had an almost mystical experience of the infinity of melody. It is as if melody could open one door after another. From the very first moment, this can be heard in my music. My very early works were even characterized to a greater degree by a melodic universe than by sound or rhythm.”– Per Nørgård. . “This is now much larger and also much more appealing to the public,” affirms Bettina von Siemens. Not only the public, but also the press follows the events of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation closely: year after year, the Foundation appears in the culture sections of major German-language newspapers. ²² Imke List has been Head of Press and Public Relations since 2009 and has also been Deputy Secretary of the Board of Trustees since 2019. Her predecessor was Hildegart Eichholz, the Foundation’s press spokesperson from 1994 to 2009.  The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize is a sure-fire winner. And not only in Germany: The New York Times and the Guardian also report on the award winners time and again. For many years, only the main prize was in the spotlight, probably because of the generous prize money. In the meantime, the other award winners are now also receiving media coverage, and they probably need the recognition more.
Not only in terms of its outward perception, but also behind the scenes, the Foundation has evolved into a professional institution: Where Siemens employees used to work in the early days, they have long since been replaced by specialists. And the organization of the awards ceremony has also improved over the years. Ulrich Mosch recalls the presentation of the main prize to Helmut Lachenmann in 1997: “In front of me sat the critic of a major German daily newspaper. The award ceremony had begun at seven o’clock. In the meantime, it was half past eleven and the laudatory speech was still being read out. You can imagine: I was starving. Because the laudator Wolfgang Rihm was in hospital, his text was read by Hans-Peter Jahn. When at one point he announced a quotation from Maurice Blanchot, the critic in front of me heaved a sigh and said: ’That too!’ The award ceremony ended up lasting five and a half hours.” In the meantime, never-ending events have given way to a more stringent dramaturgy.
In its early years, Trustees still complained about so few applications, and thought was given on how to increase the number of submissions. This has long since ceased to be an issue. About 400 applications now arrive at the Music Foundation every year. This also forces professionalization. While in 1973 only seven projects were supported, in 2012 there were already more than 100 and in 2022 about 140. In the meantime, about one third of the submitted project applications are supported (though not always with the requested amount).

Assets
But how is all this funded? The basis for the Foundation’s work is Ernst von Siemens’ money. To call it into existence he donated starter capital worth DM 1 million in the form of 20,000 Siemens shares. And because the founder remained childless, his entire inheritance went to his foundations after his death. Private assets are managed here. They are still invested in Siemens shares. The income is then available year after year for all expenses, including operating costs, of course.
“When I joined Siemens, the Foundation only owned the Siemens shares and the dividends that came from those shares,” recalls Michael Roßnagl. The dividends were used to fund the grants-in-aid. “In the event that the Siemens shares might one day not yield a dividend, you needed a nest egg.” Michael Roßnagl wanted to avoid the putting all their eggs in the Siemens basket, as it were. But how is all this funded?So some of the Siemens shares were sold and exchanged for other shares and holdings. Now the Music Foundation has an additional portfolio.
At the beginning, the prize money that came with the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize was just as high as the sum available for sponsored projects – Swiss Franc 100,000 each. Thanks to smart financial experts on the Board of Supervisors and the capitalist law of growth, the money steadily increased: from 1978, it was Swiss Francs 150,000, and from 1983, DM 150,000 each, which could be spent on grants-in aid projects or on the main prize. From the beginning of the 1990s, the money for the main prize was no longer linked to the amount awarded for the sponsorship prizes. The money awarded for the Music Prize was DM 250,000 from 1993 to 2001, EUR 150,000 from 2002 to 2007, and EUR 200,000 from 2008 to 2012. Since 2013, the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize has been endowed with EUR 250,000.The funds for the sponsorship projects exceed those of the main prize many times over.
The funds for the sponsorship projects exceed those of the main prize many times over. These funds have grown continuously since the beginning of the 1990s – the Music Foundation now has EUR 3.6m at its disposal each year, which covers funding and prize activities.

Noblesse Oblige
As is the case almost everywhere, that old adage also applies in the Foundation sector: More money means more influence. The muchpraised quotes “Music history would have been different without the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation” or “Music history would have been different without the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation”.“The New Music scene would be different without the Foundation” are indeed true. There is no comparable foundation in the world. In addition to all the pride, this also means that the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation has an enormous responsibility. Through its outstanding position, it acts as a gatekeeper – and can decisively shape who is part of the contemporary music landscape and in what way. This role has only grown over the past decades and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future – especially at a time when other important players such as public broadcasters are becoming less and less important.
An awareness of this special role became visible, for instance, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In May 2020, the Board of Supervisors initiated the distribution of an additional EUR 4 million to provide unbureaucratic and effective support for music students in German-speaking countries. The aid fund, which was hastily launched in a time of need, supports 43 music academies and universities in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. In 2021 and 2022, the Board of Supervisors added another EUR 2 million each. The money was intended to help students in need and distress as a result of the pandemic.

In Tune with the Times
According to Ulrich Mosch, the Foundation sometimes becomes a “victim of its own success.” This is because the number of applications keeps growing yet the funds are unable to grow at the same rate. “These are then tough decisions. You have to weigh up very carefully what to fund and what to sacrifice.” The scene that makes the applications is complex, vibrant, diverse. “It’s impossible to keep track of it all.” The scene that makes the applications is complex, vibrant, diverse.Nevertheless, the Foundation is increasingly trying to reflect this diversity as well. This can be seen quite plainly in the Foundation’s gender focus: By 2000, a total of only six women were being considered as candidates for the top prize at meetings of the Board of Trustees. As late as 1989, a “new variant” was discussed, namely “whether a female main prize winner could not also be honoured at some point”. In 2008 the time finally came, and since then three more women have received the Music Prize ²³ Female main prize winners to date have been Anne-Sophie Mutter in 2008, Rebecca Saunders in 2019, Tabea Zimmermann in 2020 and Olga Neuwirth in 2022. . Better late than never. The fact that increasingly younger prize winners are being honoured is also part of this awareness of the present. Promoting contemporary music also means representing a diverse society and music scene. The landscape of New Music is diverse, pulsating, quirky and highly complex – the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation has watered and nurtured this landscape for 50 years now, taking a stand in it and transforming it, just like the music. What the future holds is uncertain. What is certain, however, is that the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation will be a part of that future.

Translation: Claire Cahm

Sophie Emilie Beha

is a multimedia music journalist. She is author and presenter for various public broadcasters. She also writes for newspapers such as the taz or the neue musikzeitung and various music magazines such as the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik or Positionen. She moderates festivals, concert introductions, podcasts and panel discussions. She regularly works for festivals such as Darmstädter Ferienkurse, Donaueschinger Musiktage or MaerzMusik.