Volker Bertelmann aka Hauschka is “Düsseldorfer of the Year 2018”, was once a member of the support acts for the Fantastischen Vier and Sigur Rós – and has now received an Oscar in the category “Best Film Music” for a war film. How does that fit together? We took a closer look at the musician to find out who Hauschka actually is.
Straight Outta Düsseldorf – with junk in the piano
Born in 1966 in Siegerland, North Rhine-Westphalia, Volker Bertelmann is a German composer and pianist who also publishes under his stage name Hauschka. But he only became really well known in the last decade; especially when he started making music, for which he prepared the strings of his piano with bottle caps, plastic wrap and other things.
Bertelmann’s beginnings: Hip-hop support act for the Fantastischen Vier
Before Bertelmann won an Oscar in the US and prepared pianos, he seemed to have spent half his life on an orientation journey. At a very young age, at the age of 14, he founded his first rock band, later commissioned work for television music followed, at 18 he wrote the music for two episodes of the ZDF series “Ein Fall für Zwei”. This was followed by activities as a singer, medical studies and later business administration (both broken off in order to devote himself to music again.)
The big Oscar analysis
In the 1990s he played in the indie hip-hop band God’s Favorite Dog, which managed to open for the Fantastischen Vier.
Mental collapse after lack of success
But after a later lack of success, the band lost their record deal and broke up. Bertelmann first brought that back to earth, like him “Deutschlandfunk Kultur” told in 2007: “The band broke up, my best friend and bandmate went to a monastery, my girlfriend broke up with me and those were these three things that all happened in one year, and then I said to myself, never mind, I’ll keep going. And after about a year and a half I collapsed, nothing worked anymore, I was simply tied to the bed, I just had total disturbances of perception. So mentally and physically I was just a wreck.”
Off to Düsseldorf, preparing pianos
After a phase of searching and healing, Bertelmann finally moved to Düsseldorf, began making music again and drew on his many years of training as a classical pianist. But anything but the classic way: He now prepared pianos for his pieces of music – with scrap metal, table tennis balls and the like. This technique was originally made famous by John Cage, a 20th-century American composer and artist who developed the technique of “prepared piano” invented (i.e. using objects such as erasers, nails, paper, etc. at certain points in the string courses of a piano. These are then supposed to produce polyphonic, flageolet tones or percussive sounds).
Hauschka was born and film music followed
From then on, Bertelmann composed his music under the pseudonym Hauschka. He became a father, followed by the album “The Prepared Piano” in 2005, numerous collaborations with various artists such as Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sigur Rós.
The first Oscar nomination
After a few more successful years, he finally received an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe Award in 2017 for his collaboration with Dustin O’Halloran on the soundtrack to the feature film The Long Walk Home. At the end of June 2018, Bertelmann became a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The first Oscar
Finally, in 2022, he created the music for Edward Berger’s anti-war film, Nothing New on the West. “Hauschka” aka Volker Bertelmann was awarded the prize for the best film music at the 95th Academy Awards.
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