Summa cum laude

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The Australian composer Samuel Penderbayne was awarded "summa com laude" for his artistic and scientific doctorate supervised by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Flender, Prof. Dr. Georg Hajdu and Prof. Fredrik Schwenk.

The artistic part of the doctorate, a full-length music theater, was premiered on April 6, 2018 at the opera stabile of the Hamburg State Opera. The dissertation: "Cross-Genre Composition: encoding characters in the chamber opera I.th.Ak.A . with semiotic elements derived from commercial music genres" was defended on December 14 at the University of Music and Drama. It deals with the innovative approach of the music theater work scientifically and artistically.

The approximately one-and-a-half-hour work I.th.Ak.A. for four vocal soloists, five instruments and electronics was successfully performed eight times under the direction of Paul Georg Dittrich. The production was dramaturgically accompanied by Johannes Blum, while Barbara Kler was responsible for the musical direction.

The 272-page dissertation is a novelty in that it is the first to use the innovative method of artistic research in musicology, which makes it possible to explore the aesthetic and theoretical foundations of the music of I.th.Ak.A. and to reveal inner connections.

"I.th.Ak.A" and the associated artistic-scientific doctorate were created in cooperation between the Hamburg State Opera, the Institute for Cultural Innovation Research at the Hamburg University of Music and Drama and the Claussen Simon Foundation as part of its "Dissertation Plus" funding program.