Suhrkamp Insel

Theodor W. Adorno

Beethoven

Beethoven is a classic study of the composer's music, written by one of the most important thinkers of our time. Throughout his life, Adorno wrote extensive notes, essay fragments and aides-memoires on the subject of Beethoven's music. This book brings together all of Beethoven's music in relation to the society in which he lived.

Christoph Dallach

Future Sounds

West-Germany, around 1968. As everywhere in the rest of the world, here too a young generation is pressing for radical change. Many flood from the lecture halls onto the street, some into the political underground. And some, on the search for the soundtrack of the movement, into the rehearsal rooms under ground.

Felix Denk, Sven von Thülen

The Sound of Family

Post-reunification Berlin was one big playground filled with infinite possibilities. In the former no-man’s-land places suddenly sprung up out of nowhere, often lasting only for a few weeks, where history was going to be written. Techno, the new youth culture that would unite East and West spread out from here at 180 beats per minute.

Rüdiger Esch

Electri_City – Electronic Music from Düsseldorf

Just as Memphis is for rock 'n' roll, Düsseldorf is regarded as the Mecca of electronic music. It’s where Kraftwerk worked on classics such as »Autobahn« and »Wir sind die Roboter« in the Kling Klang Studio. It’s also where DAF fried their sequencers. Chart successes like »Das Model« or »Dr. Mabuse« as well as underground hits such as »Der Mussolini« and »Wahre Arbeit – Wahrer Lohn« made Düsseldorf famous overnight.

Bodo Mrozek

Youth – Pop – Culture

Clamorous sounds, unruly behavior, and colorful fashions: the sonic vocabulary used by contemporaries to describe the new youth scene in the mid-20th century mark a cultural dividing point. Aesthetic conflicts culminated in street riots and produced police measures, censorship, and laws. Spectacular court cases against youths led to negative social clichés of male urban youth: the American juvenile delinquent, the British teddy boy, the French blouson noir and the German halbstarke.

Hanns-Josef Ortheil

How I Learnt to Play the Piano

The first time he has a piano lesson, Hanns-Josef Ortheil is four years old. Guided by his mother, he makes rapid progress and is placed in the care of a Russian pianist. Soon he makes the decision to become a concert pianist and to shine on the important stages of the world. For the young piano student this means years of practice, often many hours a day. Shortly after graduating from grammar school, the twenty-year-old receives a scholarship to study in Rome, where he experiences a completely unexpected breakdown. His big dream is shattered...

Tobias Rapp

Lost and Sound

Techno is dead, at least officially. In reality, beyond social utopias and Love Parade electronic music and the night-time sub-culture of going out were never more creative or interesting than today. And never so concentrated in a single place: Every weekend young people from all over Europe populate a few kilometers on the banks of the River Spree in Berlin.

Jürgen Teipel

Waste Your Youth

When Waste Your Youth came out in 2001, no one could have predicted the effect this docu-novel about German punk and new wave would have.