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Ludger Hofmann-Engl

p, *1964 GB
Musician / Composer

Composer, Pianist Born in Germany, 1964 Lives in London PhD in Music Psychology and Composition from University of Southampton Ludger Hofmann-Engl was born in 1964 in Bamberg. Subsequently, his family moved first to Erlangen and then to the nearby village Uttenreuth, where he lived until 1985. Between 1985 and 1992 he lived in Berlin and until 2015 in London. Here, he was the Chair Person of Chameleon Group of Composers between 1995 and 2000. In London he also worked in customer services, as a music teacher and within social work. Since 2015, he has been living in Krakow currently working as an IT analyst. Ludger studied composition with Dr. Ludwig Schilling at the Meistersinger Konservatorium Nuremberg. In piano, he was instructed at the Sacred Music Institute Erlangen and by E. Sternlicht in Berlin. At the Technical University Berlin he completed his MA with Carl Dahlhaus and Helga de la Motte-Haber in music science, philosophy (Günter Abel) and theoretical physics. During his studies, he modified Ernst Terhardt's model on virtual pitch and pitch salience. Apparently, this model, supported by experimental data, solves problems of previous models as put forward by other researchers. The model also allows for the development of a contemporary harmony theory, which Ludger presented during the VI Brazilian symposium of computer music in Rio de Janeiro in 1999. In 2003, he presented a stringent analysis of Schoenberg's op 19.2 based upon this virtual pitch model during the Interactive Musicnetwork Workshop at Leeds University. A software application of the theory in form of a harmony analyzer can be found here. In a paper delivered during the 9th ICMPC (Bologna, 2006), he demonstrated that the pattern approach to virtual pitch is superior to the temporal approach. The paper can be viewed here. In 2008, he made an aural presentation during ICMPC 10 in Sapporo (Japan), showing that his virtual pitch model (here coined Hofmann-Engl pitch) and Riemann's functional harmony theory are in support of each other. His paper on the historical perspective on consonance and dissonance appeared within the proceedings of ICMPC 11, Seattle, USA. He completed his PhD in 2003 in psychology (Keele University) with John Sloboda as his main supervisor and Alan Marsden(University of Lancaster) as his external supervisor. In his research project he investigated issues related to cognitive/melodic similarity and melodic transformations. Talks given regarding these issues include the University of Southampton, the University of Texas at Dallas, City University London and King's College London. He presented a paper on melodic similarity models during the 2nd international conference on Music Information Retrieval at Bloomington (Indiana) in 2001. In 2002 his paper on rhythmic similarity was read by Richard Parncutt during the ICMPC 7 (7th international conference on music perception and cognition, Sydney). Ludger also moderated a panel on What makes music similar during the 3rd international symposium on music information retrieval in Paris in 2002. He ontributed to Axmedis 2008 in Florence with a paper on similarity software engineering. Other papers were included in conferences in France and Italy. At present, Ludger is still trying to explain the shortcomings of the Pythagorean tradition.

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