Found­a­tion

The founder of the Ton­meister edu­ca­tion, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Erich Thi­en­haus, was born in Lübeck in 1909. After re­ceiv­ing his dip­loma in phys­ics and math­em­at­ics in 1932, he car­ried out in­tens­ive re­search on in­stru­ment sound, sound trans­mis­sion, and room acous­tics. Fur­ther­more, he stud­ied mu­sic with his broth­er-in-law Hugo Dist­ler in the sub­jects of or­gan, in­stru­ment­a­tion, and pi­ano re­duc­tion of scores. He was awar­ded his doc­tor­ate in Ber­lin in 1935.

On Oc­to­ber 1, 1946 he was ap­poin­ted lec­turer for acous­tics and in­stru­ment­a­tion in Det­mold, where three years later he foun­ded the first Ger­man mu­sic­al-acous­tic in­sti­tu­te for the train­ing of Ton­meister. Between 1949 and 1963 Thi­en­haus held six in­ter­na­tion­al Ton­meister con­fer­en­ces in Det­mold, which crowned his tire­less work in the field of mu­sic trans­mis­sion. He died in 1968.

The in­sti­tu­te in the 70s

After a four-year va­cancy, Dr. Wern­er Czesla was ap­poin­ted pro­fess­or in the fields of the­or­et­ic­al acous­tics and elec­tri­city. In the fol­low­ing years, ma­jor changes were made to the train­ing of Ton­meisters, which also set the stage for the sub­se­quent re­struc­tur­ing in­to an eight-semester course of study at uni­versity level.

Already in 1968, an­oth­er per­son­al­ity shaped the Det­mold Ton­meister edu­ca­tion: Jür­gen Mey­er, head of the Labor­at­ory for Mu­sic­al Acous­tics of the PTB in Braun­sch­weig and a sci­ent­ist of in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing, who could be re­cruited for a teach­ing po­s­i­tion in mu­sic­al acous­tics. Mey­er was the first to sys­tem­at­ic­ally and sci­en­tif­ic­ally in­vest­ig­ate the laws of in­stru­ment acous­tics and their in­ter­re­la­tion with room and psy­choacous­tics. He presen­ted his res­ults in a prac­tice-ori­en­ted man­ner for mu­si­cians, in­stru­ment makers, and Ton­meister. From 1974 on­wards, Volk­er Straus had a de­cis­ive in­flu­en­ce on the train­ing of mas­ter crafts­men in Det­mold for more than 25 years as a main dis­cip­line teach­er. His ex­pert­ise in the sub­jects of re­cord­ing pro­duc­tion, edit­ing, mix­ing, sound aes­thet­ics, and re­cord re­view in­flu­en­ced gen­er­a­tions of sound en­gin­eers of this era.

The 80s

The year 1980 rep­res­ents a sig­ni­fic­ant mile­stone for the Ton­meister In­sti­tu­te, as it re­ceived a new mix­ing con­sole from Neu­mann with 32 chan­nels and Studer mul­ti­track equip­ment, the latest ef­fects equip­ment, a com­pletely re­newed mi­cro­phone col­lec­tion, and Brüel&Kjaer meas­ur­ing equip­ment for the elec­tro-acous­tic part of the cur­riculum.
Dur­ing these years there were also the first guest events re­lated to pop mu­sic, which over time be­came an in­teg­ral part of the course.

Fur­ther­more, the sub­ject "artist­ic re­cord­ing pro­duc­tion (künst­lerische Auf­nahmelei­tung)" was defined as a main dis­cip­line.

The 90s

With the ap­point­ment of Dipl. Ton­ing. Car­los Al­brecht as Pro­fess­or of “Mu­siküber­tra­gung|pop­uläre Mu­sik” in 1996, the Uni­versity and the In­sti­tu­te es­tab­lished the bal­ance of mu­sic­al genres in the train­ing of fu­ture Ton­meister. In the same year, two con­trol rooms were gen­er­ously mod­ern­ized and new mix­ing con­soles - one for clas­sic­al and one for pop­u­lar mu­sic - were in­stalled. For the first time mon­it­or­ing cap­ab­il­it­ies were ex­ten­ded to 5.1 sur­round.

The in­sti­tu­te was also nicely roun­ded out in the clas­sic­al field through the es­tab­lish­ment of a new pro­fess­or­ship for “Mu­siküber­tra­gung”. Mi­chael Sand­ner and Rain­er Mail­lard shared the re­spons­ib­il­ity for the main sub­ject of artist­ic re­cord­ing pro­duc­tion/ clas­sic­al mu­sic.

The 2000s

In 2003, An­dreas Mey­er, a gradu­ate Ton­meister who had been teach­ing at the in­sti­tu­te since 1977, took over the tech­nic­al man­age­ment of the ETI. Dur­ing this time, the in­sti­tu­te was fur­ther ex­pan­ded by the con­struc­tion of an ad­di­tion­al floor. Prof. Thomas Görne found his home in the newly built rooms and was re­spons­ible for the tech­nic­al and sci­en­tif­ic con­tent of the Ton­meister course from 2005 to 2008.

From 2006 to 2009, An­dreas Mey­er headed the ETI sim­ul­tan­eously as dir­ect­or of the in­sti­tu­te and dir­ect­or of the study pro­gram. Fol­low­ing the re­tire­ment of Car­los Al­brecht and Thomas Görne's de­par­ture for HAW Ham­burg, two new pro­fess­ors were ap­poin­ted in the winter semester of 2008/2009: Dr.-Ing. Malte Kob took over train­ing in the tech­nic­al-sci­en­tif­ic sub­jects and was the head of the in­sti­tu­te and pro­gram dir­ect­or in 2010/11. Dipl.-Ton­meister Mi­chael Schubert suc­ceeded Prof. Car­los Al­brecht in the area of re­cord­ing pro­duc­tion/ pop­u­lar mu­sic and took over the po­s­i­tion of head of in­sti­tu­te and pro­gram dir­ect­or in 2012. In 2013 Rain­er Mail­lard ended his work at the ETI as a pro­fess­or. As his suc­cessor, Bernhard Güt­tler, gradu­ate Ton­meister, was ap­poin­ted for the winter semester 2014/15.

The res­tor­a­tion and ren­ov­a­tion work at the Det­mold Con­cert Hall (formerly the Neue Aula), which was com­pleted in 2009, has opened up com­pletely new fields of act­iv­ity for Ton­meister and mu­si­cians: Two Wave Field Syn­thes­is Sys­tems (WFS) were in­stalled in the con­cert hall and in a con­trol room in the base­ment, giv­ing stu­dents and lec­tur­ers the cre­at­ive op­por­tun­ity to in­teg­rate multi-di­men­sion­al re­pro­duc­tion sys­tems in­to train­ing and prac­tice.