Sigma Alpha Iota

32 32 Fall 2026 | sai-national.org By Jayne I. Hanlin In 2017, I entered the Interactive Orchestra Room at the Bach Museum in Leipzig, Germany. While pressing individual buttons for lighted instruments, I heard their separate parts in the music being played. My favorite instrument was the theorbo. Later at the nearby Schumann- Haus, I met Benjamin Stache who explained and demonstrated the four features of its Interactive Orchestra Room where ceiling- mounted objects play programmed melodies. (See PAN PIPES Winter 2018.) Born in 1960, his father, Erwin Stache, was the creator of these exhibits in both interactive rooms in which there is two-way communication between a device and user input. Through the years, the elder Stache has worn many hats, having studied physics and mathematics as well as piano in the former German Democratic Republic. Since 1983, he has been working as a musician, composer, and also a builder, creating clever musical objects for museums and designing unique installations for public spaces. The younger Stache, a classically-trained violinist, performs in concerts with other musicians—all playing his father's instruments in the small group, Atoner, founded in 2002. On a recent visit, I spent time with father and son in both of these museums to learn about Erwin's newest projects and to see two of his unusual instruments: the kilo ohm and an accordion wall hanger guitar. Inside the Bach Museum, the small Interactive Composing Room (2021) corresponds to Johann Sebastian Bach's own workspace. I was able to "experiment with words and sounds, music and noises, rhythms and tempos." Knut Müller co-created Liedspiel (Song Game Station), the imaginative first display, constructed with weights and magnets. For each of my compositions, I chose five of seventeen word cards and inserted them into frames of the song machine board, adjusting pitches and tempos. Then I selected a voice (male or female) and tonal systems—major, minor, or Phrygian church mode—to complete my work. At the second station, Erwin enthusiastically demonstrated how to "play" all of the dozen objects, each with a relevant Bach connection. Placed on and connected to the composing table are a travel bottle, candlestick, pocket watch, snuff box, coffee grinder, cross staff, tuning fork, AWORLDOFMUSIC The Musical Creations of Erwin Stache A model of the large hand of 51-year-old Clara Schumann. The Bach Museum in Leipzig, Germany

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