26. Kompolize Sommer 2026
The jury has reached its decision: Winner of the 26th International Composition Competition Kompolize Summer 2026 is Anthony Jacobs. The world premiere of his compositiion Noodklok. will take place on Sunday, July 5 2026, 7 pm at the Emmauskirche in Berlin-Kreuzberg, on Wednesday, July 8 2026, 8 pm at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin-Charlottenburg and on Sunday, July 12 2026, 11 am at the Open-air stage of the Zitadelle Spandau in Berlin-Haselhorst.
Born in 2000 in Arcachon (France), Anthony Jacobs is a Belgian composer based in Brussels. Exposed to classical music from an early age, it was after discovering Beethoven's symphonies and Vivaldi's concertos that he developed a precocious passion for musical creation and began learning music through the saxophone and piano.
Always driven by the desire to create, at the age of fourteen he was accepted into the composition class at the Bordeaux Conservatory, where he studied the great works of the 1925 generation and serialism.
Admitted in 2022 to study composition at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in the classes of Daniel Capelletti, Martin Loridan, and Lukas Ligeti, he moved away from the aesthetics he had studied during his years in Bordeaux, discovering North American minimalists, 20th-century Russian music, and post-1950 Polish composers. Today, he is developing an approach where these different aesthetics meet and intersect.
As a young composer, he intends to make the most of his youth to contribute to contemporary creation through his research on the development of Eastern European Aesthetics, which is still relatively unexplored in the West. His works are published by New Consonant Music.
Anthony Jacobs writes about his piece Noodklok:
"Noodklok", a Dutch term meaning “tocsin”, pays tribute to Dmitri Shostakovich's symphonic music while exploring the worrying rise of contemporary dangers. Through its various sections, the work depicts a society on the brink of sinking into an abyss from which it seems unable to escape. The tocsin, a traditional alarm signal, sounds like a warning in the face of an increasingly unstable world, where the shadows of the past resurface to threaten the future.
Conceived as a deeply descriptive piece, it is divided into three distinct sections. The first section is characterized by a slow crescendo emanating from the low instruments of the orchestra, amplifying within a constantly shifting harmonic fabric. The second section forms the heart of the work. It takes the form of an ostinato passacaglia, in which the bass and a melody respond to each other until the discourse completely disintegrates, marked by the gradual addition of chromaticism and large, deliberate dissonances. The third part, written in retrograde and transposed, symbolizes a cyclical musical and historical return.
