Otto Zykan

Otto Matthäus Zykan (29 April 1935, Vienna – 25 May 2006, Sachsendorf, Burgschleinitz-Kühnring) was an Austrian composer and pianist. Education The son of composer Otto Zykan (1902–1989), Otto M Zykan received his first piano lessons from his father, and from 1940 he was taught by his paternal grandmother, who had been a student of Theodor Leschetizky. He joined the Vienna Boys Choir and studied at the Vienna Music Academy where his teachers included Karl Schiske (composition), Bruno Seidlhofer and Josef Dichler (piano). He also attended the Darmstadt summer courses (1958, 1964–1966), winning the Kranichstein Music Prize of the international piano competition on his first visit. Music theatre In 1967, working with H.K. Gruber and Kurt Schwertsik, Zykan co-founded the Salonkonzerte Group and associated ensembles such as MOB art & tone ART (sometimes termed the ‘Third Viennese School’) to further his ideas about ‘instrumental theatre’, music that aimed for closer links between performance, music and language. These ’total art productions’, influenced by Dadaism and analogous to the music theatre productions of Mauricio Kagel, were often composed in the form of sketch-like drafts. Dep