About Me

MARK B ANSTENDIG

Mr. Mark Anstendig, President of the Anstendig Institute, is a trained orchestra conductor and professional photographer who, since 1970, has been engaged in research on how we hear and see, on how we are affected by sight, sound (particularly music), and mechanical vibrations, and on problems of natural-sounding sound reproduction.

BACKGROUND IN MUSIC AND SOUND

Mr. Anstendig began studying piano in 1940, at the age of four. In grammar school, he studied piano, tuba, all percussion instruments, voice and elocution. In high school, at the Juilliard Preparatory Division, he studied piano and voice and privately continued his study of percussion, tuba and elocution. For five summers during high school, he participated in the National Music Camp, Interlochen, Michigan. At the age of 13, he won the prize for best conductor in the class, under Orion Dalley, current President of the National Music Camp.

Mr. Anstendig attended The Juilliard School of Music for five years, from 1954 until 1959. He was one of the six to eight conducting majors under the French conductor, Jean Morel. As a secondary major, he studied piano and tuba, under Joseph Bloch and Joseph Novotny. His theoretical studies (literature and materials of music) were under the direction of the composers Vittorio Giannini and Peter Mennin (the late president of Juilliard). He studied ear training under Suzanne Bloch. For four summers while at Juilliard, Mr. Anstendig had scholarships to the Aspen Music Festival, where he was a conducting major under Hans Schwieger and Izler Solomon. In 1958, he studied conducting privately with Ernst Maerzendorfer who was visiting New York City as conductor of the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra.

In 1959, Mr Anstendig was awarded a German Government Grant to study conducting with Professor Maerzendorfer, then with the Berlin Staedtische Oper. This grant was specifically reserved for the Juilliard School of Music as one of ten grants--Dankstipendium--offered to different schools, each the best in its field. In Berlin, under the grant, he studied privately with Professor Maerzendorfer and at the Hochscule fuer Musik with Professors Lindermann and Krauss, in conducting. He also studied theory and ear training at the Hochscule under Professor Friedrich Hartig, one of the pioneer German composers of electronic music. Professor Hartig introduced Mr. Anstendig to the problems of recording and sound reproduction.

From 1959 until 1963, during summers and all vacations, Mr. Anstendig studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Fontainebleau. (During this time, he received a 16,000 franc prize from the Paris Conservatory.) When in Berlin, Mr. Anstendig continued the work of Mademoiselle Boulanger with Professor Hartig.

In 1961, Mr. Anstendig was chosen by audition as one of the few Active Conductors in the Herbert van Karajan conducting practicum. As an exception to their rule, the German Government Grant was extended for a second time in 1962 to allow Mr. Anstendig to remain in these courses.

Since Mr. Anstendig did not have perfect pitch and since a finely tuned ear was demanded by both Jean Morel and Nadia Boulanger, Mr. Anstendig studied ear-training extensively, under the finest ear-training teachers. In addition to attending their regular classes, he studied privately for four years with Suzanne Bloch, who organized the ear-training department at Juilliard for William Schumann, and also for four years with Professor Hartig, who taught the ear-training classes for conductors and composers at the Hochschule. While working with Nadia Boulanger he also studied ear-training privately with her assistant, Professor Annette Dieudonne. While at Juilliard, he studied daily for five years with Michael Charry, a Juilliard colleague who is now an active conductor.

BACKGROUND IN PHOTOGRAPHY AND OPTICS

While in Berlin, where he lived for nine years, Mr. Anstendig's professional activities changed direction from music to photo-optics. For ten years (1960 to 1970), he was the associate of Mr. Joseph Dahl, the inventor of the Messraster focusing device. From Mr. Dahl, and from Professor Hayek-Halke, the photography teacher at the Technische Hochscule, Mr. Anstendig learned photography, photo-optics and photo-graphics (Hayek-Halke's field was Photo-Grafic). Under Mr. Dahl's supervision, Mr. Anstendig made the photo-experiments that demonstrated the results of absolute focus in all aspects of photography.

In the efforts to make known the possibility of exact focus, Mr. Anstendig was entrusted with representing Mr. Dahl in his dealings with the press, the public, and the industry. Among other things, he exhibited the "State of the Art” of focusing optical lenses on the stand of Arnold and Richter (makers of the prestigious Arriflex movie cameras) at the Fotokina exposition in Cologne, and in the Berlin Pavilion of the New York World's Fair, for which he was also commissioned to make photographs of Berlin landmarks demonstrating the effects of focal-point-exact focus with all types of lenses, including extreme focal-lengths up to 2000 mm, which were supplied by the Astro-Gesellschaft of Berlin. Articles about exact focusing by Mr. Anstendig have appeared in newspapers and magazines, including Der Tagesspiegel and Spiegelreflex Praxis in Germany and U.S. Camera in America.

Mr. Anstendig's photographic activities also included one-man exhibits, fashion and advertising, theater photography, and all the Berlin work for Paris Match, Ouick, Revue and the U.S. agency PIX, Inc.

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND

From 1965 until 1969, Mr. Anstendig was privately taken through the stages of the original Autogenic Training by Dr. Hans Citron, an early collaborator with Carl Jung and head of Berlin's leading neurological clinic. Autogenic Training is one of the first scientifically researched methods of stress control and personal discipline.

For the last 14 years, Mr. Anstendig has combined his scientific experience in the fields of sound, photo-optics and autogenic training in the work now continued by The Anstendig Institute. Since the organization of the Institute in 1978, Mr. Anstendig has completed his work in achieving natural-sounding sound reproduction through a use of sophisticated equalization techniques. He has also written and compiled the necessary materials to make known the effects of focal-point-exact focus.