Helmut Lachenmann
Helmut Friedrich Lachenmann is a German composer of contemporary classical music, pianist and academic teacher. He taught, among others, at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and the Musikhochschule Hannover.
As a private student of Luigi Nono in Venice, Lachenmann was inspired to reflect social and political contexts, and to include unconventional playing techniques and noises in his compositions. He stopped using electroacoustic music after working at the studio of the University of Ghent in 1965, but turned to what he called musique concrète instrumentale: calling for unusual and extreme sound production from traditional instruments. He created compositions of many genres. In an opera, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern based on Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" and texts by Leonardo da Vinci and Gudrun Ensslin, the performers speak, play instruments, sing and act. Instrumental works include piano pieces, string quartets such as Gran Torso and Reigen seliger Geister, ensemble works such as Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung), and music for large orchestra including Accanto which juxtaposes a solo clarinet to an "orchestra of noise, friction, and unorthodox sound generation". Lachenmann is regarded among the leading German composers of his time.
Life and career
Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart on 27 November 1935; His father was a pastor. After the end of the Second World War, at age eleven, he began to sing with the Stuttgarter Hymnus-Chorknaben. Showing an early aptitude for music, he already composed in his teens. He studied piano with Jürgen Uhde and composition and theory with Johann Nepomuk David at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart from 1955 to 1958. He encountered Luigi Nono at the 1957 Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and became Nono's first private student in Venice from 1958 to 1960, staying in his home. Nono inspired him to reflect social and political contexts, and to use unconventional techniques and noises in his compositions. Lachenmann's works were first performed in public in 1962, Fünf Strophen for nine instruments and the piano piece Echo Andante at the Venice Biennale and the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. In the mid-1960s, Lachenmann was inspired by Olivier Messiaen who taught in Darmstadt. He worked briefly at the electronic music studio at the University of Ghent in 1965, composing his only published tape piece Szenario during that period but thereafter focused almost exclusively on purely instrumental music.Teaching
Lachenmann lectured at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart from 1966. In 1972 he became professor of music at the Pädagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg, also coordinator of the studio for composition of the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and began to give a master class at the Basel Music Academy. In 1976 he was appointed professor of music theory and composition at the Musikhochschule Hannover. He regularly lectured at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse since 1978. From 1981 to 1999 he was professor of composition at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart.He is also noted for his articles, essays and lectures, many of which appear in the collection Musik als existentielle Erfahrung . He published Kunst als vom Geist beherrschte Magie in 2021.
Personal life
Lachenmann is married to the Japanese pianist Yukiko Sugawara.2025
Several events have been staged in 2025 to celebrate Lachenmann's 90th birthday. The Ensemble Modern has collaborated with him, continuing a tradition of three decades, to play his Concertini, composed for the ensemble in 2005, in four major halls in German. At the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, their concert is part of a focus on Lachenmann of several events, including his string quartets. A concert played there and at the Kölner Philharmonie combines his Ausklang for piano and orchestra with Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, played by Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and the SWR Symphonieorchester conducted by François-Xavier Roth.Klangwerkstatt Berlin programmed two chamber music works to mark the occasion, Intérieur I for piano and Salut für Caudwell for two guitarists. A concert of the Goethe-Institut Boston featured his for piano and works by two of his students. Oper Frankfurt features an evening with Lachenmann in conversation with Enno Poppe and a performance of Mouvement (– vor der Erstarrung).
Composition
Lachenmann composed works in many genres, an opera, instrumental works for orchestra and ensembles, chamber music and piano pieces, using traditional instruments but requesting unusual new ways of sound production. Derived from musique concrète, he has referred to his compositions as musique concrète instrumentale, implying a musical language that embraces the entire sound-world made accessible through unconventional playing techniques on traditional instruments. According to the composer, this is musicLachenmann wrote three string quartets; Gran Torso, composed in 1971 and revised in 1976 and 1988, uses the instruments not for carrying harmonic progressions, but as noise sources with strings "scratched, bowed, and struck". It had an impact on performance practices of string quartets. Reigen seliger Geister was written in 1989, and Grido in 2001.
He composed Schwankungen am Rand in 1974/75, set for eight brass instruments, two electric guitars, two pianos, four thunder sheets, and 34 strings, He wrote Accanto in 1975/76, for clarinet, large orchestra and tape, with a part for the clarinet that is reminiscent of a classical concerto but juxtaposed to an "orchestra of noise, friction, and unorthodox sound generation".
Lachenmann composed the ensemble work Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung) in 1982 to 1984 for an ensemble of three ad hoc players and 14 players, described as a piece "in which musical gestures repeatedly fizzle out, break apart and then reassemble. Nothing develops according to conventional logic, everything remains in flux – a music of unrest and resistance to fixed forms". He wrote ... zwei Gefühle..., Musik mit Leonardo in 1992, based on a text by Leonardo da Vinci translated into German, for two speakers and ensemble.
He wrote an opera, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern between 1990 and 1996, based on the fairy-tale by Hans Christian Andersen and texts by Leonardo da Vinci and Gudrun Ensslin. The performers speak, play, sing and move, with their actions becoming part of the expression.
Awards
Lachenmann has received many distinguished awards including:- 1965 Kulturpreis für Musik der Stadt München
- 1972 Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg
- 1990 member of the Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg, also of the academies of Berlin, Mannheim and Munich, the Belgium Akademie der Wissenschaften, Literatur und Künste
- 1997 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize
- 2000 Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg
- 2001 Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin, Verdienstmedaille des Landes Baden-Württemberg, honorary doctorate from the Musikhochschule Hannover
- 2004 Royal Philharmonic Society Award London
- 2008 Leono d'oro of the Venice Biennale for his life's works
- 2008 Berliner Kunstpreis
- 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Contemporary Music category, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London, honorary doctorate of the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden
- 2011 Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 2012 honorary doctorate of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln
- 2012 Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
- 2015 German Music Authors' Prize of the GEMA in the category life's work
- 2016 Hans-Christian-Andersen-Preis
List of works
The chronological list is sourced from Lachenmann's publisher Breitkopf & Härtel and IRCAM:Fünf Variationen über ein Thema von Franz Schubert for piano Rondo for two pianos Souvenir for 41 instruments Due Giri, two studies for orchestra Tripelsextett for 18 instruments Fünf Strophen for 9 instruments Echo Andante for piano Angelion for 16 instruments Wiegenmusik for piano Introversion I for 18 instruments Introversion II for 8 instruments Scenario for tape Streichtrio I for violin, viola and cello Intérieur I for one percussionist Notturno for small orchestra and solo cello Trio fluido for clarinet, viola and percussion Consolations I for 12 voices and percussion temA for flute, voice and cello Consolations II for 16 voices Air, music for large orchestra with percussion solo ' for cello Dal niente for clarinet- '
Films
*Cited sources
- #