Wolfgang Fortner


Wolfgang Fortner was a German composer, academic composition teacher and conductor.

Life and career

Fortner was born in Leipzig. From his parents, who were both singers, Fortner very early on had intense contact with music.
In 1927 he began his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory and at University of Leipzig, . While still a student, two of his early compositions were publicly performed: Die vier marianischen Antiphonen at the Lower Rhineland Festival in Düsseldorf in 1928, and his First String Quartet in Königsberg in 1930.
In 1931 he completed his studies with the State Exam for a high teaching office, after he accepted a lectureship in music theory at the Hochschule für Kirchenmusik Heidelberg. There his music was attacked as Cultural Bolshevism. In 1935 and 1936 Fortner created the Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra with which he supported New Music and undertook expanded concert journeys for "armed forces support", from Scandinavia to the Netherlands to Greece. In the same year he also took over the directorship of the orchestra of the Hitler Youth of Heidelberg, a string orchestra, formed from juvenile laymen, whose directorship changed in 1939 again. In 1940, he was drafted into the army as a medical soldier.
After the end of the war, Fortner underwent Denazification and was found not affected by professional disqualification. Fortner moved to the Heidelberg Kohlhof and there a group of very young students formed around him, who showed interest in the modern music of 1933. In 1946 he joined the circle of the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, and taught within that framework. In 1954 he became a professor for composition at the North-West German Music Academy in Detmold, then from 1957 up to his retirement in 1973 taught in Freiburg. After the death of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, in 1964 he took up the leadership of the musica viva concerts, which he directed until 1978.
From 1957 to 1971, he was President of the German section of the ISCM. In 1975, he was named President of the Dramatists' Union.
Together with eleven other composer-friends, he was asked by Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, on the occasion of the 70th birthday of the Swiss composer and art patron Paul Sacher, to write a composition for cello solo using the notes of his name. Wolfgang Fortner created the theme and three variations Zum spielen für den 70. Geburtstag, Thema und Variationen für Violoncello Solo. These compositions were partially presented in Zurich on 2 May 1976.
Wolfgang Fortner died in Heidelberg in 1987, aged 79.

Awards

Students

Among his students were composers, Friedhelm Döhl, Hans Ulrich Engelmann,, Peter Förtig,, Hans Werner Henze, Carl Johnson, Milko Kelemen, Rudolf Kelterborn, Karl Michael Komma,,,, Roland Moser, Diether de la Motte, Nam June Paik, Graciela Paraskevaidis, Robert HP Platz, Rolf Riehm, Wolfgang Rihm,, Mauricio Rosenmann,, Manfred Stahnke, Karen Tarlow, Peter Westergaard, Hans Zender, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Heinz Werner Zimmermann, conductors and Arturo Tamayo and translator Hans Wollschläger.

Works

Operas

Bluthochzeit. Lyric Tragedy in 2 Acts/7 Pictures, libretto by the composer after the drama Bodas de sangre by Federico García Lorca in Enrique Beck's German translation Corinna. Opera buffa in one act after a comedy by Gérard de Nerval In seinem Garten liebt Don Perlimplin Belisa. Opera after Federico García Lorca Elisabeth Tudor. Opera in three acts after a libretto by Mattias Braun at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with Helga Dernesch and William B. MurrayThat time. Scenic cantata after Samuel Beckett

Ballets

Die weiße Rose, after Oscar Wilde Die Witwe von Ephesus, pantomime after a scenario of PetroniusCarmen , music for a ballet by John Cranko

Other works