“I need to excite and be excited,” mentioned Wolfgang Rihm; he died on the age of 72

German composer Wolfgang Rihm died yesterday on the age of 72 in a hospital in his native Karlsruhe, after an extended sickness.

He is among the most vital authors of current many years. He wrote greater than 500 works in all genres, together with quite a few operas, of which probably the most notable is The conquest of Mexico and had a predilection for the texts of James Joyce, Antonin Artaud, Paul Celan and Friedrich Nietzsche. His central contribution was the type he referred to as New Simplicity, whose vectors are subjectivity and direct language.

Wolfgang Rihm was a pupil of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and his writing fashions have been Hans Werner Henze, Morton Feldman and Luigi Nono, all authors whose originality, forcefulness and depth of favor describe the language that Rihm developed.

Though the composer’s sickness was well-known, the shock over his dying unfold on Saturday, when the primary musical establishments of Europe spoke out, such because the Berlin Philharmonic, with which he maintained an in depth collaboration and of which he was composer in residence between 1997 and 1998, and was scheduled once more for the 2024-2025 cycle. His compositions continuously figured within the Berlin Philharmonic’s star applications.

Born in Karlsruhe on 13 March 1952, he premiered his first work in 1974, which instantly catapulted him to ever-growing fame. His early stylistic traits mixed the emotional whirlwinds of Gustav Mahler’s music with the cerebral rigour of Arnold Schoenberg’s expressionist interval. He stretched that stylistic arc from the late works of Beethoven to the creations of the opposite two members, with Schoenberg, of the Second Viennese Faculty: Anton Webern and Alban Berg.

I need to excite and be excitedRihm preached. The traits of his works thus led the listener because of the sturdy energetic and sensual cost of his writing.

There are three distinct intervals in Wolfgang Rihm’s lengthy manufacturing; the primary takes Beethoven as its place to begin, an writer to whom he would flip in lots of episodes of his creations, after which, within the following compositional interval, he strikes in direction of Berg and Webern, and is when he begins to outline the New Simplicity.

His third interval started in 1980, in direction of an much more laconic expression, by which sounds are expressed as an indication, as a brand new evaluation of his musical semantics, and later these components seem in his works as opposition of opposites and as thesis/antithesis in direction of a synthesis, whereas granting instrumentalists and singers new virtuoso potentialities.

He wrote three symphonies, a lot music for theatre and a substantial variety of operas, such because the one already talked about devoted to Mexico, with texts by Artaud and Octavio Paz. Certainly one of his most up-to-date masterpieces is his Concerto for French Horn.

His opera The Extermination of Mexico (The Conquest of Mexico) It premiered in 2001 in a manufacturing by Nicolas Brieger; that is what he advised Barbara Rüder for the specialist journal Scherzo:

“The creation of The conquest of Mexico, The manufacturing in Hamburg was very spectacular, though (or exactly as a result of) it was very summary and indifferent. It performed loads with colors, which aroused plenty of feelings. Nicolas Brieger interpreted the theme otherwise in his manufacturing in Frankfurt. For those who evaluate my musical theatre works, they at all times appear to make use of a unique sound language, acceptable to the respective plot. You’ll be able to’t deal with all themes with the identical musical language. This by no means works, beginning with the dramaturgical query. There’s a particular tone of the topic. The grasp singers, which differs from the tone of Tristan. And the cosmos of The sundown of the gods It incorporates a unique sound world than the one it presides over Parsifal”.

With the sound world of a Jacob Lenz or Hamletmaschine, I’d by no means have been capable of compose The enclosure. Right here we’re coping with fully various things: particular stimuli, the sport between need and rejection. The enclosure musically describes a totally intimate motion. Inside feelings are uncovered and expressed musically. The wind machine, which very discreetly describes the flight of the eagle, seems just for a couple of moments, as an intrusion into the sound, to mirror the motion of the wings of the emblematic hen.

Wolfgang Rihm’s music is a fountain of poetry, photos, states of consciousness and the realm of mythology. Right this moment he’s already an immortal writer.