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Wolfgang Rihm

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Wolfgang Rihm
Rihm at the Kölner Philharmonie in 2007
Born(1952-03-13)13 March 1952
Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, West Germany
Died27 July 2024(2024-07-27) (aged 72)
Ettlingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
EducationHochschule für Musik Karlsruhe
Occupations
  • Composer
  • academic teacher
OrganizationsHochschule für Musik Karlsruhe
Known for
WorksList of compositions
Awards

Wolfgang Rihm[needs IPA] (13 March 1952 – 27 July 2024) was a German composer of contemporary classical music and an academic teacher. One of the most influential post-war European composers, Rihm was among the leading German composers of his time.[1][2] He wrote more than 500 works and was particularly known for his operas.[2] When his opera Dionysos was premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 2010, it was voted World Premiere of the Year by Opernwelt. While Rihm's earlier music was associated with the New Simplicity movement, The Guardian described his later work as comprising a "bewildering variety of styles and sounds".

Rihm was the musical director of the Institute of New Music and Media at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe and was a composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival. He was honoured as an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2001 and received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2003.

Biography

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Rihm was born in Karlsruhe on 13 March 1952.[3][4][5] He began to compose at age eleven[6] and wrote a plan for a mass the following year; he was successful with a cello sonata at the Jugend musiziert competition at age 16[5] and wrote his second string quartet at age 18. He pursued university-level study in music theory and composition at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe with Eugen Werner Velte [de][4] while still in secondary school;[6] around the time of his his secondary school graduation in 1972, he was also completing his undergraduate final examinations. He studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne from 1972 to 1973).[5] From 1973 to 1976 Rihm studied composition with Klaus Huber at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg,[5][7] and there also musicology with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht.[5] Among his other teachers were Wolfgang Fortner and Humphrey Searle.[8]

The premiere of Rihm's early work Morphonie at the 1974 Donaueschingen Festival launched his career in the European new music scene.[9] It was regarded as "indecently individual" ("unanständig individuell"). too wild and too beautiful. Rihm pursued a freedom of expression in opposition to limitations by sets of rules.[5] He combined contemporary techniques with the emotional volatility of Mahler and of Schoenberg's early expressionist period, which was regarded by many as a revolt against the avant-garde generation of Boulez, Stockhausen and others.[5] Favourable reviews of his early work led to a large number of commissions in the following years. His chamber opera Jakob Lenz was premiered in 1977, exploring the inner conflict of a poet's soul rather than following a linear narrative.[4]

In 1978 Rihm became a lecturer at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.[3] From 1985 on, Rihm was a composition professor at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe.[6][7] He succeeded his teacher Velte, and followed his approach to educate in open dialogue with the individual student, inviting to freedom of thinking.[5] His students included Rebecca Saunders, David Philip Hefti, Márton Illés, and Jörg Widmann.[5] Rihm held a seminar for composition in Lucerne from 2016.[5]

His opera Die Hamletmaschine, premiered at the Nationaltheater Mannheim in 1987, was described in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera as following Stockhausen, as "a total theatre of sound and nonnarrative, ritualistic drama".[10] Rihm's work continued in an expressionist vein, though the influence of Luigi Nono, Helmut Lachenmann, and Morton Feldman, amongst others, affected his style significantly. He was an extremely prolific composer, with hundreds of completed scores, a large portion of which have not been commercially recorded. Rihm did not always regard finishing a work as the last word on that subject—for example in 1992 he completely rewrote his orchestral work Ins Offene... (1990), then used it as the basis for his piano concerto Sphere (1994), and then recast the piano part of Sphere to create a solo piano work Nachstudie (1994). At the invitation of Walter Fink, Rihm was the fifth composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 1995.[11] In 1995 he contributed Communio (Lux aeterna) to the Requiem of Reconciliation.[12]

Rihm received an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin in 1998.[13] In 2002 Rihm produced Sphäre nach Studie (a new version of Nachstudie, for harp, two double basses, piano, and percussion), as well as a new version of Sphere called Sphäre um Sphäre for two pianos and chamber ensemble. Other important works include thirteen string quartets, the operas Die Hamletmaschine (1983–1986, text by Heiner Müller), and Die Eroberung von Mexico (1987–1991, based on texts by Antonin Artaud), over twenty song-cycles, the oratorio Deus Passus (1999–2000) commissioned by the Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart, the chamber orchestra piece Jagden und Formen (1995–2001), more than thirty concertos, and a series of related orchestral works bearing the general title Vers une symphonie fleuve ("Towards a river symphony "). The New York Philharmonic premiered Rihm's 2004 commission Two Other Movements. In 2008 Rihm composed KOLONOS | 2 Fragments by Hölderlin after Sophokles for orchestra and countertenor, premiered in Bad Wildbad with the countertenor Matthias Rexroth.[14][15] In 2003 Rihm received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize.[16] His 2010 revised version of his Gegenstück (2006), for bass saxophone, percussion, and piano, was premiered by Trio Accanto on 16 August 2010 to celebrate the 80th birthday of Walter Fink.[17]

In March 2010, the BBC Symphony Orchestra featured the music of Rihm in one of their 'total immersion' weekends at the Barbican Centre, London. Recordings from that weekend were used for three Hear and Now programmes on BBC Radio 3 dedicated to his work.[18] On 27 July 2010, Rihm's opera Dionysos, based on Nietzsche's late cycle of poems Dionysian-Dithyrambs, had its world premiere at the Salzburg Festival, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, and designed by Jonathan Meese.[19][20] This performance was voted World Premiere of the Year (Uraufführung des Jahres) for 2010/2011 by Opernwelt magazine.[21] Anne-Sophie Mutter premiered his violin concerto Lichtes Spiel (Light Games) in Avery Fisher Hall with the New York Philharmonic on 18 November 2010.[22] In 2020, Concerto en Sol paints a brilliantly bright portrait of cellist and dedicatee Sol Gabetta.[23]

Rihm died in Ettlingen on 27 July 2024, at the age of 72,[4][5][6] after a struggle with cancer for two decades.[4]

Awards

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Honorary doctorates

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Memberships

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Notable students

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For Rihm's notable students, see List of music students by teacher: R to S § Wolfgang Rihm.

Compositions

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Main article: List of compositions by Wolfgang Rihm

Rihm composed more than 500 works and was particularly known for his operas.[32] 460 of his works were published, and manuscripts are held by the Paul Sacher Foundation.[5]

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, his name was associated with the movement called New Simplicity.[33]The Guardian described his later work as comprising a "bewildering variety of styles and sounds".[34] Among his last works are a Stabat Mater and a song cycle, Terzinen an den Tod.[5]

Writings

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  • Rihm, Wolfgang (1997). Mosch, Ulrich (ed.). Ausgesprochen: Schriften und Gespräche (in German). Winterthur: Amadeus Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7957-0395-0.
  • Rihm, Wolfgang; Brinkmann, Reinhold (2001). Musik Nachdenken: Reinhold Brinkmann und Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch (in German). Regensburg: ConBrio Verlag. ISBN 978-3-932581-47-2.
  • Rihm, Wolfgang (2002). Mosch, Ulrich (ed.). Offene Enden: Denkbewegungen um und durch Musik (in German). Munich: Hanser Verlag. ISBN 978-3-446-20142-2.

References

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  1. ^ Williams 2013, p. 1.
  2. ^ a b Häusler 2005.
  3. ^ a b Fulker 2017.
  4. ^ a b c d e Brachmann 2024.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Büning 2024.
  6. ^ a b c d Leyrer 2024.
  7. ^ a b Hagedorn 2012.
  8. ^ Angermann 2016.
  9. ^ Büning 2012.
  10. ^ Warrack, John and West, Ewan (eds.) (1996). "Rihm, Wolfgang", Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, p. 432. Oxford University Press.
  11. ^ Universal Edition 2024.
  12. ^ Rihm, Wolfgang (18 August 1995). "Communio (Lux aeterna)". ircam.fr. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 27 July 2024.
  13. ^ Dümling, Albrecht (23 November 1998). "Der Ort der Musik". Der Tagesspiegel (in German). Berlin. Archived from the original on 24 October 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2019.
  14. ^ "Wolfgang Rihm: KOLONOS". universaledition.com. Vienna: Universal Edition. 2008. Archived from the original on 14 September 2023. Retrieved 14 February 2020.
  15. ^ Wilske, Hermann (30 September 2008). "Rossini und Rihm in Wildbad". neue musikzeitung. Regensburg. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 3 September 2017.
  16. ^ Schwenger, Dietmar (31 January 2003). "Wolfgang Rihm erhält Ernst von Siemens Musikpreis". Musikwoche (in German). Munich. Archived from the original on 24 October 2019. Retrieved 24 October 2019.
  17. ^ Hauff, Andreas (8 September 2010). "Ehrungen und Raritäten. Die Endphase beim Rheingau-Musik-Festival". nmz online (in German). neue musikzeitung. Archived from the original on 27 September 2010. Retrieved 15 July 2017.
  18. ^ Hear and Now: Wolfgang Rihm: Episode 1 Archived 17 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine BBC, March 2010
  19. ^ Büning 2010.
  20. ^ Tommasini, Anthony (1 August 2010). "A Nietzschean Plunge Into Sensual Labyrinths". The New York Times. New York City. Archived from the original on 14 September 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2019.
  21. ^ "Das Herz der Opernwelt schlägt nun in Brüssel". Badische Zeitung (in German). Freiburg. 29 October 2011. Archived from the original on 2 September 2017. Retrieved 2 September 2017.
  22. ^ Vivien Schweitzer (19 November 2010). "Pairing Wolfgangs From Two Eras". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 16 February 2023. Retrieved 23 August 2011.
  23. ^ Schacher, Thomas (3 February 2020). "Wo viel Licht ist, sollte auch ein bisschen Schatten sein". Neue Zürcher Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 30 July 2024.
  24. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Karlsruhe 2024.
  25. ^ "Pour le Mérite: Wolfgang Rihm" (PDF). www.orden-pourlemerite.de. 2018. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 July 2020. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  26. ^ "Bayerischer Maximiliansorden für Jens Malte Fischer und Wolfgang Rihm". Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz (in German). 5 December 2014. Archived from the original on 23 September 2020. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  27. ^ "Wolfgang Rihm erhält den Robert Schumann-Preis für Dichtung und Musik". Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz (in German). 28 October 2014. Archived from the original on 28 July 2024. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  28. ^ Neuhoff, Bernhard (28 February 2019). "Wolfgang Rihm erhält Deutschen Musikautorenpreis: "Meine Musik ist nicht ängstlich"". br-klassik (in German). Archived from the original on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  29. ^ a b c d "Rihm". Akademie der Künste, Berlin (in German). Archived from the original on 16 July 2020. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  30. ^ "Wolfgang Rihm". Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg (in German). 3 October 2021. Archived from the original on 15 January 2022. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
  31. ^ "Members". European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Archived from the original on 8 March 2022. Retrieved 16 July 2020.
  32. ^ Mattenberger 2019.
  33. ^ Heidenreich 2000.
  34. ^ Service 2012.

Cited sources

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Obituaries

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Further reading

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