Wolfgang Rihm

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Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox classical composer

Wolfgang Michael Rihm (Template:IPA; 13 March 1952 – 27 July 2024) was a German composer of contemporary classical music and an academic teacher based in Karlsruhe. He was an influential post-war European composer, as "one of the most original and independent musical voices" there,Template:Sfn composing over 500 works including several operas.

The premiere of Rihm's Morphonie for orchestra at the 1974 Donaueschingen Festival won him international recognition. Rihm pursued a freedom of expression, combining avant-garde techniques with emotional individuality. His chamber opera Jakob Lenz was premiered in 1977, exploring the inner conflict of a poet's soul. The premiere of his opera Oedipus at Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1987 was broadcast live and recorded as DVD. When his opera Dionysos was first performed at the Salzburg Festival in 2010, it was voted World Premiere of the Year by Opernwelt. He was commissioned to compose a work for the opening of the Elbphilharmonie, and created the song cycle Reminiszenz which was premiered in 2017.

Rihm was professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe from 1985, with students including Rebecca Saunders and Jörg Widmann. He was composer in residence for the BBC, 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

Youth, early work and studies

Rihm was born in Karlsruhe on 13 March 1952.Template:Sfnm His parents were Julius Rihm, a treasurer for the Red Cross, and Margarete, a homemaker.Template:Sfn He grew up with a sister, Monika.Template:Sfn The boy began to compose at age eleven,Template:Sfn and wrote a plan for a mass the following year.Template:Sfn He was an enthusiastic choir singer, and he often improvised on the organ, creating "sound orgies" in the style of French organists.Template:Sfn His cello sonata earned him a prize at the Jugend musiziert competition at age 16. He wrote his second string quartet at age 18.Template:Sfn

At the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, he studied music theory and composition with Template:Ill while still attending secondary school.Template:Sfnm He took his undergraduate final exams in 1972, when he graduated from secondary school. He attended the Darmstädter Ferienkurse from 1970 and studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne from 1972 to 1973.Template:Sfn Rihm then enrolled at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg from 1973 to 1976, studying composition with Klaus HuberTemplate:Sfnm and musicology with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht.Template:Sfn His other teachers included Wolfgang Fortner and Humphrey Searle.Template:Sfn

Initial successes and teaching

The premiere of Rihm's Morphonie at the 1974 Donaueschingen Festival launched his career in the European new music scene.Template:Sfn It was regarded as "indecently individual" (Template:Lang). Rihm pursued expressive freedom in clear opposition to established norms.Template:Sfn He combined the techniques of then-contemporary classical music with the emotional volatility of Gustav Mahler and the musical expressionism of Arnold Schönberg. Rihm later cited Claude Debussy, saying that Debussy and the expressionist Schönberg combined "minimal formalism and system with the maximal expression".Template:Sfn Many regarded this as a revolt against the early Darmstadt School generation of Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.Template:Sfnm

His Dis-Kontur (1974) has been described as "rusty and brutal",Template:Sfn "channeling primal acoustic violence".Template:Sfn When Sub-Kontur (1975) was premiered in Donaueschingen (1976), the audience complained about Rihm's "brutal noise". Some critics called it a "fecal piece".Template:Sfn But positive reviews of his early work led to many commissions in the following years. His chamber opera Jakob Lenz premiered in 1977; it explores the inner conflict of a poet's soul without following a linear narrative.Template:Sfn

In 1978 he became a lecturer at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.Template:Sfn From 1985 onward, he was a composition professor at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe,Template:Sfnm succeeding his teacher Velte.Template:Sfn Rihm followed Velte's approach of educating in open dialogue with the individual student, cultivating freedom of thought.Template:Sfn

His opera Die Hamletmaschine, composed between 1983 and 1986 based on Heiner Müller's play, Hamletmachine, premiered at the Nationaltheater Mannheim in 1987. It was described as a "total theatre of sound" and a "non-narrative, ritualistic drama" reminiscent of Stockhausen.<ref>Warrack, John and West, Ewan (eds.) (1996). "Rihm, Wolfgang", Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, p. 432. Oxford University Press.</ref> He based the libretto for his opera Oedipus, commissioned by Deutsche Oper Berlin on the Greek tragedy by Sophocles and related texts by Friedrich Nietzsche and Heiner Müller.Template:Sfn The premiere in October 1987, directed by Götz Friedrich, was broadcast live and recorded as DVD.Template:Sfn Rihm's work continued in an expressionist vein. However, the influence of Luigi Nono, Helmut Lachenmann, and Morton Feldman, amongst others, affected his style significantly.Template:Sfn<ref name="Ircam" />

International successes and honours

At Walter Fink's invitation, Rihm was the fifth composer featured in the annual Komponistenporträt of the Rheingau Musik Festival in 1995.Template:Sfn The same year, he contributed Communio (Lux aeterna) to the Requiem of Reconciliation.<ref name="x342">Template:Cite web</ref> The Free University of Berlin awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1998.Template:Sfn

In 2003 Rihm received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, as Template:Quote The New York Philharmonic commissioned and premiered his Two Other Movements in 2004. Matthias Rexroth sang his Kolonos | 2 Fragments by Hölderlin after Sophokles for countertenor and small orchestra in 2008 at the Bad Wildbad Kurhaus, with Antonino Fogliani conducting the Virtuosi Brunensis.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Sfn

In 2009 Rihm's opera Proserpina<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> premiered successfully at the Schwetzingen Festival.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In March 2010, the BBC Symphony Orchestra featured Rihm's music in one of their 'total immersion' weekends at the Barbican Centre in London. Using recordings from that weekend, BBC Radio 3 dedicated three Hear and Now programmed to his work.<ref>Hear and Now: Wolfgang Rihm: Episode 1 Template:Webarchive BBC, March 2010</ref>

File:Austria august2010 0128.jpg
Entrance to the premiere of Dionysos at the Salzburg Festival 2010

On 27 July 2010, his opera Dionysos (on Nietzsche's late cycle of poems Dionysian-Dithyrambs) was premiered at the Salzburg Festival by Ingo Metzmacher with sets designed by Jonathan Meese.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In Opernwelt magazine, this performance was voted by critics World Premiere of the Year.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The Trio Accanto premiered his Gegenstück (2006, Template:Abbreviation 2010) for bass saxophone, percussion, and piano on 16 August 2010, celebrating the 80th birthday of Walter Fink.Template:Sfn Anne-Sophie Mutter and the New York Philharmonic premiered his violin concerto Lichtes Spiel (Light Games) in Avery Fisher Hall on 18 November 2010.Template:Sfn

In 2016 Rihm became artistic director of the Lucerne Festival Academy where young musicians, directors and composers are trained in music of the 20th and 21st centuries.Template:Sfn On 11 January 2017, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg was inaugurated with the premiere of Reminiszenz, a song cycle for tenor and large orchestra that he composed on a commission for the occasion.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Rihm wrote and dedicated Concerto en Sol to cellist Sol Gabetta in 2020. It was reviewed as a radiant musical portrait.Template:Sfn Among his last works were a Stabat Mater and the song cycle Terzinen an den Tod.Template:Sfn

Personal life

Rihm lived in Karlsruhe and Berlin.Template:Sfn He was married to Johanna Feldhausen-Rihm; they had a son, Sebastian. The marriage ended in divorce. He married Uta Frank in 1992; they had a daughter, Katja. They separated, and Uta Frank died in 2013. He married Verena Weber in 2017.Template:Sfn

His friend, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, said in an interview: "In a certain way he was an anti-ascetic character", taking pleasure in living. About cooking for friends, Sloterdijk said: "There was always a certain level of form and a certain inventive height. He never just cooked a simple recipe. He was always improvising and inventing."Template:Sfn

Rihm was diagnosed with cancer in 2017. He said in an interview in 2020: "Of course, like every person, I'm physically approaching the end. But I'm not at the end of my creative energy."Template:Sfn

Rihm died in a hospiceTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn in Ettlingen on 27 July 2024, at the age of 72, after battling cancer for many years.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Compositions and style

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Rihm composed more than 500 worksTemplate:Sfn and was particularly known for his operas.Template:Sfn 460 of his works were published, and manuscripts are held by the Paul Sacher Foundation.Template:Sfn Despite this productivity, he said he never found composing easy; rather, he was dedicated to his work.Template:Sfn Tom Service described Rihm's music as comprising a "bewildering variety of styles and sounds" in The Guardian.Template:Sfn Jeffrey Arlo Brown described it as a "forceful, shape-shifting" Template:Lang in The New York Times.Template:Sfn

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, his name was associated with the movement called New Simplicity Template:Lang, a term popularized by Aribert Reimann.Template:Sfnm Writing in 1977, Rihm suggested instead New Multiplicity Template:Lang or New Clarity Template:Lang, since he felt his music was not well described as simple.Template:Sfn His music was sometimes also described as Neoromantic.Template:Sfn

In the 1980s, Rihm's music was newly described as representing "New Subjectivity" or Neo-expressionism, with its "free figuration, emotional pathos, ... and ... clear individualization", sometimes in relation to contemporaneous art schools like Junge Wilde (also known as Template:Lang) in Germany or the Transavantgarde (also known as Template:Lang or Template:Lang) in Italy.Template:Sfn However, Rihm did not seek to belong to any school and said that such things "must not be looked for" in his music.Template:Sfn Nonetheless, Yves Knockaert considered that there were important philosophical and stylistic affinities, especially between Rihm's music and the work of Georg Baselitz.Template:Sfn

Rihm once said he sought "a new kind of coherence, no longer only restricted to process". He experimented with "loosening coherence" in his "Notebook Compositions": the Musik for drei Streicher (1977), Zwischenblick: "Selbsthenker!" for string quartet (1983–1984), and the String Quartets Nos. 5 and 6. In these, he wrote the music with little, if any, precomposition or revision. Yves Knockaert compared his manner of writing here to the expressionist, but not the dodecaphonic, Schönberg.Template:Sfn

Rihm wrote his own libretti, based on the writings of Sophocles, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Artaud and Müller.<ref name="Ircam">Template:BrahmsOnline</ref> Rihm grouped particular themes in cycles, like Chiffre, Vers une symphonie-fleuve, Séraphin, and Über die Linie.<ref name="Ircam" /> He also experimented with writing musical fragments, like Alexanderlieder, Lenz-Fragmente, and Fetzen (Scraps).Template:Sfn

Reception

According to Bachtrack, Rihm was in 2022 in the Top 10 of the most performed living contemporary composers in the world.<ref name="Bachtrack-2023">Template:Cite web</ref> He was acclaimed for his independence and continuous self-invention, which Brown said "reinvigorated" contemporary classical music.Template:Sfn

Legacy

File:Landappbw 830407 1819 Forum Wolfgang -Rihm-Forum Karlsruhe.jpg
Wolfgang-Rihm-Forum

In 2013, the Wolfgang-Rihm-Forum was opened at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, a multi-functional auditorium with 400 seats.<ref name="y043">Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Clear

Awards

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Honorary doctorates

Memberships

Students

Template:For LMST Rihm's students included Rebecca Saunders,Template:Sfn David Philip Hefti, Márton Illés, and Jörg Widmann.Template:Sfn Saunders said about his teaching that "he fought steadily and consequently against polemic thinking, and he encouraged a decidedly personal aesthetic unique to each of his many students."Template:Sfn Widmann characterized Rihm as "sometimes manic-obsessive and always extreme".<ref name="k539">Template:Cite web</ref>

Writings

Notes

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References

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Cited sources

Obituaries

Bibliography

Further reading

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