Helmut
Lachenmann is Germany's pre-eminent composer, and is in the United
States this spring at the invitation of Harvard University where he is
a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music. He is also traveling
around the world, making appearances on behalf of his music in Los
Angeles, at Oberlin, and in Sweden, along with his visit to New York.
Helmut Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart in 1935 and studied there at
the Musikhochschule between 1955 and 1958. His interest in the current
avant garde was reinforced by his first visit to the Darmstadt
Ferienkurse in 1957, where he met Luigi Nono, with whom he studied in
Venice between 1958 and 1960. Stockhausen was added to the pedagogical
mix three years later, when Lachenmann attended the Cologne New Music
Course.
In 1966 Lachenmann embarked on his own academic career, lecturing first
on music theory at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule and subsequently
teaching at the Ludwigsburg Pädagogische Hochschule and the
Musikhochschule in Hanover, before returning to live in Stuttgart in
1981.
When Lachenmann's music began to be performed in the early 1960s, first
at the Venice Biennale and at Darmstadt, his works appeared to fit
comfortably into the aesthetic of the post-Webern serialists, in
particular revealing the influence of Nono's pointilliste techniques.
From the late 1960s onward, however, Lachenmann began to look for a new
approach to the problems of musical language and syntax. In a series of
works, beginning with temA (1968), Pression for solo cello (1969), and
Air for percussionist and orchestra (1969), he started to exploit a
new, alienated sound world that treated instrumental technique in a
radically unconventional way.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, with scores such as the string quartet
Gran Torso (1972), Salut für Caldwell for two guitars (1977), and
Mouvement (vor der Estarrung) for chamber orchestra (1984), Lachenmann
continued to question many of the basic assumptions about the function
of music and the expectations made of it, backing up his musical
achievement with the vigorous polemics of his writing and lectures.
Always, though, the pressure of tradition remained a background
presence in his explorations, sometimes even emerging as audible points
of reference in his scores. In his most recent pieces, Lachenmann has
begun to pick up recognizable elements of a post-serial language which
reveal the tradition from which his music evolved.
Since 1983, Lachenmann has been a featured composer at numerous
festivals and concert series in Germany and abroad, including the
Holland Festival in Amsterdam, Ars Musica in Brussels, Musik der Zeit
in Cologne, Festival d'Automne in Paris, Wien Modern in Vienna, and
Tage für neue Musik in Stuttgart and Zurich. He is a member of the
Akademie der Künste in Berlin and of the Akademien der Künste
in Hamburg, Leipzig, Mannheim, and Munich.
His music is published by Breitkopf & Härtel.
