Helmut Lachenmann

Born in 1935 in Stuttgart, he studied piano with Jürgen Uhde and composition and theory with Johann Nepomuk David at the city1s Musikhochschule (1955­58). From 1958 to 1960 he studied composition with Luigi Nono in Venice. He made his compositional debut in 1962 at the Venice Biennale and the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt. In 1965 he worked at the electronic music studio of the University of Ghent. A year later he began an extensive teaching career which comprised of permanent and free-lance positions at numerous music schools and universities in Germany and other countries. He taught at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart (1966­70), the Teachers Training College in Ludwigsburg (1970­76), the University of Basle (1972­73) and the Hannover Musikhochschule (1976­81). Since 1978 he has been an instructor at Darmstadt and since 1981 a Professor of Composition at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule. He also lectured at the Cursos Latinoamericanos de Música Contemporânea in Brazil and the Dominican Republic (1972 and 1982), in Toronto (1982), Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile and Tokyo (1984), Villafranca in Spain (1986), Middelburg in Holland (1987), Blonay in Switzerland (1988), Oslo and Paris (1989), St. Petersburg (1992), Akiyoshidai in Japan and Villa Musica in Mainz (1993), Vienna (1994), Chicago and Urbana (1997), and Viitasaari in Finland (1998).
Lachenmann1s honours include the Bach Prize of Hamburg (1972) and the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung1s Prize (1997). He is also a member of arts academies in Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, Mannheim, and Munich, as well as of the Academy of Arts and Literature in Belgium.
Lachenmann1s discography includes numerous cds and a series of analogue recordings. Some of his pieces (e. g. Pression) have been issued in several editions.

Selected works (since 1980): Ein Kinderspiel for piano (1980), Harmonica for tuba and large orchestra (1981­83), Mouvement (-vor der Erstarrung) for three ad hoc players and small orchestra (1982­84), Ausklang for piano and large orchestra (1984­85), Dritte Stimme zu J. S. Bachs zweistimmiger Invention in D minor bwv 775 for three ad hoc players (1985), Staub for large orchestra (1985­87), Toccatina for violin (1986), Tableau for large orchestra (1988), Guero for piano, new version (1988), String Quartet No. 2:
Reigen seliger Geister (1989), OŠzwei GefühleŠ1, Musik mit Leonardo for two loudspeakers and small orchestra (1992), Air for percussion and large orchestra, new version (1994), The Little Match Girl, stage music, libretto after Hans Christian Andersen, Leonardo da Vinci and Gudrun Ensslin (1990­96), Nun for male choir, flute, trombone and large orchestra (1998­99), Serynade for piano (1998­2000).

Mouvement ­ vor der Erstarrung
Commissioned by the Ensemble InterContemporain, this work arose during 1982­84. It is the music of lifeless movements, of the final convulsions, as it were, whose pseudo-activity itself ­ the remains of empty rhythms (dotted triplets, motor rhythms) ­ already foreshadows the internal torpor that precedes external torpor. (A fantasia, which in
the face of a perceived threat renounces all expressive Utopias, and like
a beetle turning round on its back, still sets in motion acquired mechanisms which run idly, perceiving their anatomy and at the same time their futility, and seeking in this perception a new beginning.)
The phases of the work as staged, from the Oarco-machine1, through Ofluttering organ points1, Otrembling fields1 and Ointerrupted fits of rage1, to the tapped-out Meine Lieber Augustin and other situational variants gaining in independence ­ these are all orientated towards the external mechanical processes with which they are connected, and make us aware of the idle materiality of the means applied (including abstract ones, e.g. respecting intervals), creating a counterpoint to their customary vapid expressivity.
Life in this music is the transition from composition to decomposition. Such decomposition is not staged or celebrated in the form of
a process as a phenomenon of nature, but is repeatedly presaged through the structural breakdown of the means of sound (e.g. through the manipulation of dumping techniques). In spite of the temptation once more to compose with Ountouched1 sound, within the realm of familiar devices, through their alienation: for when an unalienated sound again comes into play, it must then become evident again that it is not the mere breaking of the sound practice of perception within our own selves.
Helmut Lachenmann