As a private student of Luigi Nono in Venice, Lachenmann was inspired to reflect social and political contexts, and to include unconventional playing techniques and noises in his compositions. He stopped using electroacoustic music after working at the studio of the University of Ghent in 1965, but turned to what he called musique concrète instrumentale: calling for unusual and extreme sound production from traditional instruments. He created compositions of many genres. In an opera, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern based on Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" and texts by Leonardo da Vinci and Gudrun Ensslin, the performers speak, play instruments, sing and act. Instrumental works include piano pieces, string quartets such as Gran Torso and Reigen seliger Geister, ensemble works such as Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung), and music for large orchestra including Accanto which juxtaposes a solo clarinet to an "orchestra of noise, friction, and unorthodox sound generation". Lachenmann is regarded among the leading German composers of his time.[1]
Life and career
Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart on 27 November 1935;[2][3][4] His father was a pastor.[5] After the end of the Second World War, at age eleven, he began to sing with the Stuttgarter Hymnus-Chorknaben. Showing an early aptitude for music, he already composed in his teens. He studied piano with Jürgen Uhde and composition and theory with Johann Nepomuk David at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart from 1955 to 1958.[4][6] He encountered Luigi Nono at the 1957 Darmstädter Ferienkurse,[7] and became Nono's first private student in Venice from 1958 to 1960,[4] staying in his home.[2] Nono inspired him to reflect social and political contexts, and to use unconventional techniques and noises in his compositions.[7] Lachenmann's works were first performed in public in 1962, Fünf Strophen for nine instruments and the piano piece Echo Andante at the Venice Biennale and the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.[8] In the mid-1960s, Lachenmann was inspired by Olivier Messiaen who taught in Darmstadt.[7] He worked briefly at the electronic music studio at the University of Ghent in 1965,[4] composing his only published tape piece Szenario during that period but thereafter focused almost exclusively on purely instrumental music.[8]
Teaching
Lachenmann lectured at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart from 1966. In 1972 he became professor of music at the Pädagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg, also coordinator of the studio for composition of the Darmstädter Ferienkurse, and began to give a master class at the Basel Music Academy. In 1976 he was appointed professor of music theory and composition at the Musikhochschule Hannover. He regularly lectured at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse since 1978. From 1981 to 1999 he was professor of composition at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart.[2][4]
He is also noted for his articles, essays and lectures, many of which appear in the collection Musik als existentielle Erfahrung (Music as Existential Experience) (Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden, 1996).[4][9] He published Kunst als vom Geist beherrschte Magie (Art as Magic Mastered by the Spirit) in 2021.[7][10]
Several events have been staged in 2025 to celebrate Lachenmann's 90th birthday. The Ensemble Modern has collaborated with him, continuing a tradition of three decades, to play his Concertini,[12] composed for the ensemble in 2005,[13] in four major halls in German.[12] At the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, their concert is part of a focus on Lachenmann of several events, including his string quartets.[14] A concert played there and at the Kölner Philharmonie combines his Ausklang for piano and orchestra (1985) with Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, played by Jean-Frédéric Neuburger and the SWR Symphonieorchester conducted by François-Xavier Roth.[14][15]
Klangwerkstatt Berlin programmed two chamber music works to mark the occasion, Intérieur I for piano (1966) and Salut für Caudwell for two guitarists (1977).[16] A concert of the Goethe-Institut Boston featured his Guero[de] for piano (1970) and works by two of his students.[17]Oper Frankfurt features an evening with Lachenmann in conversation with Enno Poppe and a performance of Mouvement (– vor der Erstarrung) (1984).[13]
Composition
Lachenmann composed works in many genres, an opera, instrumental works for orchestra and ensembles, chamber music and piano pieces, using traditional instruments but requesting unusual new ways of sound production.[7] Derived from musique concrète, he has referred to his compositions as musique concrète instrumentale, implying a musical language that embraces the entire sound-world made accessible through unconventional playing techniques on traditional instruments. According to the composer, this is music
in which the sound events are chosen and organized so that the manner in which they are generated is at least as important as the resultant acoustic qualities themselves. Consequently those qualities, such as timbre, volume, etc., do not produce sounds for their own sake, but describe or denote the concrete situation: listening, you hear the conditions under which a sound- or noise-action is carried out, you hear what materials and energies are involved and what resistance is encountered.[18]
Lachenmann wrote three string quartets; Gran Torso, composed in 1971 and revised in 1976 and 1988,[19] uses the instruments not for carrying harmonic progressions, but as noise sources with strings "scratched, bowed, and struck". It had an impact on performance practices of string quartets. Reigen seliger Geister was written in 1989,[20] and Grido in 2001.[21]
He composed Schwankungen am Rand (Fluctuations at the Edge) in 1974/75, set for eight brass instruments, two electric guitars, two pianos, four thunder sheets, and 34 strings,[7] He wrote Accanto in 1975/76, for clarinet, large orchestra and tape, with a part for the clarinet that is reminiscent of a classical concerto but juxtaposed to an "orchestra of noise, friction, and unorthodox sound generation".[7][5]
Lachenmann composed the ensemble work Mouvement (- vor der Erstarrung) (- before paralysis) in 1982 to 1984 for an ensemble of three ad hoc players and 14 players, described as a piece "in which musical gestures repeatedly fizzle out, break apart and then reassemble. Nothing develops according to conventional logic, everything remains in flux – a music of unrest and resistance to fixed forms".[7] He wrote ... zwei Gefühle ..., Musik mit Leonardo in 1992, based on a text by Leonardo da Vinci translated into German, for two speakers and ensemble.[22][5]
1990 member of the Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg, also of the academies of Berlin, Mannheim and Munich, the Belgium Akademie der Wissenschaften, Literatur und Künste
An interview with Lachenmann appeared in issue 228 (February 2003) of The Wire
Feller, Ross (2002). "Resistant Strains of Postmodernism: The Music of Helmut Lachenmann and Brian Ferneyhough". In Lochhead, Judy; Auner, Joseph (eds.). Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought. Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture. Vol.4. New York and London: Routledge. pp.249–262.
Lachenmann, Helmut (1996). "Struktur und Musikantik". In Häusler, Josef (ed.). Musik als existentielle Erfahrung. Schriften 1966–1995 (in German). Wiesbaden: Breitkkopf & Härtel. pp.155–161.
Lachenmann, Helmut (1970). "Klangtypen der neuen Musik". Zeitschrift für Musiktheorie (in German). I (1): 20–30.
Lachenmann, Helmut (1978). "Bedingungen des Materials. Stichworte zur Praxis der Theoriebildung". Ferienkurse '78, Darmstädter Beitr. zur Neuen Musik (in German). Vol.XVII. Mainz: Schott. pp.93–110.
Lachenmann, Helmut (1994). "Dialektischer Strukturalismus". In Borio, Gianmario; Mosch, Ulrich (eds.). Ästhetik und Komposition: Zur Aktualität der Darmstädter Ferienkursarbeit (in German). Mainz: B. Schott's Söhne. pp.23–32.
Nonnenmann, Rainer (2000). "Angebot durch Verweigerung: Die Ästhetik instrumentalkonkreten Klangkomponierens in Helmut Lachenmanns frühen Orchesterwerken". Kölner Schriften zur Neuen Musik (in German). Vol.8. Mainz & New York: Schott. ISBN978-3-7957-1897-8.
Shaked, Yuval (1985). "Helmut Lachenmann's Salut für Caudwell – An Analysis". Nova giulianiad / Freiburger Saitenblätter. 2 (6): 97–109.
