Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation mourns the loss of Wolfgang Rihm
New Music has lost a creator, a great mind, a brilliant composer and a wonderful person. The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation mourns the loss of its longstanding and eminent member Wolfgang Rihm, who has had a lasting influence on the fortunes and face of the Foundation since 1993. We bid farewell to our Ernst von Siemens Music Prize winner, member of the Board of Trustees, friend and companion, and a great composer.
He was and is a figure of integration for the whole of contemporary music and especially for the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation. His circumspect, open manner, his sheer boundless wealth of knowledge, his curiosity and not least his incomparable humour have enriched and perfected the meetings of the Board of Trustees.
Wolfgang Rihm made a profound influence on the Foundation over the course of many years. He was not only an outstanding composer and great scholar, but also a wonderful person. All those who were able to get to know him will always remember him fondly.
Deputy Chairman of the Foundation Board
Rihm, who was born in Karlsruhe in 1952, was one of the most important composers of his time. Even as a teenager, his works caused a sensation, e.g. at the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music, where his Musik für drei Streicher caused an éclat in 1977 and initiated a paradigm shift in composition. Rihm has shaped the music of the past 50 years like almost no other composer. Rihm has also achieved great things as a university teacher and has repeatedly helped talented students to become outstanding composers.
“In the decades of his membership of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Wolfgang Rihm always represented the concerns of young composers, supporting them and helping them on their career paths was his most important task.
Wolfgang’s personality, his enormous knowledge and his conciliatory nature have shaped the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and I will never forget his wonderful musical friendship and his advice.”
Thomas Angyan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees
Stefan Deuber
In 2003, Wolfgang Rihm himself received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for his outstanding achievements as a composer and teacher, for a life’s work in the service of music. An excerpt from the certificate:
Wolfgang Rihm is one of the most prolific and versatile composers of our time. With inexhaustible imagination, a vital creative drive and keen self-reflection, he has created an oeuvre rich in facets, which already comprises over four hundred compositions from all musical genres. Rihm’s music manifests his belief in the indestructible existence of the creative individual, who is able to assert his strength and dignity against all external threats.
As a versatile musician, he cultivated an intensive dialogue with the other arts. Nevertheless, he has never retreated into an ivory tower. His precise reflections on the problems of artistic creation, guided by philosophical questions, have a literary quality and open up wide horizons for the listener and reader.
Wolfgang Rihm's death marks the end not only of an extremely productive artistic life, but also of an entire era that he shaped like few others. The void he leaves behind is painful, both musically and personally. We will miss his unquenchable curiosity and willingness to learn, his immense wealth of not only listening experience, his encyclopaedic knowledge, his incorruptible power of judgement, his sharp thinking and his wonderful art of formulation and, last but not least, his sensuality – in short, his entire humanity. What will remain are the memories and, above all, his music.
Member of the Board of Trustees
With deep gratitude,
Foundation Board, Board of Trustees, Management and Secretariat of the Board of Trustees of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
“Wolfgang Rihm wrote to me while working on his 2nd Viola Concerto in March 2002:
‘I wrote this last part, the Consolatio, as a very largely remodelled paraphrase of a musical setting of this poem by Hermann Lenz:‘SeaAir
Mild sea air,
The sky at times thunder-black.
Then a vespertine light,
As if something could be found
When one is obliviously flying westwards.
Perhaps a bright eternity.’There is nothing left to add …”
Tabea Zimmermann, Chairwoman of the Foundation Board
