Hans Werner Henze 1926
For a little change, I thought I would write about a great composer that is still to be admired, for he is still living a prolific life.
Hans Werner Henze is a German that has gone through a lot but has been able to give the world a great deal, not only a lot of songs, but a new type of musical style. His works are comprised of a mixture of various musical styles having evolved into their own. Among them are: twelve-tone technique, serialism, neo-classicism, jazz, and even rock.
Above all, this is a person that is not only great, but had to deal with plenty of prejudice and alienation throughout his lifetime in order to bring his music to the world.. Being a pacifist, he not only grew up during the rise of Nazism in Germany having a father who was a Nazi supporter, he also had to deal with being a homosexual in these harsh times. Born in Gütersloh, Germany, the oldest of 6 children, he got interested in music at a very early age. His father, who was quite conservative, was against him going into the music field. Nevertheless, he ended up going to a state-run music school at the age of 16, studying piano and percussion. He was unfortunately drafted into the army 2 years later and had to serve in Poland just before the end of the war, ending up as a British prisoner.
At the end of the war, he did not let his musical talent go to waste. After working for a while as a theatre pianist, he continued his studies at the Heidelberg Institute for Church Music (German: Das kirchenmusikalischen Institut in Heidelberg) under Wolfgang Fortner in 1946. He later studied 12 tone technique under René Leibowitz in Darmstadt and Paris. 12 tone technique, originally thought up of by Arnold Schoenberg, is a method of composing a song by using all 12 notes of a chromatic scale, all of them equally sounded, typically avoiding a certain key.
Although writing one beforehand called ‘das Wundertheater’, his first full opera and significant work which made him famous was named ‘Boulevard Solitude‘ and was written in 1952. It comprised of the various styles, aria, jazz, blues, and recitative, all united by the same 12 note sequence.
Henze was the ballet director at Wiesbaden State Theatre for a while in 1950, but got tired of living in Germany and went to live in Italy. He ended up in Naples where he concluded his operas ‘König Hirsch’ and ‘Der Prinz von Homburg’. The latter was composed along with a close friend of his, Ingeborg Bachman, an Austrian author and poet who played a leading role in post-war literature. She was the librettist for the opera. For those of you reading that do not know, a librettist is the person that creates the words to be set to music for an opera.
In 1961, Henze moved to Rome. It was here that he became an international figure. He started teaching master classes in composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria and became a visiting professor at Dartmouth college in New Hampshire. It was at this time that he wrote his fifth symphony for the New York Philharmonic and went to the US to see his work premier under the direction of Leonard Bernstein.
One very interesting aspect of Henze’works is the ability to express and intertwine his political beliefs and social critic in his music. Music and politics have been intertwined for quite some time, but this is a prime example of how music can enter into the political world. During the 1960’s, Henze became quite interested in communism and wrote ‘Das Floss der Medusa’( The Raft of Medusa) based on the painting with the same name by artist Théodore Géricault. This oratorio was intended to be a requiem for Che Guevara. The grand premier in Hamburg actually failed on account of the fact that the players from West Berlin refused to play under the portrait of Che Guevara with a red flag draped across the stage. The police ended up coming and not only some students were arrested, but also the opera’s librettist. Since then, he has written other politically motivated pieces, such as his 6th Symphony, written during a year-long stay in Cuba where he was teaching and researching new ideas. This piece encompassed and interesting mix of Greek and Vietnamese freedom songs.
Hans Werner Henze has written a great deal of works since this time and still lives in Italy. He has given a lot to humanity and the musical world; to list all of his achievements on this blog would be impossible. A great composer of today’s present, a truly great musical personality who has not only dedicated, but put his whole life into his music.
“I have evolved a concept of beauty nurtured by experiences both terrible and wonderful.” ----Hans Werner Henze
To listen to music by this great composer click here
