This week: three well-known composers, who passed away in 2024.
At the end of the year, we can always count on an ‘in memoriam’ of celebrity deaths of the past year to appear. Today in Contemporary Music, we look back at some of the composers that passed away in 2024.
The biggest name on the list is without a doubt Wolfgang Rihm (1952-2024). This German composer was at the head of an entire new generation of composers during the seventies. It was a generation that wanted to distance itself from the ultra-modern music from the fifties and sixties – they wanted to break with the serial music and didn’t need endless experiments. They just wanted to compose works with heads and tails, which allow the composer to communicate with his audience and let performers have the freedom to interpret the music. This didn’t mean, though, that they wanted to return to the old days. Their musical idiom remains modern and isn’t very easy listening.
Alexander Goehr (1932-2024) is another composer that passed away this year. He was born in Germany, like Rihm, but moved to Great Britain at a young age. His German identity has always remained an important influence in his work. In his music, he goes back to the great German masters, from Bach to Schönberg and everything in between. It is quite similar to Rihm’s work and strikingly little like the British music of that time.
The third composer in this programme is the Hungarian Péter Eötvös (1944-2024). He was, at first, mostly known as conductor. During the seventies, he directed the Ensemble InterContemporain (EIC) from Pierre Boulez, a chamber orchestra that specialised in the most forbidding avant-garde music. When Eötvös produced works himself in the eighties and nineties, his style turned out remarkably traditional. He didn’t write for ensembles like EIC, but for traditional symphonic orchestras.
An hour of symphonic music with a romantic spirit in a contemporary body.
Playlist
- Wolfgang Rihm – Unbenannt IV
- Alexander Goehr – When Adam fell
- Péter Eötvös – Levitation
