Wolfgang Michael Rihm (German: [ˈvɔlfɡaŋ ˈʁiːm]; 13 March 1952 – 27 July 2024) was a German composer of modern classical music and a teacher in Karlsruhe. He was an important European composer after World War II, known for creating over 500 musical works, including several operas.

Rihm gained international attention when his orchestral piece Morphonie premiered at the 1974 Donaueschingen Festival. He used experimental techniques while expressing deep emotions in his music. His chamber opera Jakob Lenz, first performed in 1977, explored the struggles of a poet’s mind. The opera Oedipus, premiered at Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1987, was broadcast live and recorded on DVD. His opera Dionysos, first performed at the Salzburg Festival in 2010, won the title of "World Premiere of the Year" by Opernwelt. Rihm was asked to compose a piece for the opening of the Elbphilharmonie, and he created the song cycle Reminiszenz, which premiered in 2017.

From 1985, Rihm taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. His students included composers Rebecca Saunders and Jörg Widmann. He held the title of composer in residence at the BBC, the Lucerne Festival, and the Salzburg Festival. In 2001, he was honored as an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2003, he received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize.

Biography

Rihm was born on March 13, 1952, in Karlsruhe, Germany. His father, Julius Rihm, worked as a treasurer for the Red Cross, and his mother, Margarete, was a homemaker. He had a sister named Monika. At age 11, Rihm began composing music, and the next year, he wrote a plan for a mass. He was an active choir singer and often played the organ, creating loud and exciting sounds inspired by French organists. At 16, he won a prize for his cello sonata in the Jugend musiziert competition. At 18, he completed his second string quartet.

While still in high school, Rihm studied music theory and composition at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe with Eugen Werner Velte. He graduated from high school in 1972 and passed his undergraduate exams that same year. He attended the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1970 and studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in Cologne from 1972 to 1973. From 1973 to 1976, he studied composition with Klaus Huber and musicology with Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. Other teachers included Wolfgang Fortner and Humphrey Searle.

The premiere of Rihm’s Morpĥonie at the 1974 Donaueschingen Festival marked the start of his career in European new music. The piece was described as "incredibly unique." Rihm focused on creative freedom, challenging traditional musical rules. He blended techniques from modern classical music with the emotional intensity of Gustav Mahler and the expressive style of Arnold Schönberg. Later, he said that Claude Debussy and Schönberg combined "simple structure with strong emotion." Some saw his work as a challenge to earlier composers like Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.

His piece Dis-Kontur (1974) was described as "rough and harsh," with "powerful, raw sounds." When Sub-Kontur (1975) premiered in 1976, some audience members disliked its "loud and jarring noises." Critics called it "unpleasant," but positive reviews led to many commissions for his work. His chamber opera Jakob Lenz, which premiered in 1977, explored a poet’s inner struggles without a clear story.

In 1978, Rihm became a lecturer at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. From 1985 onward, he taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, succeeding his former teacher, Velte. He taught students through open dialogue, encouraging independent thinking.

Rihm’s opera Die Hamletmaschine, based on Heiner Müller’s play Hamletmachine, premiered in 1987. It was called a "complete sound theater" and a "non-narrative, ritualistic drama" similar to Stockhausen’s style. For his opera Oedipus, commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin, he used texts from Sophocles, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Heiner Müller. The premiere in 1987 was broadcast live and recorded on DVD. Rihm’s work continued in an expressive style, though composers like Luigi Nono, Helmut Lachenmann, and Morton Feldman influenced his style.

In 1995, Rihm was featured in the Rheingau Musik Festival’s annual Komponistenporträt. That same year, he contributed Communio (Lux aeterna) to the Requiem of Reconciliation. In 1998, the Free University of Berlin awarded him an honorary doctorate.

In 2003, Rihm received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. The New York Philharmonic premiered his Two Other Movements in 2004. In 2008, Matthias Rexroth performed Kolonos | 2 Fragments by Hölderlin after Sophokles with the Virtuosi Brunensis orchestra.

Rihm’s opera Proserpina premiered successfully at the Schwetzingen Festival in 2009. In 2010, the BBC Symphony Orchestra included his music in a "total immersion" event in London. BBC Radio 3 later dedicated three programs to his work. That year, his opera Dionysos, based on Friedrich Nietzsche’s poems, premiered at the Salzburg Festival. Critics named it the "World Premiere of the Year." The Trio Accanto performed Gegenstück in 2010, celebrating the 80th birthday of Walter Fink. Anne-Sophie Mutter and the New York Philharmonic premiered his violin concerto Lichtes Spiel in 2010.

In 2016, Rihm became the artistic director of the Lucerne Festival Academy, where young musicians and composers are trained. In 2017, he composed Reminiszenz, a song cycle for the Elbphilharmonie’s inauguration in Hamburg. In 2020, he wrote Concerto en Sol for cellist Sol Gabetta. His final works included a Stabat Mater and the song cycle Terzinen an den Tod.

Rihm lived in Karlsruhe and Berlin. He was married to Johanna Feldhausen-Rihm, and they had a son, Sebastian. They divorced. He married Uta Frank in 1992, and they had a daughter, Katja. They later separated, and Uta Frank died in 2013. He married Verena Weber in 2017.

A friend, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, said Rihm enjoyed life and took pleasure in cooking for others. He described Rihm’s cooking as creative and full of imagination.

Rihm was diagnosed with cancer in 2017. In 2020, he said, "I am approaching the end of my life, but not the end of my creative energy." Rihm died on July 27, 2024, in a hospice in Ettlingen, Germany, at age 72, after a long battle with cancer.

Compositions and style

Rihm composed over 500 works and was especially known for his operas. 460 of these works were published, and many of his manuscripts are kept by the Paul Sacher Foundation. Even though he created so many pieces, he said composing was not easy for him. Instead, he remained very committed to his work. Tom Service, in The Guardian, described Rihm’s music as having a "wide range of styles and sounds." Jeffrey Arlo Brown, in The New York Times, called it a "strong and ever-changing" collection of works.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Rihm was linked to a movement called New Simplicity (Neue Einfachheit), a term introduced by Aribert Reimann. In 1977, Rihm suggested other names, such as New Multiplicity (Neue Vielfalt) or New Clarity (Neue Eindeutigkeit), because he felt his music was not simple. His music was sometimes also called Neoromantic.

During the 1980s, Rihm’s music was described as representing "New Subjectivity" or Neo-expressionism. These terms refer to music with "free figuration, emotional depth, and clear individual expression." This style was sometimes connected to art movements like Junge Wilde (also called Neue Wilde) in Germany or Transavantgarde (also called Arte Cifra or Transavantguardia) in Italy. However, Rihm said he did not want to be part of any school and believed such labels should not be applied to his music. Yves Knockaert noted that Rihm’s work shared important ideas and styles with the work of Georg Baselitz.

Rihm once said he aimed to create "a new kind of coherence, no longer only limited to process." He explored this idea in his "Notebook Compositions," such as Musik for drei Streicher (1977), Zwischenblick: "Selbsthenker!" for string quartet (1983–1984), and String Quartets Nos. 5 and 6. In these works, he wrote the music with little or no planning or revision. Yves Knockaert compared his writing style to that of expressionist composers, but not to the dodecaphonic style of Schönberg.

Rihm wrote his own libretti, which were based on the writings of Sophocles, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Artaud, and Müller. He grouped certain themes into cycles, such as Chiffre, Vers une symphonie-fleuve, Séraphin, and Über die Linie. He also experimented with short musical pieces, including Alexanderlieder, Lenz-Fragmente, and Fetzen (Scraps).

According to Bachtrack, in 2022, Rihm was among the top 10 most performed living contemporary composers worldwide. He was praised for his independence and constant innovation, which Brown said "reinvigorated" contemporary classical music.

Legacy

In 2013, the Wolfgang-Rihm-Forum was opened at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe. It is a place used for many purposes and has 400 seats.

Awards

• 1998 Free University of Berlin

• 1983 Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste
• 1986 Academy of Arts, Berlin
• 1996 Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, Darmstadt
• 2000 Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg
• European Academy of Sciences and Arts

Students

Rihm's students included Rebecca Saunders, David Philip Hefti, Márton Illés, and Jörg Widmann. Saunders said that Rihm worked consistently and as a result opposed argumentative or controversial ideas. He also supported each student in developing a unique personal style. Widmann described Rihm as sometimes very intense and focused, and always extreme.

Writings

• Rihm, Wolfgang (1997). Edited by Mosch, Ulrich. Ausgesprochen: Schriften und Gespräche (in German). Winterthur: Amadeus Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7957-0395-0.
• Rihm, Wolfgang and Brinkmann, Reinhold (2001). Musik Nachdenken: Reinhold Brinkmann und Wolfgang Rihm im Gespräch (in German). Regensburg: ConBrio Verlag. ISBN 978-3-932581-47-2.
• Rihm, Wolfgang (2002). Edited by Mosch, Ulrich. Offene Enden: Denkbewegungen um und durch Musik (in German). Munich: Hanser Verlag. ISBN 978-3-446-20142-2.