Hans Werner Henze was born on July 1, 1926, and died on October 27, 2012. He was a German composer known for creating a wide variety of musical works. His music was influenced by many styles, including serialism, atonality, Neoclassicism, Italian music, Arabic music, jazz, and traditional German music. His plays and operas especially show his long-term focus on writing music for the theater.

Henze was also known for his strong political beliefs. In 1953, he moved to Italy because he felt Germany was unfair to people with leftist political views and those who were homosexual. Later in life, he lived in the village of Marino in the central Italian region of Lazio. Even in his older years, he traveled widely, especially to Britain and Germany, for his work. He was a Marxist and a member of the Italian Communist Party. He wrote music honoring Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. At the 1968 premiere of his opera Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of Medusa), which was a requiem for Che Guevara, a red flag placed on the stage caused a fight and led to the arrest of several people, including the librettist. From 1969 to 1970, Henze taught in Cuba.

Life and works

Henze was born in Gütersloh, Westphalia, as the oldest of six children to a teacher. He showed an early interest in art and music, which led to disagreements with his father, who held traditional views. Henze’s father, Franz, had fought in the First World War and was wounded at Verdun. He worked as a teacher in Bielefeld at a school that promoted progressive ideas, but the school was closed in 1933 by government order because its ideas did not match official policies. Franz then moved to Dünne, a small village near Bünde, where he was influenced by Nazi propaganda. Books by Jewish and Christian authors were replaced in the Henze household with Nazi-themed literature. The family was expected to follow Franz’s new beliefs. The older boys, including Hans, joined the Hitler Youth.

Although the Henze household often discussed politics, Hans also listened to classical music broadcasts, especially by Mozart. Eventually, his father recognized that Hans had a talent for music. In 1942, Henze began studying at the state music school in Braunschweig, where he learned piano, percussion, and music theory. Franz Henze re-enlisted in the army in 1943 and was sent to the Eastern front, where he died. Henze had to leave his studies in 1944 when he was drafted into the army near the end of the Second World War. He was trained as a radio operator and later captured by the British, spending the rest of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp. In 1945, he became an accompanist at the Bielefeld City Theatre and continued his studies at Heidelberg University in 1946.

Henze gained attention after performing a neo-baroque work for piano, flute, and strings at Darmstadt in 1946, which was published by Schott’s, a music publisher. He also participated in the Darmstadt New Music Summer School, a program that promoted experimental techniques. At the 1947 summer school, Henze began using serial technique in his compositions.

In his early years, Henze used the twelve-tone technique, as seen in his First Symphony and First Violin Concerto of 1947. In 1948, Sadler’s Wells Ballet visited Hamburg, inspiring Henze to write a choreographic poem, Ballett-Variationen, which he completed in 1949. His first ballet, Scènes de Ballet by Frederick Ashton, influenced him. He wrote to Ashton, introducing himself as a 22-year-old composer, and later sent him the score of Ballett-Variationen. The work premiered in Düsseldorf in 1949 and was staged in Wuppertal in 1958. In 1948, Henze became a musical assistant at the Deutscher Theater in Konstanz, where he created his first opera, Das Wundertheater, based on Cervantes’ work.

In 1950, Henze became a ballet conductor at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, where he composed two operas for radio, his First Piano Concerto, and his first major stage work, the jazz-influenced opera Boulevard Solitude, a modern version of the story Manon Lescaut. His ballet Ondine was composed for the English Royal Ballet and choreographed by Ashton, with a production in 1958.

Henze left Germany in 1953 due to homophobia and the political climate. His publisher, Schott’s, offered him an advance on royalties if he left his conducting roles to focus on composition. This allowed Henze to move to Italy, where he lived most of his life. He settled on the island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples. Other residents on the island included composer William Walton and his wife, Susana, who supported Henze. His 1955 work Quattro poemi for orchestra showed a shift away from the experimental style of Darmstadt. In 1956, Henze moved to Naples. However, his operas König Hirsch and Maratona di danza faced criticism. He then formed a long partnership with poet Ingeborg Bachmann, who helped him write operas like Der Prinz von Homburg (1958), Der junge Lord (1964), and Serenades and Arias (1957), as well as Choral Fantasy (1964).

Henze composed Five Neapolitan Songs for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau shortly after moving to Naples. A later trip to Greece allowed him to complete Kammermusik 1958, based on Hölderlin’s work, dedicated to Benjamin Britten and premiered by tenor Peter Pears, guitarist Julian Bream, and an eight-member ensemble.

In 1961, Henze moved to a villa called La Leprara in Marino, overlooking the River Tiber near Rome. This period marked a stronger focus on vocal music. From 1962 to 1967, Henze taught composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and in 1967, he became a visiting professor at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. A major success was the premiere of his opera Die Bassariden at the Salzburg Festival.

Henze’s political involvement grew, influencing his music. For example, the premiere of his oratorio Das Floß der Medusa in Hamburg failed when collaborators refused to perform under a portrait of Che Guevara and a revolutionary flag. His politics also shaped works like his Sixth Symphony (1969), Second Violin Concerto (1971), Voices (1973), and El Cimarrón (1973), based on a Cuban book about escaped slaves. His most politically charged opera, We Come to the River, premiered in 1976.

In 1976, Henze founded the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano to promote new music, where his children’s opera Pollicino premiered in 1980. From 1980 to 1991, he taught composition at the Cologne Music School. In 1981, he started the Mürztal Workshops in Austria and the Deutschlandsberg Youth Music Festival in 1984. In 1988, he founded the Munich Biennale, an international festival for new music theatre.

Henze’s operas became more traditional later in his career, such as The English Cat (1983) and Das verratene Meer (1990), based on Yukio Mishima’s novel. His later works continued his political and social engagement, including Requiem (1990–93), written in memory of Michael Vyner, and the choral Ninth Symphony (1997), dedicated to German anti-fascist heroes. His final major success was the 2003 premiere of L'Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe at the Salzburg Festival, based on a Syrian fairy tale. Other

Works

Henze's music includes styles like neoclassicism, jazz, the twelve-tone technique, serialism, and elements of rock or popular music. Although he studied atonalism early in his career, after moving to Italy in 1953, Henze's music became more influenced by Neapolitan music. His opera König Hirsch ("The Stag King") features rich and full sounds. This style is even more evident in the grand ballet music he wrote for English choreographer Frederick Ashton's Ondine, completed in 1957. While Mendelssohn and Weber were important influences, the music for Ondine includes some jazz and has elements similar to Stravinsky's work—not only Stravinsky's neoclassical style but also his music from The Rite of Spring. His Maratona di danza, however, required a more closely combined use of jazz elements, including a live band on stage, which was very different from the more romantic style of Ondine. Much of Henze's ballet music was inspired by his earlier job as a ballet adviser at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden.

The sounds in the cantata Kammermusik (1958, revised in 1963) are much harsher. Henze returned to atonalism in Antifone, and later, the other styles mentioned earlier again became important in his music.

Awards

• Ernst von Siemens Music Prize (1990)
• Praemium Imperiale (2000)
• Deutscher Tanzpreis (2001)
• Knight Commander of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2008)