It is especially hard to talk about the death of a composer who was the same age as me and who appeared in the musical bullrings during the same years and felt similar concerns. Time flies.
Wolfgang Rihm, who died on Saturday at the age of 72, was born in Karlsruhe (Germany, then West Germany) on 13 March 1952. There he began his studies with teachers such as Eugen Werner Velte, Wolfgang Fortner and Humphrey Searle. In 1970 he attended the legendary courses in Darmstadt, where he quickly became a classic. In Cologne he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Klaus Huber, as well as Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht in Freiburg. He soon became a teacher himself, first in Karlsruhe, his hometown, and later in numerous centres in Central Europe, practically in the 1970s, when he made his breakthrough.
When, at the beginning of that decade, Rihm’s first works were presented at the Central European avant-garde festivals, monumental orchestral works such as Morphonia/Sector IVin 1974, caused as much admiration as perplexity, if not scandal, it sounded a lot like Mahler or Bruckner, to take up again the clichés of the period. There was talk of neo-romanticism, of new simplicity. In that same year, his most and best known opera was presented, Jacob Lenza declaration of intent based on the biographical experience of one of the fathers of German Romanticism, the predecessor of Buchner, author of Woyzeckand a friend of Goethe.
His emergence coincided with a drastic change in sensitivity in the avant-garde, in the eye of the hurricane of postmodernism, when the structural dogmas of previous generations were being questioned. The precocity of his rise seemed to correspond to the intensity of his compositional proposal and, very soon, to its enormity. He went on to become one of the most sought-after composers in Central Europe, garnering prizes, commissions and distinctions.
Faced with so much demand, Rihm was not discouraged for a second; he composed, and continued to compose until his death, like someone who opens the tap of an inexhaustible fountain. As Rihm himself declared: “I have the vision that music is inside me, like a great block. Each composition is part of this block and constitutes a precise physiognomy to be sculpted. To see who I am, I must cut myself into my own flesh, open myself, ask a mirror what it sees.”
This statement is very interesting, because the superhuman amount of music written by Rihm, the great length of his works and the feeling that each one could be continued by the others invites us to corroborate what the composer himself describes. And, of course, the great block is very, very large: very long works, of almost Brucknerian durations, with a musical texture that evokes a flow that ideally could never be interrupted. To which is added an outstanding instrumental continuity: dozens and dozens of orchestral pieces, many others for chamber music, lyrical works among which operas stand out, lyrical pieces for theatre, or simply for soloists and groups… In short, his catalogue of almost 500 works could be compared to great mythical enterprises, such as the library of Babel, by Borges, or similar, and frees me from the obligation to cite some outstanding works.
Just as it seems almost impossible to listen to the entire catalogue, or even a substantial part of it, listening to any of them clearly gives the impression that the whole is similar to the part; that any fragment of this great block that has been music for Rhim could be considered as a faithful portrait of the whole. So don’t be discouraged, you have to listen to Rhim, even if it is just one of his works; you will surely get a good idea of the great block.
Rihm’s merit, his absolute singularity, lies in the fact that this musical programme, almost like that of a gluttonous child who never gets enough of producing music, was a non-logical but plausible continuation of the indigestion of the musical avant-gardes, of the megalomaniacal programme of one of his teachers and references, Stockhausen; but at the same time its reduction to absurdity, its negation.
What ultimately made him one of the most outstanding composers of that turbulent period is that Rihm did not allow himself to be trapped in the postmodern scheme. He always declared his admiration and faithful continuity with the previous masters, Stockhausen, of course, as well as Feldman, Lachenmann, Nono… And that his work can sound like Mahler and at the same time like Lachenmann or Nono is something that will astonish those who know something of what I quote.
His career has also been enriched by an unfailing taste for cultural references, including Sophocles, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Müller, and an insatiable curiosity for the visual arts and cinema. In short, a personality who is complex and rich in his cultural aspect and, of course, exuberant in his musical aspect. If anyone has deserved to rest in peace, it is certainly Wolfgang Rihm.