Composer Aribert Reimann dies: “master of vocal music”

The composer Aribert Reimann died on Wednesday in Berlin at the age of 88, as his music publisher Schott Music (Mainz) announced, citing his family. At his last public appearance in February, Reimann personally accepted the German Music Authors’ Prize from the collecting society Gema for his life’s work.

With his more than 70 works, he was considered one of the most important and most performed creators of contemporary music. The opera “Lear,” which premiered in Munich in 1978, made him world famous. Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth praised him as “one of the most productive opera composers of our time”. In particular, the setting to music of literary material with references to the present has established “its unique status in contemporary musical life”. His musical language was characterized by its great intensity.

Growing up in a musical family, Reimann studied composition with Boris Blacher and Ernst Pepping after graduating from high school in 1955. At the same time, he made a name for himself as a concert pianist and accompanist – especially for the singers Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Brigitte Fassbaender. He composed a large number of his songs for them, including the “Five Poems by Paul Celan” (1960).

Reimann wrote his first opera, “A Dream Game” after August Strindberg, when he was less than 30 years old. At the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with which he was particularly closely associated throughout his life, he premiered his Maeterlinck opera “L’Invisible” in 2017, his last major musical theater work. In a message of condolence, the Deutsche Oper recalled that Reimann took up his first position as an accompanist here at the age of 19 and received “his first formative impressions of opera.”

In addition to the famous “Lear”, other major works for musical theater include “Troades”, “The Castle” and “Medea”. The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, which honored him for his life’s work in 2011, called him the “undisputed master” of vocal music. “Aribert Reimann, who never followed the music business and did not join any direction,” had a decisive influence on the musical events of the last decades, it was said in the laudatory speech.

From 1974 to 1983 Reimann taught contemporary song at the Hamburg University of Music, then for almost fifteen years at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 1988 he founded the Busoni Composition Prize to promote young composers. His numerous awards included the Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany. (dpa/Tsp)