Singing and sensuality: On the death of the Berlin composer Aribert Reimann

It is said of Alban Berg that he was the only twelve-tone musician who composed with dodecaphonic means as if he had done so without them. For him, process and sensuality were never in contradiction. The same could be said of Aribert Reimann: his greatness lay not least in his ability to apply the traditional techniques of the 20th century without getting in the way of the sound experience. For him, Webernian rigor and impressionistic gestures sometimes went hand in hand. Beyond all schools and idioms, he created an expressive atonality that was entirely his own.

But perhaps he also knew earlier than others how much music needs an inner truth in order to withstand the merciless reality. Born in Berlin in 1936 as the son of a church musician and a contralto, his early years were shaped by the horrors of the times. His brother’s early death in the bombing campaign in 1944 left him unmoved and found his way into the operas, in particular, in new ways.

After studying piano, counterpoint and composition in Berlin, especially with Boris Blacher and the church musician Ernst Pepping, he studied musicology in Vienna. He initially earned his living as a pianist and accompanist for, among others, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. In 1978 he also wrote his Shakespeare opera “Lear” for the baritone.

Close relationship to literature

Operas need librettos, songs usually need words. Beyond this matter-of-factness, there is probably no composer of his generation who had a closer relationship with literature: as a passionate reader, but also in the processing of text beyond mere material. His stage debut, a ballet in 1959, was based on a specially written libretto by Günter Grass.

In the major music-dramatic genre, people always used the derogatory term literary opera, which, like literary adaptations, is of course not without its problems. Franz Kafka’s “Schloss”, Federico García Lorca’s “Bernarda Alba’s House” or, most recently, Maurice Maeterlinck’s “L’invisible” did not cannibalize their originals, but rather gave them a resonant individuality.

Professorship for Song

Nevertheless, his domain was contemporary song. From 1983 to 1998 he also represented it with a professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts. Reimann showed once again how the genres of music and poetry that had become alien to each other in the 20th century could find each other. Because to the extent that the sound language had atomized itself and refused to be a mere voice carrier, poetry had advanced into the purely sound. Using the most modern means, he took on poems by Paul Celan, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson in an almost old-masterly manner: in larger and chamber music ensembles, sometimes also for solo voice.

The awards for his life’s work are legion, including the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, the highest honor the music world has to award. He was tireless in his work, both in the knowledge that the time for creativity is finite and in the conviction that inspiration is overrated.

While still a student, he once showed up empty-handed to his composition teacher Boris Blacher and sheepishly confessed that he hadn’t come up with anything. Blacher simply said: “Composing with inspiration is not art – without it, that’s just where composing begins!” Aribert Reimann died in Berlin on Wednesday at the age of 88.