In last Monday’s (10/29) New York Times, Paul Griffiths reports that Hans Werner Henze, “a prolific German composer who came of age in the Nazi era and grew estranged from his country while gaining renown for richly imaginative operas and orchestral works, died on Saturday in Dresden, Germany, where he was due to attend the premiere that evening of a ballet set to one of his scores. He was 86.” No cause of death was specified in the announcement from Henze’s publisher, Schott Music. Griffiths writes, “Born into a European generation that wanted to make a fresh start at the end of World War II, Mr. Henze … did so without wholly negating the past. He wanted a new music that would carry with it the emotion, the opulence and the lyricism of the Romantic era, even if those elements now had to be fought for. Separating himself from the avant-garde, he devoted himself to genres many of his colleagues regarded as outmoded: opera, song, the symphony.” Griffiths notes that his Fifth Symphony (1963) was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic and his Eighth (1992-93) by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with which Henze had earlier been associated as composer-in residence at Tanglewood Music Festival in 1988. Henze was born in Gütersloh, Westphalia, and following Army service in 1944-45 studied at the Heidelberg Institute for Church Music and with the French composer René Leibowitz. After serving as music director of the Wiesbaden State Theater, he emigrated to Italy in 1953, initially to the Naples area. Since 1961 he had made his home near Rome.
Posted November 5, 2012
