Swiss-born Klaus Huber died aged 92 last Monday, 2 October 2017, in Perugia. He was one of the most important composers of our time and was awarded numerous prizes, including the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and the Salzburg Music Prize. Besides his compositional work, he was a professor in Basel and in Freiburg im Breisgau; numerous great composers ranked among his pupils, including Wolfgang Rihm, Brian Ferneyhough, Toshio Hosokawa, Kaija Saariaho and Younghi Pagh-Paan, who later became his wife. Klaus Huber most recently lived in Bremen and Panicale (Italy).

Klaus Huber was born in Bern in 1924 and studied violin and composition at the Zurich Music Conservatory. In 1955 he went to Berlin, where he continued studying composition with Boris Blacher. His international breakthrough came in 1959 with the chamber cantata Des Engels Anredung an die Seele [The Angel's Appeal to the Soul]. There followed a creative phase lasting more than 60 years in which he repeatedly subjected his compositional thinking to far-reaching re-examinations, always seeking new inspirations and continuously developing his style further. In his compositions he worked with Asian and Latin American culture, amongst others. His later works in particular are characterised by using microtonality and adopting the Arabic tone system.

Klaus Huber understood himself as a political composer, frequently addressing philosophical, religious and social questions in his works. His work focussed on the conflict between the individual and the collective, between humane vision and anti-human power.

As a composer, Klaus Huber helped creatively shape the development of contemporary music full of moral, artistic and aesthetic convictions. With him, we lose a great person and a great musician, a thinker, passionate pedagogue and endless source of inspiration.

is musical far-sightedness and worldview, his artistic openness, the concentration of his compositions and the diversity of his oeuvre not only made an impact on his students and countless composers, but also decisively influenced the profile of the publisher Ricordi.


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Read article: "Klaus Huber - Focus on Mankind"

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