Moritz Eggert was born in Heidelberg in 1965. He studied piano at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts (Leonard Hokanson) and composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich (Wilhelm Killmayer), as well as the Guildhall School for Music and Drama (Robert Saxton) in London.
As a composer, Eggert likes to cater to multiple impulses; his music is provocative and challenging, exhilarating and inspiring. For him, melody and emotionality are not at odds with experimental or performative sonic ideas. True to his maxim that “there must be space in music for everything that occupies space in real life,” he draws from a wide range of musical forms of expression, and constantly lends his comprehensive experience as a pianist, performer, conductor, and singer to a sense of music he describes as “atopic,” or “extraordinary.” As a well-known blogger (“Bad Blog of Musick”) and author, he is committed to cultivating a more active role for contemporary music in the public consciousness.
“When you read the name Moritz Eggert, you know what to expect: With everything […] Moritz Eggert has mastered the art of artistically transforming even the most banal from everyday life.” Crescendo
Eggert's commissions are numerous and spectacular. Among others, he has received commissions for the EXPO 2000, wrote the first contemporary composition for the Vienna Opera Ball, wrote a football oratorio as well as music for the opening ceremony for the cultural program of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, wrote a piece about Google’s terms of use for the 100th anniversary of the Goethe University in Frankfurt, and a piece for the ARD International Music Competition. In addition, he has written works for numerous institutions, festivals and artists including the Munich Biennale, musica viva, the Salzburg Festival and Easter Festival, the Ruhr Triennale, the Kronberg Academy, Beethovenfest Bonn, the Europäischen Festwochen Passau, and orchestras such as the Concertgebouworkest in Amsterdam, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in Berlin.
His 19 full-length operas and musical theater works have meanwhile seen performances at houses in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, and England – such as the Komische Oper Berlin, the Bonn Opera, the Landestheater Linz, the Lucerne Theater, and the Frankfurt Opera.
Hämmerklavier, his cycle for solo piano, today counts as one of the most-performed piano works worldwide, and his song cycle
Neue Dichter Lieben can be found on the compulsory program of numerous singing competitions. His catalog of works is fast-approaching 300, with many having seen release on CD.
Eggert has received numerous awards as a composer, including the Salzburg Easter Festival Composition Prize, the Mainz Schneider-Schott Music Prize, 1st prize at the SMCQ’s "Ad referendum" competition in Québec, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation’s Composers' Prize, and the Audience Choice award at the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra International Composers Award. In 1998, he received the Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis, and the Louis Spohr Music Prize in 2016. Notable scholarships abroad enabled him to spend time at the Villa Massimo in Rome, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and the Deutsches Studienzentrum in Venice. He has, among others, also received a stipend from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation. In 2003 he became a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, as well as of the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature in 2009.
Since October 2010, Eggert has held a professorship at the University of Music and Performing Arts Munich, where many of his students already count among the best-known and most successful representatives of the young generation of composers internationally. He has been president of the German Composers' Association since 2020. Notable guest lectureships have taken him to Mainz ("Mainzer Musikdozentur") and the USA ("Howard Hanson Visiting Professor, Eastman School of Music").
Coming up is the premiere of his “conspiracy myth” operetta
Die letzte Verschwörung (The Last Conspiracy) at the Vienna Volksoper as well as new solo concertos with orchestra for the soloists Elisabeth Kufferath and Konstantyn Napolov. Also in preparation is the interactive video opera Kairosis, which is planned for release on YouTube.
www.moritzeggert.de
Photo: Mercan Fröhlich