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Helmut Lachenmann
November 27, 1935 -
born in Stuttgart, Germany, composed during the Contemporary period
Biography
"Expression is created on the reverse face of that on which the composer is working...destruction, deflation, and disintegration. But during this process expressive energy radiates out in the first instance like a creative serenity -- freedom even." -- Helmut Lachenmann

To scratch the grain of one's own voice, to perpetually resist and violate the habitual, to defy nature, only to retrieve, redeem, and reinvent it through that defiance: this strangely antithetical strategy has fueled German composer Helmut Lachenmann's imagination for more than 30 years now. Some have described Lachenmann as a great ironist, occupying opposite perspectives at once; others like Richard Toop have even found in Lachenmann a musical masochist, "denying [himself] what [he] innately loves without seeking to deny the love itself" -- though Lachenmann himself has confessed the desire to "deny denial" as well. But whatever his stance, Lachenmann's music has been a vital voice in later twentieth-century Europe, one tirelessly driven to reinvent musical sounds, meanings, and notational and performance techniques. The manner in which Lachenmann achieves his results, by working "on the reverse face of expression," is thoroughly individual, but has formidable literary and philosophical precedents -- such as Theodor Adorno's advice that "the splinter in your eye is your best defense," or Kafka's obsession with "that self-suiciding art.
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