Reinhard Febel

Biography

Reinhard Febel (born 3 July 1952) is a German composer, notable for his operas. He is also a music theorist and a university professor at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover and the Mozarteum.

Career

Febel was born in Metzingen, Baden-Württemberg, and first studied music and piano with Jürgen Uhde at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. On a recommendation from Helmut Lachenmann he studied composition from 1979, with Klaus Huber at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and at the IRCAM in Paris where he attended courses in electronic music in 1982. On a commission of the Bayerische Staatsoper he composed the chamber opera Euridice, premiered in 1983. He described his work "The musical world of Euridice is a hybrid of instrumentation, pastiche, collage, composition, sound-noise, and song-language-speech particles." He worked from 1983 to 1988 as a freelance composer in London, in 1984 in Rome on a scholarship of the Villa Massimo. In 1985 his Symphony, composed for the Youth Orchestra of the European Community, was premiered at the Donaueschinger Musiktage.
In 1989 he took over the Chair of Composition and Music Theory at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover. In 1992 his opera in three acts Sekunden und Jahre des Caspar Hauser (Seconds and years of Caspar Hauser) on a libretto by Lukas Hemleb was premiered at the Opernhaus Dortmund. In 1996 WERGO recorded his Variations for Orchestra, Das Unendliche (The Infinite) for mezzo-soprano, baritone and orchestra, and his first string quartet, played by the Arditti Quartet. Joseph Stevenson described Variations for Orchestra as "a highly individual, strikingly mysterious one-movement orchestral piece in a post-modern style that mixes tonality and atonality in a freely chromatic technique." Das Unendliche on a poem by Giacomo Leopardi begins with an instrumental reference to the opera Euridice. The string quartet shows elements of American Minimal music and is written in a notation of eight lines, two for each player. In 2003 Wolkenstein, Lieder und Chöre nach Texten und Melodien des Oswald von Wolkenstein (Wolkenstein, songs and choruses after texts and tunes of Oswald von Wolkenstein) was first performed at the Berliner Philharmonie. Triptychon is a "Kammermusiktheater für zwei Sänger, zwei Schauspieler und Kammerorchester nach drei Gemälden von Frida Kahlo, Edward Hopper und Diego Velázquez" (chamber music theater for two singers, two actors and chamber orchestra on three paintings by Frida Kahlo, Edward Hopper and Diego Velázquez) on a text by the composer. The three parts are entitled "Frida", "Gespensterhaus" (Ghost house) and "Raum 17" (Room 17). The opera was premiered in 2009 at the Opernhaus Kiel.
Over the years he spent periods of study, teaching and composing abroad, including in South America (Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina), New Zealand, South Africa (University of Natal) and Cameroon, and in cities such as Skopje, Edinburgh and Riga. Since 1997 he has been professor of composition at the Mozarteum University of Salzburg.

Stage works

Frida, Gespensterhaus and Raum 17 were presented as Triptychon, an operatic triptych based on paintings.
Febel's works have been published by Ricordi.

Literature

Günter Katzenberger (editor): Reinhard Febel. Beiträge zu seinem musikalischen Schaffen. Hannoversche Gesellschaft für Neue Musik. Ricordi, Feldkirchen 1994, ISBN 3-9803090-4-5.