Jörg Widmann
Jörg Widmann (born 19 June 1973) is a German composer, conductor and clarinetist. In 2023, Widmann was the third most performed living contemporary composer in the world. Formerly a clarinet and composition professor at the University of Music Freiburg, he is composition professor at the Barenboim–Said Akademie. His most important compositions are the concert overture Con brio, the opera Babylon, an oratorio Arche, Viola Concerto, Kantate and the trumpet concerto Towards Paradise. Widmann has written musical tributes to Classical and Romantic composers. He was awarded the Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art in 2018 and the Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 2023. He was Gewandhaus Composer of the Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig and Composer in Residence for the Berlin Philharmonic.
Jörg Widmann
19 June 1973
- Clarinetist
- composer
- conductor
- academic teacher
1990–present
Carolin Widmann (sister)
Education[edit]
Widmann was born on 19 June 1973 in Munich, the son of a physicist and a teacher. His sister is the German classical violinist Carolin Widmann.[1] He first took clarinet lessons in 1980.[2] Four years later he became a composition student of Kay Westermann.[2] Widmann attended the secondary school Pestalozzi Gymnasium in Munich.[3] He later studied composition with Hans Werner Henze, Wilfried Hiller, Heiner Goebbels and Wolfgang Rihm.[4] He studied as a clarinetist at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München with Gerhard Starke (1986–1997, Meisterklassendiplom 1997)[5] and at the Juilliard School in New York City with Charles Neidich (1994–1995, Advanced Certificate 1995).[2][6] He furthered his studies at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe (1997–1999).[4][2]
Style[edit]
Widmann cannot be pinned down to a specific personal style.[77] His music has been described as varied and imaginative.[83] In his experimental, absurd breathtaking and technically extreme early work,[84][85][86] Widmann integrates serialism and noise in traditional sources.[87] He focuses on sounds, not tones.[88] Widmann has written pieces without pitches and also purely tonal pieces with exaggerated familiar gestures.[89][87] In many of his compositions, Widmann is in a musical "dialogue" with Classical and Romantic composers such as Mozart,[90] Beethoven,[91] Schumann,[92][93] Mendelssohn,[94][95] Schubert[96][97] and Brahms.[45][98][99] He wrote musical tributes to these composers.[99][45]
Widmann's scores show extremely precise, well-considered structures and instructions.[100] A common instruction is, that the soloist moves around the stage, for example in Viola Concerto, Towards Paradise and Kantate.[101][69] He uses extended techniques in many compositions, such as Con brio.[91][40] Beside the influence of his musical idols, Widmann finds inspiration in literature, poems, paintings and sculptures.[102] He frequently uses literary sources for his compositions, like Matthias Claudius, Klabund, Heinrich Heine, Peter Sloterdijk, Clemens Brentano and Friedrich Schiller in his oratorio ARCHE.[103][104] In his 2023 Bach-homage Kantate (called: "Friedenskantate", peace cantata),[105] he used texts by Matthias Claudius, Jean Paul, Bertolt Brecht, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Gerhardt and from the Bible.[69][106]
(in German and English)
