Hubert Stuppner

Hubert Stuppner (born 19 January 1944 in Trodena, near Bolzano) is an Italian composer whose career combines academic training in Italy with an early presence on the international contemporary music circuit. He studied piano and composition at the Bolzano Conservatory and musicology at the University of Padua, where he obtained his doctorate in 1965.

His international profile came in 1970, when he won the Gaudeamus competition. Between 1970 and 1974 he attended summer courses at Darmstadt, where he worked, among others, with Stockhausen, Ligeti and Xenakis. In 1975 he founded the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Bolzano, and in 1981 he was appointed director of the conservatory in that city.

Until 1975 his works show a strong influence of the Darmstadt school. He then moved away from serialism and, starting from the premise that musical development had come to an end, adopted a postmodern style grounded in the repertoire of the past. The chamber opera Totentanz (1978) ironically paraphrases elements of Verdi's La traviata, and other pieces employ similar procedures, often with a very pronounced black humour. Later he sought musical archetypes through which to understand the primary psychological modes of perception, and created a neo-neoclassical 'music about music', based on the historical repertoire but without literal quotation. Quasi una sinfonia (1981), the First Symphony (1985), which takes Mahler's Sixth as its starting point, and KV 1991 (1989–90), linked to Mozart, illustrate this line.

His importance lies in having been one of the Italian composers who, coming from the avant-garde, embraced postmodernism with an ironic view of tradition. His catalogue spans opera, ballet, vocal works, orchestral and chamber music, and his principal publishers were Edition Modern and Ricordi.