Reinhard Febel

Reinhard Febel was born in Metzingen, in the German state of Baden-Württemberg, on 3 July 1952. He belongs to the generation of composers who, towards the end of the 1970s, were labelled neo-Romantic and representatives of the so-called "Neue Einfachheit" ("new simplicity"), although he distanced himself from that group because of the solidity of his construction and a sonic sensuality which, in the words of Helmut Lachenmann, he describes as sensitive, brilliant and restrained.

He studied composition, mathematics and musicology in Tübingen and Stuttgart. Between 1978 and 1982 he completed his compositional training with Klaus Huber in Freiburg im Breisgau, and in 1979 he received a scholarship from the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of the SWF broadcasting station. He lived in London between 1983 and 1988. In 1989 he was appointed Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hanover, and in 1997 he took up a composition chair at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. His distinctions include the Beethoven Prize of the city of Bonn (1980), a scholarship from the Villa Massimo in Rome (1984), and composition prizes from the Boswil seminar and the Steinbrenner Foundation in Berlin.

His aesthetic thinking rests on the influence of Zen Buddhism and modern physics, which lead him to conceive musical material as alternating or superimposed relations. He adopts a postmodern stance: his works are heard as composed with tonal methods, yet without belonging to tonality. From Claude Lévi-Strauss he took the concept of bricolage, which became one of his fundamental aesthetic principles.

His catalogue includes the chamber opera Euridice, the opera Sekunden und Jahre des Caspar Hauser, the Sinfonie (1985–6), the Concerto for piano, winds and percussion and numerous chamber works for piano. His legacy lies in his reflection on the history of music as a source of materials, rather than in adherence to a closed style.