Thomas Hertel (composer)

Thomas Hertel (* 1951 in Bad Salzungen , Thuringia ) is a German composer .

Life

After graduating from high school in the special branch for music in Wernigerode, Thomas Hertel studied musicology in Halle from 1969 to 1973 . Afterwards he was a master student for composition at the Academy of Arts in Berlin with Siegfried Matthus . From 1974 to 1982 he was the director of incidental music at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and worked as a freelance composer and head of the Young Composers Section in the Dresden Composers' Association (commissioned operas "Leonce and Lena" and "Till"). He received composition prizes in Halle and the Hans Stieber Prize of the GDR radio. After his compositional support (e.g. by the two Leipzig music publishers Peters and Deutscher Verlag für Musik) he was banned from working and realizing cross-genre projects. After leaving the Federal Republic of Germany in 1985 for artistic and cultural-political reasons, he primarily devoted himself to the realization of musical and scenic projects; including "Cernunnos for 7 pipe players, bulls and live electronics" for the Donaueschinger Musiktage 1993 with the SWR experimental studio ; the opening installation for the Lucerne International Music Festival 1996 "from the earth through the wind" - mobile open-air music for various wind, vocal and bell ensembles and the sound transport of natural sound samples and in 1999 the cartoon opera "The Beast of Monsieur Racine “After Tomi Ungerer on behalf of the Basel Opera . In 1991 he received the Munich City Art Prize for experimental theater. He received teaching positions at music academies and drama schools a. a. in Hamburg, Bochum, Frankfurt and Munich. He realized numerous commissioned works, recitals and plays on over 40 German-speaking stages. From 2002 to 2008 he was the director of drama music at the Schauspiel Leipzig ; There he created the experimental musical and scenic series “mund & knie 1-12”, for which he was awarded the Leipzig Theater Prize in 2009. After living in Dresden, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Vienna and Strasbourg, he has lived in Leipzig since 2002 with his wife Isabella Hertel-Niemann and their children Jules-Elias and Sophie-Marie.

Awards

• 1982: Hans Stieber Prize
• 1982: Hanns Eisler Prize
• 1991: Art Prize of the City of Munich
• 2009: Leipzig Theater Prize

Web links

• Thomas Hertel at the National Theater Weimar
• Thomas Hertel in the archive of contemporary composers of the Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library