Composer Dieter Kaufmann Passed Away at the Age of 84

Composer Dieter Kaufmann questioned musical and societal dogmas and encouraged students at the Vienna University of Music to experiment. The 84-year-old was a trailblazer of electro sound in various music genres.

Socially Critical Engagement of Composer Dieter Kaufmann

Kaufmann was born on April 22, 1941, in Vienna, but grew up in Carinthia. He studied German studies, music education, and eventually composition with Austrian greats like Gottfried von Einem and Karl Schiske. This was followed by years of study in Paris with musical role models such as René Leibowitz, Olivier Messiaen, and François Bayle. Together with his wife, singer and actress Gunda König, he founded the K & K Experimental Studio in Vienna in 1975. In addition to engagements as a choir singer at the Vienna opera houses, Kaufmann worked as a journalist and led the composition class at the Carinthian State Conservatory from 1983 to 1990. From 1991 to 2006, he held a professorship in composition at the Vienna University of Music and was head of the Institute for Electroacoustics and Experimental Music there.

Many of Kaufmann's works were characterized by socially critical engagement: "The Death of Trumpeter Kirilenko" is, for example, a memorial piece for a musician murdered by the Nazis. His collaborations with local writers also attracted attention: For the Mozart Year 2006, Kaufmann composed the "Requiem for Piccoletto" based on a libretto by Josef Winkler, and in the New Opera Vienna, "fuge - unfug - e" was premiered in 2008, based on Elfriede Jelinek's play "er nicht als er".

Composer Dieter Kaufmann Was Highly Decorated

In 2020, Kaufmann was represented at the festival "The Improvement of the World" of the sirene Opera Theater with the premiere of the chamber opera "Icarus" based on a text by Thomas Arzt. "The improvement of the world cannot be musically represented so easily. As in politics, music is also about overcoming cherished habits: about liberation from tonic-dominant thinking, without dispensing with the triad as an acoustic phenomenon or the leading tone at the end of a phrase," Kaufmann stated programmatically: "The current trend of seeing music as a means of entertainment rather than as a staple runs parallel to the role of conservatism in art in general, to the rejection of a critical engagement of artists with the present, indeed, to a rejection of everything unfamiliar, foreign, or seemingly foreign, to any form of change even in politics?"

With his productions, Kaufmann toured all over Europe. By invitation, he also played in North and Latin America, in Egypt, and Taiwan. The artist received numerous awards for his operas, chamber music, choral music, piano and organ music, as well as for his electroacoustic compositions and computer music, such as the Composition Prize at the Styrian Autumn 1975, the Ernst Krenek Prize of the City of Vienna 1990, the Prize of the City of Vienna for Music 1991, or the Federal Recognition Award 1996. In 2008, he was awarded the Carinthian State Culture Prize.

(APA/Red)

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