- Heinz-Klaus Metzger
Heinz-Klaus Metzger (Born
February 6 1932 inKonstanz ) is a German music critic and theoretician.Metzger studied piano under
Carl Seemann inFreiburg and composition underMax Deutsch inParis . Later, attending a summer course for new music inDarmstadt , he metTheodor W. Adorno ,Edgard Varèse ,Karlheinz Stockhausen andLuigi Nono . Here he found his role as a notable theoretician and proponent ofSerialism in musical theory. He participated as a distinguished contributor to a series of important texts called " Die Reihe". Metzger was among the first critics to promote Stockhausen's music, but was soon a substantial critic of Stockhausen's compositional development.In the 1960s, Metzger was one of the first
Europe an commentators onJohn Cage , and spokesman of the movement called "compositional Anarchy", which resulted in the so called "Kölner Manifest" of 1960, and serving as a copy editor of the magazine "Collage" inPalermo . From 1965 until 1969 he worked as a music critic for the "Zürcher Weltwoche" (Zürich world weekly). In 1969, he founded, together with his partner, composer and conductorRainer Riehn , the 'Ensemble Musica Negativa', where they embraced the performance of radical new music. In 1987, Metzger and Riehn became the chief dramatic advisors of theFrankfurt opera underGary Bertini . During their tenure, the Frankfurt Opera commissioned and premiered John Cage'sEuroperas 1 & 2 .From 1977 to 2002 Metzger and Riehn founded, edited, researched, and provided texts criticism for the musicology series "Musik-Konzepte" (The concepts of music),
Munich "text+kritik-edition"; for this they received the "Deutscher Kritikerpreis" (German critics prize) in 1983. Also, they edited the two first volumes of the "Kompositionen von Adorno" (Compositions of Adorno). Metzger has received honorary doctorates from theBerlin University of the Arts and from theUniversity of Palermo .Works
* "Musik wozu. Literatur zu Noten", with Rainer Riehn, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1980
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