Helmut Lachenmann

Lachenmann was born in Stuttgart. He studied the piano from an early age, and in 1957 attented the summer school at Darmstadt. There he met Luigi Nono[?], who was to be a big influence and who encouraged Lachenmann to write music with a political or social message.

Through much of the 1990s, Lachenmann was working on an opera, Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern (The Little Match Seller) based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen).

Further reading

• An interview with Lachenmann appeared in issue 228 (February 2003) of The Wire