Hans Peter Haller (26 October 1929 – 16 April 2006) was a German composer and pioneer of

electroacoustic music Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instrumen ...

Life

Born in

Radolfzell Radolfzell am Bodensee is a town in Germany at the western end of Lake Constance approximately 18 km northwest of Konstanz. It is the third largest town, after Constance and Singen, in the district of Konstanz, in Baden-Württemberg. Rado ...

, Haller studied

church music Church music is Christian music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclesiastical liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. History Early Christian music The onl ...

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

from 1947 and took composition lessons with

Wolfgang Fortner Wolfgang Fortner (12 October 1907 – 5 September 1987) was a German composer, composition teacher and conductor. Life Fortner was born in Leipzig. From his parents, who were both singers, Fortner very early on had intense contact with music. ...

and

René Leibowitz René Leibowitz (; 17 February 1913 – 29 August 1972) was a Polish, later naturalised French, composer, conductor, music theorist and teacher. He was historically significant in promoting the music of the Second Viennese School in Paris after ...

. From 1950, he worked as a recording manager and programme editor at Südwestfunk Baden-Baden. From 1954 to 1958, he studied

musicology Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...

at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg with

Wilibald Gurlitt Wilibald Gurlitt (1 March 1889, Dresden – 15 December 1963, Freiburg) was a German musicologist. Gurlitt, son of the art historian Cornelius Gurlitt, attended the St. Anne Semi-Classical Secondary School (''Annenrealgymnasium'') in Dresd ...

. After returning to the Sudwestfunk in 1959, he turned increasingly to electronic and

Neue Musik Neue Musik (English ''new music'', French ''nouvelle musique'') is the collective term for a wealth of different currents in composed Western art music from around 1910 to the present. Its focus is on compositions of 20th century music. It is char ...

. For the composition ''Mantra'', a work commissioned by

Karlheinz Stockhausen Karlheinz Stockhausen (; 22 August 1928 – 5 December 2007) was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is known for his groun ...

for Südwestfunk (1969), Haller built a sound transducer with the engineer Peter Lawo. In 1970, the head of the music department of Südwestfunk, Heinrich Strobel, awarded a double commission for an electroacoustic work to

Cristóbal Halffter Cristóbal Halffter Jiménez-Encina (24 March 1930 – 23 May 2021) was a Spanish classical composer. He was the nephew of two other composers, Rodolfo and Ernesto Halffter and is regarded as the most important Spanish composer of the gene ...

and Haller. The device designed by Haller for this purpose ("Hallers tolle Kiste 4") was the forerunner of the ''Halaphone'', a "fully electronic sound control device for the movement of a sound source in a given space", manufactured by the

Lawo Lawo is an international company based in Rastatt, Germany, specializing in the manufacture of digital mixing consoles and other professional audio equipment. It was founded in 1970 by Peter Lawo, and is currently run by his son Philipp. The comp ...

company. In 1972, Haller became director of the newly founded experimental studio of the ''Heinrich Strobel Foundation'' of Südwestfunk. Halffter's ''Planto por las Victimas de la Violencia'', the first work with electronic spatial sound control, was

premiere A première, also spelled premiere, is the debut (first public presentation) of a play, film, dance, or musical composition. A work will often have many premières: a world première (the first time it is shown anywhere in the world), its first ...

d at the

Donaueschinger Musiktage The Donaueschingen Festival (german: Donaueschinger Musiktage, links=no) is a festival for new music that takes place every October in the small town of Donaueschingen in south-western Germany. Founded in 1921, it is considered the oldest festiv ...

. From the early 1980s onwards, the Experimental Studio produced

Luigi Nono Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music. Biography Early years Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...

's entire late work, who compared Haller's importance for these compositions to that of Joseph Joachim for Brahms'

Violin Concerto A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ensemble (customarily orchestra). Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up thro ...

. In particular, the late major work ''

Prometeo ''Prometeo'' (''Prometheus'') is an "opera" by Luigi Nono, written between 1981 and 1984 and revised in 1985. Here the word "opera" carries the generic Italian meaning of "works", as in work of art, and not its usual meaning. Indeed, Nono scornf ...

'' would not have been realisable in this form without Haller's collaboration. In addition to Nono, Haller also worked with composers such as

Pierre Boulez Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war Western classical music. Born in Mont ...

(''Répons''),

Kazimierz Serocki Kazimierz Serocki (3 March 1922 – 9 January 1981) was a Polish composer and one of the founders of the Warsaw Autumn contemporary music festival. Life Serocki was born in Toruń. He studied composition with Kazimierz Sikorski and piano w ...

(''Pianophonie''),

Brian Ferneyhough Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and ...

, (''Time and Motion Study''),

Dieter Schnebel Dieter Schnebel (14 March 1930 – 20 May 2018) was a German composer, theologian and musicologist. He composed orchestral music, chamber music, vocal music and stage works. From 1976 until his retirement in 1995, Schnebel served as professor of e ...

(''Monotonies'') and Emmanuel Nunes (''Wandlungen'') together. In addition, Haller taught at the

University of Freiburg The University of Freiburg (colloquially german: Uni Freiburg), officially the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg (german: Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), is a public university, public research university located in Freiburg im Breisg ...

and the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universit ...

as well as at the

Hochschule für Musik Freiburg ' (, plural: ') is the generic term in German for institutions of higher education, corresponding to ''universities'' and ''colleges'' in English. The term ''Universität'' (plural: ''Universitäten'') is reserved for institutions with the right to ...

from 1974 to 1990. At the end of 1989, Haller took early retirement to write a documentary about the Experimental Studio and the research into electronic sound transformation on behalf of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation. ("Das Experimentalstudio der Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung des Südwestfunks Freiburg 1971–1989. Die Erforschung der Elektronischen Klangumformung und ihre Geschichte.", 2 volumes, Verlag Nomos, Baden-Baden 1995–96).Hans Peter Haller
on AllMusic Haller died in

Denzlingen Denzlingen is a municipality in the district of Emmendingen, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated north of Freiburg. Geography Denzlingen is located in the Upper Rhine Valley (''Oberrheinische Tiefebene'') at the edge of the Black F ...

at age 76.

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Haller, Hans Peter German electronic musicians 20th-century German composers 20th-century classical composers 1929 births 2006 deaths People from Radolfzell