Boris Blacher

Boris Blacher was born in Niutschuang (China) in 1903 to German-Baltic parents of Russian nationality. After spending his childhood and youth in China, Siberia and Manchuria, he came to Berlin in 1922 to study, which subsequently became the center of his life. The spirit of the Weimar Republic laid the foundation for an objective and transparent compositional style, which Blacher adhered to until his death in 1975, despite his openness to innovations such as twelve-tone technique and electronic music. Blacher was able to confidently combine his compositional activity with his cultural and political work. From 1948 to 1970, he was professor of composition at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, and from 1953 he was also its director. In 1955, he was appointed a member of the West Berlin Academy of Arts, which he headed as vice president from 1956 and as president from 1968 to 1971. From 1966 he was also a member of the East Berlin Academy of the Arts and, as an intimate friend of Paul Dessau, he attached great importance to the cultural dialog between the parts of Berlin and Germany separated by the Iron Curtain.
This volume brings together recent works on the composer's life and work as well as a previously unpublished tribute by his companion Nicolas Nabokov and a conversation with Blacher's widow, the pianist Gerty Herzog.
With contributions by David Drew, Thomas Eickhoff, Christopher Grafschmidt, Jürgen Hunkemöller, Stephan Mösch, Hans-Jürgen Radecke, Aribert Reimann, Gerd Rienäcker and Dietmar Schenk as well as an inventory of the music in the Boris Blacher Archive.

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