Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze in 1960Hans Werner Henze (born July 1, 1926, Gütersloh, Germany) is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life". His music is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Stravinsky, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition.

Henze is also known for his political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his leftist politics and homosexuality. He lives in the village of Marino in the central Italian region of Lazio, and still travels extensively, in particular to Britain and Germany, as part of his work. An avowed Marxist and member of the Communist Party of Italy, Henze has produced compositions honoring Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. The librettist of his requiem for Che Guevara, titled Das Floß der Medusa (The Raft of Medusa), was among several people arrested at the 1968 Hamburg premiere in the riot that followed the placing of a red flag on the stage. Henze spent a year teaching in Cuba, though he later became disillusioned with Castro.

Henze continues to compose today in his mid-eighties.

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Werner_Henze. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.