Peter Michael Hamel (born 15 July 1947 in Munich) is a German composer. His works have been associated with the minimalist style of composition, and in the late 1970s with the New Simplicity movement.
He is the son of the film director Peter Hamel. Hamel studied musical composition, psychology and sociology in Munich and Berlin with teachers including Günter Bialas and Carl Dahlhaus. He then continued his education abroad, spending several extensive periods in Asia. [1]
In 1970, he founded "Between", an international group dedicated to improvisational music with whom he made 6 records on the intuition/WERGO label and in 1978 in Munich, he founded the Freies Musikzentrum, an institute for musical education and therapy. In 1978, his book Through Music to the Self [2] was published in English translation, obtaining wide circulation in Europe and the U.S. [3]
Between 1997 and 2012, he was professor for composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. [1] His orchestral and chamber music is published by Schott, Bärenreiter and E.R.P./Celestial Harmonies. He composed four operas, many orchestral works (e.g., Gestalt), violin and piano concertos, sacred works for soprano, choirs and orchestra (e.g., Missa); Shoah (a radio-composition about the Holocaust), chamber-music compositions (including four string quartets). He is in demand as a performing artist (piano, prepared piano, pipe organ, voice and live-electronics). His First Symphony was premiered by Sergiu Celibidache in 1988; his Second Symphony had its first performance in Munich on April 29, 2008 with the Munich Philharmonic. In 2007 Hamel's Of the Sound of Life for pianist Roger Woodward was published by Celestial Harmonies. In 2009 parts of his music theatre "last minute" on Near Death Experiences has been premiered in musica viva.
American minimalist composer Terry Riley has said:
...Peter's heart did not seem to be aligned alone with the post Webern traditions that had emerged so prevalently in Germany. His sensibilities were attracted more to American minimalism and Indian music and to some degree Rock and Jazz. In this sense he stands apart in the field of modern music of Germany. He has recognized the vast importance of improvisation and being "in the moment" in music performance. He realizes the importance of experimentation and of finding new ways to notate his ideas. However, his music is at the same time rooted in the great German tradition and today he is recognized as a major figure whose compositions have greatly enriched the development of 20th and 21st century repertoire.... [4]
John Coolidge Adams is an American composer and conductor. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, many of which center around historical events. Apart from opera, his oeuvre includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic, and piano music.
Philip Glass is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimalism, being built up from repetitive phrases and shifting layers. Glass describes himself as a composer of "music with repetitive structures", which he has helped to evolve stylistically.
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, improvisation, and delay systems. His best known works are the 1964 composition In C and the 1969 album A Rainbow in Curved Air, both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music. Subsequent works such as Shri Camel (1980) explored just intonation.
Charles Peter Wuorinen was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He also performed as a pianist and conductor. Wuorinen composed more than 270 works: orchestral music, chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal works, and operas, such as Brokeback Mountain. His work was termed serialist but he came to disparage that idea as meaningless. Time's Encomium, his only purely electronic piece, received the Pulitzer Prize. Wuorinen taught at several institutions, including Columbia University, Rutgers University and the Manhattan School of Music.
Pēteris Vasks is a Latvian composer.
Gloria Coates was an American composer who lived in Munich from 1969 until her death. She trained and worked also as actress, stage director, singer, author and painter. She is known for her many symphonies, and also wrote chamber music, and vocal music for large and small ensembles. Her compositions have been performed internationally and recorded by notable orchestras. She ran a concert series for new music in Munich. Her First Symphony "Music on Open Strings" was played at the 1978 Warsaw Autumn and was the first composition by a woman in the musica viva series of Bayerischer Rundfunk.
Hans Abrahamsen is a Danish composer born in Kongens Lyngby near Copenhagen. His Let me tell you (2013), a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, was ranked by music critics at The Guardian as the finest work of the 21st-century. His opera The Snow Queen was commissioned and premiered by the Royal Danish Theatre in 2019.
Peter Ruzicka is a German composer and conductor of classical music. He was director of the Hamburg State Opera, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Hamburg and the Salzburg Festival. Ruzicka was managing director and Intendant of the Salzburg Easter Festival and is professor at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. The list of his compositions includes numerous orchestral and chamber music works as well as the opera "Celan", about the poet Paul Celan, which was premiered in Dresden in 2001. His opera "Hölderlin" had its premiere at the Berlin State Opera in 2008. Ruzicka's third opera "Benjamin", about the philosopher Walter Benjamin, was written in 2015/16 for the Hamburg State Opera and premiered in 2018.
Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer, conductor, author, and professor. During the course of a professional career which ranges over six decades he has served as a faculty member at both the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. In addition, he is credited with founding and conducting the Seventh Army Symphony Orchestra which participated in the cultural diplomacy initiatives of the United States in Germany and throughout Europe in the aftermath of World War II. Adler's musical catalogue includes over 400 published compositions. He has been honored with several awards including Germany's Order of Merit – Officer's Cross.
John Roger Smalley was an Anglo-Australian composer, pianist and conductor. Professor Smalley was a senior honorary research fellow at the School of Music, University of Western Australia in Perth and honorary research associate at the University of Sydney.
John McCabe was a British composer and pianist. He created works in many different forms, including symphonies, ballets, and solo works for the piano. He served as director of the London College of Music from 1983 to 1990. Guy Rickards praised him as "one of Britain's finest composers in the past half-century" and "a pianist of formidable gifts and wide-ranging sympathies".
Raymond Henry Charles Warren is a British composer and university teacher.
Robert Carl is an American composer who currently resides in Hartford, Connecticut. He was chair of the composition program at the Hartt School, University of Hartford.
Max Butting was a German composer.
Gediminas Gelgotas is a Lithuanian composer, conductor and self-performing artist.
Hanna Kulenty is a Polish composer of contemporary classical music. Since 1992, she has worked and lived both in Warsaw (Poland) and in Arnhem (Netherlands).
Eduard Hayrapetyan is an Armenian composer of contemporary classical music and educator.
John Buckley is an Irish composer and pedagogue, a co-founder of the Ennis Summer School and a member of Aosdána.
Philip Sawyers is a British composer of orchestral and chamber music, including six symphonies.