Helmut Lachenmann étudie le piano avec Jürgen Uhde, la théorie et la composition avec Johann Nepomuk David (1955-1958). Il poursuit ses études à Venise auprès de Luigi Nono qui marquera profondément la personnalité musicale du jeune compositeur allemand.
De 1963 à 1965, il suit les cours de musique nouvelle de Karlheinz Stockhausen à Cologne. Après un stage au Studio électronique de Gand et l'obtention du premier prix de la ville de Munich en 1965, il enseigne à la Musikhochschule de Stuttgart (1966-1970) puis à Ludwigsburg (1970-1976). Il est ensuite nommé professeur de composition à Hanovre (1976-1981) puis à Stuttgart (1981-1999). En 2010, il est professeur invité à la Musikhochschule de Bâle.
Parmi les nombreuses invitations à donner des séminaires de composition, citons Darmstadt, Bâle, Toronto, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Tokyo, Acanthes, New York, Harvard…
La musique d'Helmut Lachenmann, qu'il appelle « Klang Komposition » (la composition du son), vient « à la fois d’une épuration esthétique et un rejet profond de toute forme d’ordre pré-codifiée. Composée de grincements, frottements et crissements, elle mène principalement à une réflexion sur le son et le bruit. » Il est Docteur Honoris Causa des universités de Hanovre, Dresde et Cologne et membre des Académies des Arts de Berlin, Hambourg, Leipzig, Mannheim, Munich et Bruxelles.
Parmi ses nombreux Prix et distinctions, citons – entre autres – Le Prix de la Fondation Ernst von Siemens (1997) ; le Lion d'Or de la Biennale de Venise (2008) ; Prix musique de la fondation BBVA (2011) ; Officier de l'ordre du Mérite de la République fédérale d'Allemagne (2011) ; Prix Hans Christian Andersen (2016)…
Sources : France musique et Ircam
Helmut Lachenmann's My Melodies begins tumultuously with an orchestral tutti. Only gradually does a microtonally fluctuating horn tone emerge from this creative chaos, before the breath sounds of the horn group determine the musical events, which resound over a delicate veil of the string player's high pitches. Generally, the work opens up new dimensions of spatial sound, making music the "object of observation" and the concert hall the "place of adventure" (Lachenmann). The composition, according to its creator, was a special challenge because he was forced "to find something like harmony with the set of instruments of eight horns. There are now four tones, two tones, eight tones. And, of course, they wanted to be tuned and designed. I began to write down the respective unused notes, to avoid penetrating octave doublings and to explore new chord relations. Chord: that is, the combination of the same sound sources form an interval complex, which tones begin and end more or less simultaneously.
Apart from a few passages in which the horns emerge soloistically as a collection of tone colours, they are firmly integrated into the acoustic texture of the orchestra and, with their characteristic tone colour, they create a variety of resonant and associative spaces.
Berlin Philharmonic, March 2019
"I always have to do what I can't do. And the story with the eight horns is simple: When I rehearsed my opera 'Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern' (The girl with the matches), in which eight horns also appear, there was only a partial rehearsal with the horn players. And that sounded so beautiful - more beautiful than the entire opera. Then I thought: This is a new device! There are no soloists in the classical sense, in which each individual plays a virtuoso figure or something similar. These eight - that is one single instrument. It's not about new sounds, it's about new hearing. But to place the antennas on this energy of hearing, I first had to suspend the view on the melody. That was a reason to avoid the 'Melodious', or at least to keep it totally in check. Now everyone is waiting for a melody and, of course, I will have to disappoint them all.
My Melodies are simply not 'my melodies' - they don't exist - however, Frank Sinatra sends his regards: "They convey 'my way' of melodies in the creative handling of the means of sound."
Helmut Lachenmann, 2018