Claus Kühnl

Claus Kühnl (born in Arnstein, Lower Franconia, 17 November 1957) is a German composer and teacher. He lives in Frankfurt am Main.

Kühnl is the eldest child of Gudrun Kühnl (née Schmitt) from Lower Franconia and Wilhelm Kühnl who comes from the Sudetenland.

His musical training began in 1973, first as an external student during his last years of high school and later, as a student at the Hochschule für Musik in Würzburg, studying with Bertold Hummel (composition), Julian von Károlyi (piano), Hanns Reinartz (conducting) and Zsolt Gárdonyi (theory). Important for him at this time were analysis courses in New Music with Klaus Hinrich Stahmer and, from 1978 to 1980, the Student Chamber Orchestra "Musici Allegri", which he himself conducted. In 1980 he successfully finished his state exam in piano and then moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he continued his studies in composition with Hans Ulrich Engelmann at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. There he met the German composer Gerhard Müller-Hornbach, with whom he founded the Mutare Ensemble in 1981. This Frankfurt-based ensemble specialises in the performance of contemporary music and rarely performed classical music.

His first publications appeared at this time and it also marks the beginning of his teaching at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. At first he taught theory but in 1984 was able to start courses in composition and contemporary chamber music. He also taught theory in the musicology department of the Goethe University Frankfurt and at the Music Academy in Darmstadt.

In 1983 he received a grant from the "Cité Internationale des Arts" in Paris where he met Tristan Murail and Henri Dutilleux, whose works he studied intensively. As more commissions for compositions came in he stood down as director of the Mutare Ensemble in 1986. In 1987 he met Wilhelm Killmayer at a course for young composers directed by Killmayer in Hilchenbach. His opera La petite Mort appeared in 1988 – a commission by the Frankfurt Feste (première 1991), and one year later the ensemble piece Duplum. Musik des Lichtes und der Finsternis, a commission by the Philharmonia Ensemble of the Hessischer Rundfunk.

...
Wikipedia