Walter Steffens (composer)

Walter Steffens, (born 31 October 1934 in Aachen-Burtscheid) is a German composer. He is noted for the diversity of his creative works, but has specialized in opera, as well as music after pictures.

The son of a bridge construction engineer, Steffens grew up in Dortmund. His road to music was a bumpy one, especially since his father could not imagine a career in the fine arts as being a respectable way to earn a living. During the Second World War the Ruhrgebiet was being increasingly bombed, and at the age of eight young Walter was sent, within the Kinderlandverschickung program—the evacuation of children from war zones to the countryside—to the village of Wollenberg in Baden-Württemberg, and was thus separated from his parents and sister. By the end of the war the now 10-year-old had found a home with his grandparents in Bad Pyrmont.

When the family was re-united again and the family's piano, which had been stored safely in the Sauerland during the war, was returned to their home, the young boy was allowed to accompany his father while singing. Walter was given his first music lessons by a woman from the neighborhood. He received his basic musical education from the music director Max Spindler in Dortmund, and this was supplemented by conducting lessons with Rolf Agop, at the Dortmund Conservatory. In Hamburg he studied composition under Ernst-Gernot Klussmann and the Busoni-pupil Philipp Jarnach, as well as music theory under Wilhelm Maler. “I was only able to convince my father about my plans for a musical career after I had finished my school leaving examinations in Münster and passed the entrance examinations for the Hamburg University of Music in 1959,” Steffens recalls. He began his teaching career in 1962 at the Hamburg Conservatory.

Eli op. 7, after the mystery play by Nelly Sachs, which premiered under the direction of Wilhelm Schüchter in 1967, was commissioned by the City of Dortmund on the occasion of the opening of its new Theater House. Under Milk Wood op. 14 (Unter dem Milchwald, 1972), based on the “play for voices” by Dylan Thomas, world premiered at the Hamburg State Opera in 1973 and staged again by Staatstheater Kassel in 1977. Two other operas are noteworthy: Der Philosoph op. 57 (The Philosopher, 1990) and Die Judenbuche op. 65 (The Jew's Beech, 1992), based on a novel by Annette von Droste-Hülshoff.

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