Friends Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn
Queer Places:
Dreifaltigkeitsfriedhof I
Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany
Michael Hirsch (2 March 1958 in Munich[1] † 6 February 2017 in Berlin[2]) was a German composer and actor.
Michael Hirsch has been active as a composer since 1976. Initially as an autodidact, he trained his compositional work with Josef Anton Riedl and Dieter Schnebel as well as an actor and speaker in the Freyer Ensemble and with the "Maulwerkern". In addition to instrumental music, music theatre and opera, his compositional oeuvre includes various cross-border hybrid forms with elements of language composition and radio plays. His compositions have been performed at the Donaueschingen Music Days, the Witten Days for New Chamber Music, the Musica Viva (Munich) of the Bavarian Radio, the XIII Cigle de música del segle XX, Barcelona, the Dresden Days of Contemporary Music, the Ultraschall Festival Berlin, the MaerzMusik Berlin and others. Michael Hirsch was awarded the Composition Scholarship of the City of Munich in 1986, the Elisabeth Schneider Prize for Composition in 2001, the Busoni Composition Prize in 2005 and the 2nd Prize in the Composition Competition of the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 2007. In 2008 Michael Hirsch was nominated for the German Music Authors' Prize in the category "Music Theatre" and received a residency scholarship for the Villa Serpentara in Olevano Romano.
In Michael Hirsch's musical works, the "dramaturgical" or "performative" moment is a constant that can be found in various forms in almost all of his compositions. "I would define the term 'performative', which is still quite young in musical terminology," Hirsch wrote, "as referring to the presence of superficially extra-musical-actionist elements that bring scenic-staging moments into a musical work. My penchant for opera, which has existed since my childhood, is certainly the reason for my strong involvement with musical theatre. But while in music theatre the element of the 'performative' goes without saying, there is also a tendency towards musical-scenic hybrid forms in some of my pieces that do not primarily belong to music theatre. Some pieces have a distinctly performance character, but most are chamber music with occasional performative irritations, or a quasi-scenic basic constellation." The most important focal points of Michael Hirsch's work in the last years of his life were compositions for opera and music theatre. In May 2000, his full-length opera Das stille Zimmer was premiered as a commissioned work by the Bielefeld Theatre. In 2003/4 he wrote the short opera La Didone abbandonata for the Dresden Days of Contemporary Music. In 2005, the music theatre Schatten was premiered on behalf of the "Musica Viva" Munich and the chamber opera Eines schönen Tag on behalf of the Hanover State Opera. In 2007 he composed the subway opera Stationendrama for the Stuttgart State Opera. Above all, however, since 2005 Michael Hirsch has been working on a full-length opera project about Celestina from Fernando de Rojas' reading drama La tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea from 1499. As preliminary studies, he had written the chamber operas Die Klage des Pleberio (premiere Berlin 2005), Celestina im Gespräch mit sich (premiere Dresden 2006) and Tragicomedia (premiere Stuttgart 2009).
My published books:
