Theo Brandmüller's music makes a direct access possible, without currying favour or compromising itself. This is not due to change, for Brandmüller is a magician of tones. His music exercises a suggestive power which leaves no listener indifferent.
(ISCM World Music Days, Luxemburg, 2000)

Foto © by Charlotte Oswald, Wiesbaden

1948	born in Mainz on 2 February
1964	first public appearance as a composer and pianist
1968-1975	music education and church-music studies in Mainz and Detmold (A-Exam), organ with Helmut Tramnitz
1970-1975	composition studies with Giselher Klebe
1972	Encouragement Prize for Composers of Rhineland Palatinate
1976/77	study of "Neues Musiktheater" in Cologne with Mauricio Kagel; studies with Cristóbal Halffter in Madrid
since 1976	lecturer at the "Jugend komponiert" courses of the "Jeunesses musicales", later also at the "Forum junger Komponisten" at Weikersheim Palace
1977	First Composition Prize of the city of Stuttgart Encouragement Prize of the Südwestfunk Baden-Baden
1977/78	organ (classe supérieure) with Gaston Litaize, and composition with Olivier Messiaen in Paris
since 1979	professor of composition, analysis and organ improvisation at the "Hochschule des Saarlandes für Musik und Theater"
1979	Rome Prize of the Villa Massimo
since 1982	titular organist at the Ludwigskirche in Saarbrücken
since 1986	adviser of the "Consociatio Internationalis Musicae Sacrae" in Rome
1986	Great Art Prize of the Saarland
1986, 1988	lecturer and director of the "Table d'orgue" at the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt
1998	Art Prize of Rhineland Palatinate
2002, 2004	Guest professorship at the Universidad Católica of Santiago de Chile
2005	Honorary degree of the "Observatoire des Relations Franco-Allemandes pour la Construction Européenne" Invitation to the Composers Forum at the Mozarteum Salzburg Workshops and concerts at the Chung Ang University in Seoul and the Goethe-Institut in Rio de Janeiro
2007	Honorary guest of the Villa Massimo
2008	Sacral Music Award of the city of Saarlouis
Career	International concert activity as organist, particularly as a performer of contemporary organ music

"Traditions are like streetlights: they light the way, but only drunkards cling to them", replied Theo Brandmüller in 1983 when, in a survey conducted by a music journal, he was asked about the composer's relationship to tradition and to the passing on of tradition in composition teaching. Brandmüller, who has been teaching composition, music theory and a number of other subjects at the "Hochschule des Saarlandes für Musik und Theater" for about twenty years now, likes to relate this bonmot to his students to help make them aware of the importance of following their own path. Brandmüller himself, whose oeuvre now comprises more than 80 works, has always been faithful to the spirit of this observation. The creative assimilation of tradition is a basic impulse in his compositional process, whereby music history is on fairly equal footing with literature, the visual arts and religion. In a word: virtually every expression of human existence can move the composer to his own creative interpretation.

In view of this matrix, it is not surprising that one finds two fundamental and only seemingly irreconcilable positions in Brandmüller's oeuvre: a marked predilection for humor and the explicit and detailed formulation of mythic-cultic, even religious subjects. This ambivalence was apparent from the start. After completing his studies in music education in 1971 with a thesis on "Musical Humor in Viennese Classicism", Brandmüller went on to study church music. Since then, he has occupied several church organist posts in addition to pursuing an active concert agenda as organist. In view of this dichotomy, his choice of composition teachers was also certainly not left to chance: he studied with Giselher Klebe in Detmold, Mauricio Kagel in Cologne, Olivier Messiaen in Paris, and he also maintained intensive contacts with Cristóbal Halffter in Madrid.
Messiaen, in particular, exerted a long-lasting influence not only on Brandmüller's writing, but also on his playing: Brandmüller often performs Messiaen's organ works, along with those of other contemporaries. What both composers have in common is a love of the organ and its liturgical function, even if they both freed themselves at an early stage from its cultic limitations. Common to each is also an optimistic view of music as a more or less generally understandable idiom formed of sounds. To help concretize a palpable and almost semantic sense of language in his music, he sometimes borrows Messiaen's "langage communicable" and the "alphabet des sons et des durées". We encounter these techniques, for example, in Enigma (1989) for violin and organ, the compositional premise for which was derived from the well-known and unique Latin palindrome SATOR / AREPO / TENET / OPERA / ROTAS.

Brandmüller also relies on the expressive qualities of language in the works which deal with the biography and writings of the Spanish poet and dramatist Federico García Lorca, who was murdered by the Falangists in 1936. Next to Christian Morgenstern, Lorca is the most important literary figure for Brandmüller. In his Lorca pieces - the String Trio "Cis-Cantus II" (1986), the orchestral work Cis-Cantus III "Lorca-Kathedralen" (1987) and his still unsurpassed opus magnum "Und der Mond heftet ins Meer ein langes Horn aus Licht und Tanz ..." (1992/93) - the personal, intimate Lorca tone of sorrow C sharp is always at the center of the compositional concept. The symbolism inherent in Lorca's language also plays a clear role in regulating the harmony, which is based on the circle of thirds and fifths and on a dodecaphony derived from it. Here, Brandmüller condenses Lorca's mythical language, even if this language itself remains unspoken, in a virtually sacred sphere whose musical emblems are seen by the composer, at least, as the symbols "with which one accedes to the divine" (Brandmüller, with reference to Nicolaus von Cues).

Since the early 1990s, one name has been turning up increasingly in Brandmüller's compositions and writings on music, a name that formerly would never have been spontaneously associated with Brandmüller and that one would have sought in vain in this context: John Cage. This is a case where the college teacher Brandmüller seems to have learned something from his students, in the sense of Schoenberg. In his work with Saarbrücken's students of music and musicology, Brandmüller found precisely what he himself had always been recommending to his students: a new, personal "streetlight". Since then, the emblematic note-name C.A.G.E. has not only formed a nucleus for some of his organ improvisations, but also provided the framework for one of his latest pieces, "Nirwana-Fax I" (in memoriam John Cage) for chamber ensemble (1996/97). That same year, Brandmüller dedicated a second fax with a similar title to Olivier Messiaen. The fact that Brandmüller has placed his most important teacher and certainly most significant "guiding light" in the immediate vicinity of Cage, whom he discovered for himself at a considerably later date, marks a new moment, an expansion, in his oeuvre which cannot yet be fully appreciated. The influence of Cage's oeuvre has already left its first traces in Brandmüller's musical philosophy. "There will be more rests in the music I shall be writing in the future", offered Brandmüller in a conversation. Such modifications of his compositional philosophy and the integration of new discoveries are characteristic for Theo Brandmüller, who sees himself as a homo ludens musicus, a composer who is always searching for his own path, but who does so with a combination of lightness and seriousness.

Stefan Fricke (1999)
(Translation: Roger Clément)

Writings by Theo Brandmüller

Brandmüllers writings are nearly all included in the book Theo Brandmüller: Arrièregarde - Avantgarde. Texte zur Musik 1980-1998, edited by Stefan Fricke, Wolf Frobenius, Sigrid Konrad and Friedrich Spangemacher, Saarbrücken: Pfau, 1998

Further writings:

Komponieren ohne Bleistift. Improvisation an der Orgel, in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 170 (2009), Heft 1, S. 38f.



Writings on Theo Brandmüller (Selection)

Dorfmüller, Joachim: Impulse von Perotin bis Messiaen. Zum Schaffen Theo Brandmüllers für und mit Orgel, in: Musica Sacra 9/1980
ders.: Zeitgenössische Orgelmusik, Wolfenbüttel, Zürich, 1983
Döpke, Doris: Wie man Komponist wird. Theo Brandmüller, Professor und auch Organist,
in: Saarbrücker Zeitung vom 23./24. März 1989
Fricke, Stefan: Artikel "Theo Brandmüller", in: Komponisten der Gegenwart, hrsg. von Hanns-Werner Heister und Walter-Wolfgang Sparrer, München 1992
ders.: Kiss me cis. Anrisse über Theo Brandmüllers Musik, in: Saarbrücker Hefte 79/80 (1998)
Lewinski, Wolf-Eberhard von: Theo Brandmüller. Organist und Komponist, in: Mainzer Vierteljahresheft für Kultur, Wirtschaft, Geschichte 2/1982
Nonnweiler, Jörg: Analyse der 7 Orgelstücke zur Passionszeit nach Reliefs von Richard Heß von Theo Brandmüller, in: Musica sacra 2/1987
Oehrlein, Josef: Ein Komponist von Dichtern beeinflusst, in: Neue Musikzeitung 2/1983
ders.: [Theo Brandmüller], in: Komponistenprospekt Theo Brandmüller, Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1989
Philippi, Daniela: Komponieren als innere Notwendigkeit des homo ludens. Zum 50. Geburtstag von Theo Brandmüller, in: Musik und Kirche 1/1998
dies.: Arrièregarde - Avantgarde. Theo Brandmüller erhielt den Kunstpreis Rheinland-Pfalz, in: Orgel International 1/1999
dies.: „Die Orgel erzieht die Seele“. Zum Orgelschaffen von Theo Brandmüller, in: Organ 11 (2008), Heft 3, S. 32-41
Schlee, Thomas Daniel: Wege gegen die Orientierungslosigkeit. Theo Brandmüller zum 60. Geburtstag, in: Musik und Kirche, 78 (2008), Heft 1, S. 48f
Schulze-Florey, Andreas: Fagott für Gourmets. Theo Brandmüller: Katgurmondisedootrisch, in: Tibia 3/1993
Spangemacher, Friedrich: Innenlicht und Grotten von Eyzies. Theo Brandmüller zum 50. Geburtstag, in: Musica sacra 1/1998


Television Portraits

"Leise Lieder sing' ich Dir bei Nacht", portrait broadcast SWF television 1978 (45'), among other things the composition "Morgenstern - Abendstern", manuscript and direction: Bernhard Pfister

"Theo Brandmüller - Organist, Komponist, Musikprofessor", portrait broadcast SR television 1988 (45') with parts from the works "Missa Morgenstern", "Antigone" and "Cis-Cantus III", direction: Manfred Heikaus

Musik der Stille und Obertöne (1972)
für Klaviertrio und Schlagzeug
UA Darmstadt, 27. April 1972
Bote & Bock

Cantico delle creature (1975/76)
für Altstimme und Orgel
UA Berlin, 10. Oktober 1976
Israeli Music Publications, Tel Aviv

Ach, trauriger Mond (1977)
für Schlagzeug und Streicher
UA Mainz, 5. Oktober 1977
Bote & Bock

Hommage à Pérotin (1978)
für Orgel
UA Paris, 27. August 1978
Bote & Bock

Venezianische Schatten (1981)
für kleines Orchester
UA Berlin, 30. Juni 1982
Bote & Bock

Konzert für Orgel und Orchester (1981)
UA Leipzig, 30. April 1991
Bote & Bock

Innenlicht (1982)
für Orgel
UA Chartres, 29. August 1982
Bote & Bock

2 Noëls (1983)
für Orgel
UA Bonn, 5. November 1985
Universal Edition

Architectura Caelestis (1994)
für Klarinette, Schlagzeug (3 Spieler) und Orgel
UA Saarbrücken, 28. September 1994
Ms.

Carillon-Fax from Gutenberg (1999)
für Orchester
UA Mainz, 1. Januar 2000
Ms.