Composer Wolfgang Rihm passed away on July 27, at the age of 72.

Rihm was born in Karlsruhe on March 13, 1952. He was an enthusiastic choir singer and began composing at age eleven. At the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, he studied music theory and composition. He went on to compose over 500 works including several operas.

Rihm was a professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe from 1985, and was a teacher to opera composer Rebecca Saunders. He was a composer who was a resident of the BBC, at the Lucerne Festival, and the Salzburg Festival. In 2001, he was honored as an officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2003. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Berlin.

For more than 40 years, Rihm was an intrinsic part of the Salzburg Festival. In 1982, the world premiere of his first work, “Fremde Szene” was presented at the Salzburg Festival. The Festival also gave the world premiere of his opera fantasy “Dionysos” in 2010, and two other world premieres of the composer’s instrumental works. In 2000, the Festival dedicated a series of seven concerts to him, “Portrait Wolfgang Rihm,” which was followed by the series “Continent Rihm” and “Homage Wolfgang Rihm” in 2022. He was a keynote speaker at the Festival in 1991 and in 2021 gave the acclaimed “Speech on the Century.” On his 70th birthday, the Salzburg Festival chose him as the first composer to receive its Festival Brooch with Rubies.

In 2017, Rihm was diagnosed with cancer. During a 2020 interview with The New York Times he said, “Of course, like every person, I’m physically approaching the end. But I’m not at the end of my creative energy.”