Mathias Spahlinger

The first book-length study in English of composer Mathias Spahlinger, one of Germany’s leading practitioners of contemporary music.

One of the most stimulating and provocative figures of the new music scene, Mathias Spahlinger has long been a touchstone for leftist, “critical” composition in Germany, yet his work has received very little attention in Anglophone scholarship until now. 

Spahlinger’s practice offers a unique negotiation of the modernist legacy as well as passionate political and philosophical engagement. Born in 1944, today his position as one of the most venerable exponents of post-WWII modernism in his homeland is undeniable: his music is regularly performed, he has received commissions from many of the major orchestras and new music groups in Germany, and in 2014 he received the Berliner Kunstpreis, Berlin’s top art prize. 

Bringing a critical perspective to Spahlinger’s life and work, this monograph provides an essential reference for scholars of new music and twentieth-century modernism.

Neil Thomas Smith is a composer and postdoctoral researcher at the Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music in the Netherlands. He lives in Edinburgh. 

Martin Iddon is a musicologist and composer and a lecturer at the University of Leeds.