Hans Werner Henze - Works

Works

Henze's music has incorporated neo-classicism, jazz, the twelve-tone technique, serialism, and some rock or popular music. He was taught by the German composer Wolfgang Fortner, and Henze's 1947 Violin Concerto shows that he could write in the 12-tone style. He later reacted against atonalism: his opera Boulevard Solitude includes elements of jazz and Parisian popular music.

After his move to Italy in 1953, Henze's music became considerably more Neapolitan in style. His opera König Hirsch ("The Stag King") contains lush, rich textures. This trend is carried further in the opulent ballet music that he wrote for English choreographer Frederick Ashton's Ondine, completed in 1957. While Mendelssohn and Weber were important influences, the music for Ondine contains some jazz and there is much in it redolent of Stravinsky -- not only Stravinsky the neo-classical composer, but also the composer of The Rite of Spring. His Maratona di danza, on the other hand, required much tighter integration of jazz elements, complete with an on-stage band, which was very different from the more romantic Ondine. Henze received much of the impetus for his ballet music from his earlier job as ballet adviser at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden.

The textures for the cantata Kammermusik (1958, rev. 1963) are far harsher; Henze returned to atonalism in Antifone, and later the other styles mentioned above again became important in his music.