Bernhard Lang

Who is Bernhard Lang?

Bernhard Lang is an Austrian composer of the experimental and avant-garde school, particularly advocating a style he has self-termed "repetition-perpetrator".

He began his musical studies at the Bruckner Conservatorium in Linz, later moving on to Graz University; both at Karl-Franzens University and the University of Music and Dramatic Arts. Besides composition he studied piano, philosophy, German philology and theory of harmony as well as computer music. His tutors were, amongst others, A. Dobrowolsky and Gösta Neuwirth.

Since 2003 he achieved the position of associate professor of composition at Graz University.

Lang frequently collaborates with artists form other genres including choreographers, electronic musicians, video artists and DJs.

He is particularly known for the provocatively titled opera I Hate Mozart, with libretto by Michael Sturminger, composed for the Viennese Mozart year festival in 2006. Das Theater der Wiederholungen, based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade and William S. Burroughs and choreographed by Xavier Le Roy, was premiered at the Graz in 2003. His Monadology II was given its British premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival in September 2008, broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Monadology uses a concept Lang calls "musical-cellular processing", which Lang says is derived from Leibniz’s Monadology.