Harry Halbreich

Who is Harry Halbreich?

Harry Halbreich is a Belgian musicologist.

He studied with Arthur Honegger and later with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. From 1970 to 1976 he was Lecturer in Musical Analysis at the Royal Conservatory in Mons. He worked on numerous radio broadcasts and co-founded the Belgian music magazine Crescendo for which he has been major contributor.

He is known for a number of books, articles and studies on modern and contemporary music, including monograph works on Olivier Messiaen, Claude Debussy, Arthur Honegger and Bohuslav Martinů. He has prepared musical catalogues of the works of Honegger and Martinů, and their works are therefore sometimes referred to by their H number. He assisted Nicolas Bacri in orchestrating Honegger's opera, La morte de Sainte Alméenne, originally written in 1918 for voice and piano; the new version was premiered in Utrecht on 26 November 2005, on the 50th anniversary of the composer's death.

Halbreich's interest in modern music has led to articles on composers including contemporary music, particularly Spectral music: Horațiu Rădulescu, Iancu Dumitrescu, Ana-Maria Avram, Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail.