Friedhelm H. Hartmann

Born in Reichenbach in Lower Silesia in 1963, died in Israel on 1 February 2023; Friedhelm Hans Hartmann, also known under the name Freed, was a German composer. From 1980 to 1985 he studied composition with Manfred Weiss and Udo Zimmermann as well as piano at the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber in Dresden. In 1986/87 he was a freelance artistic collaborator at the Studio für elektronische Klangerzeugung Dresden and attended lectures in computer science as a guest student at the Technische Universität Dresden. In 1987/88 he was a master student with Georg Katzer at the Akademie der Künste der DDR; from 1989 he deepened his work in music electronics with Dirk Reith at the ICEM in Essen and developed his computer-based composition language Celsyus. From 1993 to 1995, as a DAAD fellow, he investigated the semiotics of electronic music under Yizhak Sadai at Tel Aviv University. Electronic music, live electronics, instrumental works and music theatre form the focal points of his work. The four-part cycle “Electric Symphony” (1999/2000) draws its sound material solely from the striking and the ticking of a mechanical wall clock. He belonged to the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische Musik and lived latterly south of Tel Aviv. Four albums connect him with Cybele, and they are divided evenly between the two series with which the label documents electroacoustic music: ex machina with tangent (1996) and The Nineties (2001), and the DEGEM volumes LeiseLaute (1997) and kontinuum … bruchlos (2003). His Berlin teacher Georg Katzer is represented in the same catalogue.