Johannes Fritsch

Born on 27 July 1941 in Bensheim-Auerbach; Johannes Fritsch was a composer and university teacher. He studied musicology, sociology, philosophy, viola and composition with Bernd Alois Zimmermann at the university and at the Musikhochschule Köln; in 1965 he took his performance diploma in viola and taught music theory at the Konservatorium der Stadt Köln until 1970. With the Stockhausen-Ensemble he appeared at the World Exposition in Osaka in 1970; in the same year he founded the Feedback Studio with Rolf Gehlhaar and David Johnson, and a year later the publishing house was added. From 1971 to 1984 he led a composition class and the Seminar für Neue Musik at the Akademie für Tonkunst in Darmstadt, where he also taught at the Internationale Ferienkurse in 1974, 1984 and 1986; from 1984 to 2006 he was professor of composition at the Musikhochschule Köln. He was awarded the Förderpreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen in 1966, the prize of the Biennale Paris in 1971 and the Robert-Schumann-Preis of the city of Düsseldorf in 1981; in 1976 he held a fellowship at the Villa Massimo in Rome. He edited the “Feedback Papers” and at his death in 2010 left more than 120 compositions. Nine albums connect him with Cybele, and with him the documentation of the Feedback Studio Köln that the label pursued for a decade and a half: from the sampler for the studio’s twenty-fifth anniversary (1996) through Flötenklang (2000), the DEGEM volume Vol. 6 (2003), Violectra (2003, with David Johnson) and the 3 Trios (2006) to the Early Chamber Music, the Live-Electronic Music and the Damals-Triptychon (all 2011). The series was supported by the Kunststiftung NRW. Beyond this he is involved in one of the label’s audiobook productions.