Hans Joachim Hespos

Hans-Joachim Hespos was a German teacher and self-taught composer known for his unique avant-garde style. His expansive worklist contains operas, theatrical scenes, and chamber, choral, and orchestral music. He was born in Emden, Germany, in 1938 and was interested in music from a very young age. He began taking violin lessons in 1946, and he formed a string quartet with other students at his school. Hespos had his first public performance in 1948, and in 1950 he composed some of his first pieces. After he finished the Abitur, he attended the Pädagogische Hochschule Oldenburg and began working as a teacher in 1962. Hespos also continued developing his style as a composer, and he became more serious about it in 1964, after the completion of Für Cello Solo. Three years later, he was awarded the Gaudeamus Foundation composition prize and he started receiving his first commissions as his reputation grew. He won the first prize for composition from the Fondation Royaumont, Paris in 1968, and in 1969 he was awarded a promotion prize from the state of Lower Saxony, and he founded an annual concert series for new music in Delmenhorst. He received several more awards and professional acknowledgements throughout the '70s and gave masterclasses in Israel, Brazil, Japan, and North America. By the time of his departure from his career in education in 1984, he had composed over 60 works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo instruments. Some of his theatrical works utilize vague or unconventional instrumentation such as scrap iron, things in a room, and first-grade schoolchildren. Hespos’ scores also utilize alternative methods like graphic notation and verbal instructions, and his solo piece s o p has no score. NYKAYE, BIMBA from 1987, was his first choral piece, and he began composing for voice and orchestra in 1989. In the '90s he taught at the Academy of Arts and Music in Bremen, and as a guest lecturer at other establishments in Germany and abroad. In 2001, he became the composer in residence at the Hanover State Opera, which premiered his opera iOPAL in 2005. This was chosen by OPERNWELT magazine as the opera premiere of the year, and in 2006, the Bavarian State Library in Munich began housing Hespos’ entire catalog. He remained active as a composer until his death in 2022, and his music has been recorded by Malte Burba, Oliver Kluge, and Enikö Ginzery.
© RJ Lambert /TiVo