Peter Michael Hamel (born 15 July 1947 in Munich) is a German contemporary composer. Over the course of his work, he has been associated with minimalism and the New Simplicity movement. He is the son of the film director Peter Hamel. Hamel studied musical composition, psychology and sociology in Munich and Berlin with teachers including Günter Bialas and Carl Dahlhaus. He then continued his education abroad, spending several extensive periods in Asia.
In 1970, he founded "Between", an international group dedicated to improvisational music with whom he made 6 records on the intuition/WERGO label and in 1978 in Munich, he founded the Freies Musikzentrum, an institute for musical education and therapy. In 1978, his book Through Music to the Self was published in English translation, obtaining wide circulation in Europe and the U.S.
Between 1997 and 2012, he held an academic post as professor for composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Hamburg. His orchestral and chamber music is published by Schott, Bärenreiter and E.R.P./Celestial Harmonies. He has composed four operas, many orchestral works (e.g., Gestalt), violin and piano concertos, sacred works for soprano, choirs and orchestra (e.g., Missa); Shoah (a radio composition about the Holocaust), chamber-music compositions (including four string quartets). His First Symphony was premiered by Sergiu Celibidache in 1988; his Second Symphony had its first performance in Munich on April 29, 2008 with the Munich Philharmonic. In 2007 Hamel's Of the Sound of Life for pianist Roger Woodward was published by Celestial Harmonies. In 2009, parts of his work "last minute", about near-death experiences, were premiered on musica viva.
American minimalist composer Terry Riley has said that
Discography Aura (1972) Hamel (1972) The Voice of Silence (1972) Buddhist Meditation East-West (1975) Nada (1977) Colours of Time (1980) Bardo (1981) Transition (1983) Organum (1986) Let It Play: Selected Pieces 1979-1983 (1987) Arrow of Time / The Cycle of Time (1991) Violinkonzert Diaphainon Gralbilder (1993) De Visione Dei (2001) Hamel: String Quartet No. 3, String Quartet No. 4, String Trio (2007)
See also List of ambient music artists
References
Footnotes Hamel, Peter Michael, 1978. Through Music to the Self: How to Appreciate and Experience Music Anew, translated by Peter Lemesurier. Longmead, Shaftesbury: Element Books. (pbk). In
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