Mathias Spahlinger

German composer born in Frankfurt on 15 October 1944 who trained first in jazz before turning to contemporary composition, studying at the Stuttgart Academy of Music from 1973 to 1978. His politically committed aesthetic questions the social conventions of concert life alongside the nature of musical material itself, drawing on post-Webernian minimalism, musique concrète, improvisation, and notation without resolving into any single system. He taught composition at Freiburg University of Music from 1990 until his emeritus appointment in 2009. His work is published by Breitkopf and Härtel and is widely regarded as among the most philosophically rigorous in European new music.