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Thomas Hertel
German composer Thomas Hertel was born in Bad Salzungen, Thuringia on 3 February 1951. He studied musicology in Halle and composition with Siegfried Matthus at the Berlin Academy of Arts.
From 1974 until 1982 he was head of incidental music at the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and also worked as a freelance composer. He was commissioned to write two operas - Leonce and Lena and Till.
The East German regime didn't allow him to travel to IRCAM in Paris, and he was banned from working on cross-genre projects, so he left East Germany in 1985 and devoted himself to musical-scenic projects, realising works for over forty German-speaking theatres. He also taught at music academies and drama schools in Bochum, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich.
From 2002 until 2008 he was head of incidental music at Schauspiel Leipzig, creating a series of experimental musical-scenic works which won him the 2009 Leipzig Theatre Prize.
Following a long illness, Thomas Hertel died in Leipzig on 9 December 2024, aged seventy-three.