“ I wrote my first composition on the
day of my tenth birthday. Since then I knew that I am a composer. I
didn’t ask myself why: it just happened that way. And thus it has
remained until today. Later on – especially around 1968 – I asked
myself often, as was fashionable at the time: why – and mainly for whom
– I was composing. I found then different, more or less convincing
answers – but a composer really doesn’t know the essential and profound
motivation of what he is doing.
Making
music is an expression of my will to live and of my vitality;
that’s how I experience life, process it, and position myself in it. It
is for me a possibility to conquer and “construct” freedom. I am my
first listener and my first critic. If others like what I do, I am
happy.” Luca
Lombardii
Luca
Lombardi one of the most renowed composeras of Italy.
Even
though his Jewish mother had suffered from the persecution of the
Nazi regime, his parents sent him to the German Gymnasium in
Rome. This very
conscious and courageous decision had a formative influence
on Lombardis strong affinity
with
the German
cultural
tradition, but also inspired him to reflect
in
his essais and compositions as well as in concert lectures the break
of this
tradition by the Nazis.
After his gradutaion, he studied in
Rome,
Florence, Vienna, Cologne and Berlin (with Porena, Lupi,
Stockhausen, Schiske B.A. Zimmermann, Dessau e.a.). At
Rome University
he earned a PhD in German Literature (“Lingua e Letteratura Tedesca”).
From 1973-1994 he was a professor of
composition at the
conservatories
of
Milan and Pesaro.
In
2008 he
acquired the Israeli
citizenship
and since then he divides his
time between Lake Albano (Rome) and Tel
Aviv..
Most of Lombardi's
compostions are
pointing beyond music to political
or
philosophical
issues. In the last years, his
strong aversion against any
form of racism, especially
in
the form of antisemitism, took a greater importance.
His work with up to now
around 170
compositions,
among which numerous commissions (given among others by
several German, Swiss and Italian radios, the Wiener Festwochen, the
opera houses of Basel, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Rome, Milan (La Scala),
include 4 operas (Faust.
Un
travestimento, Dmitri, Prospero, Il re
nudo), several symphonies
and many orchestra
and chamber music works as
well as vocal
compositions.
He received, among others, the
Prize of the Italian
Society of
Authors (SIAE) for his Opera Faust.Un travestimento and the Goffredo
Petrassi Prize.
He
was a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin, of
the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst, a guest of the
“Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD” and spent 2002 six months in
Japan at an invitation of the Japan Foundation.
He is a
member of the Academiy
of Arts
Berlin and of the Bavarian
Academy of
Fine Arts and was
awarded the German
Federal Cross
of Merit.
Together
with an acoustical physicist and a musicologist, he
published the treatise on orchestration,”Instrumentation
in der Musik des 20.
Jahrhunderts”,
A selection of his writings was
published under the title "Construction
of
Freedom".
The
renowned German publication
“Musik-Konzepte”
published in 2014 a double
issue with 8
essays on his music.