Bernhard Lang is an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 of the experimental and avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 school, particularly advocating a style he has self-termed "repetition-perpetrator".

He began his musical studies at the Bruckner Conservatorium in Linz, later moving on to Graz University; both at Karl-Franzens University and the University of Music and Dramatic Arts. Besides composition he studied piano, philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

, German philology

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

 and theory of harmony as well as computer music. His tutors were, amongst others, A. Dobrowolsky and Gösta Neuwirth.

Since 2003 he achieved the position of associate professor of composition at Graz University.

Lang frequently collaborates with artists form other genres including choreographers, electronic musicians, video artists and DJs.

He is particularly known for the provocatively titled opera I Hate Mozart, with libretto by Michael Sturminger, composed for the Viennese Mozart year festival in 2006. Das Theater der Wiederholungen, based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade

Marquis de Sade

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...

 and William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

 and choreographed by Xavier Le Roy, was premiered at the Graz in 2003. His Monadology II was given its British premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival in September 2008, broadcast on BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3

BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music and opera, but jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation...

. Monadology uses a concept Lang calls "musical-cellular processing", which Lang says is derived from Leibniz’s Monadology

Monadology

The Monadology is one of Gottfried Leibniz’s best known works representing his later philosophy. It is a short text which sketches in some 90 paragraphs a metaphysics of simple substances, or monads.- Text :...

.

He has composed almost 30 pieces under the name Differenz/Wiederholung.

External links

• Lang's personal website
• The online music review La Folia offers an article on Lang's music