Frank Michael Beyer


Frank Michael Beyer was a German composer.
Active as well as a composition teacher, performer and culture functionary, he was one of the leading figures in post-war Berlin musical life. His works have been programmed by many artists of international renown, and he has left an abundant oeuvre comprising works of all genres except opera. His avant-garde compositional style is clear, strict and sensitive, rooted in German modernism as well as in Bachian counterpoint and characteristics of human speech.

Life

Beyer was born in Berlin, the son of the author and art historian Oskar Beyer and his wife Margarete, née Löwenfeld. He spent his childhood in Dresden and on Crete, as well as in Athens and Liechtenstein and received his early training in music from his father. From 1946 to 1949 he studied composition and church music at the Kirchenmusikschule Berlin, before going on to study the piano in Leipzig from 1950 to 1953.
Beyer pursued his composition studies in Berlin under Ernst Pepping and 'virtuoso organ playing' under Joseph Ahrens at the Hochschule for Musik Berlin. Johann Sebastian Bach and the Second Viennese School, especially Anton Webern, numbered among the composers who had the greatest influence on Beyer’s musical development. A strong focus on music in the family home also played a key role. He became acquainted with Bach’s music during his childhood while his father published a book on Bach which appeared in the Berlin Furche-Verlag in the 1920s.
From 1950 to 1963, Beyer worked as a church musician, both as performing organist and a conductor. He taught at the Kirchenmusikschule Berlin and subsequently at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin. In 1964, he established the Musica nova sacra series and was a leading member of the Berliner Bach-Tage festival from 1970 to 1985. From 1986 to 2003, he was director of the music department at the Berlin University of the Arts. He founded the Institute for New Music in 1990 at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Berliner Orchesterkonferenz, which he also led. From 1986 to 2006, he was a member of the senate at the Berlin University of the Arts. Beyer was also on the supervisory board of the German collecting society for music rights GEMA.
He died in Berlin.

Selected awards and honours

Ballet