Moritz Eggert

Composer

Moritz Eggert

Biography

Moritz Eggert (*1965) works mainly as a freelance composer, but also is active as a pianist, conductor, performer/actor, singer and blogger.

Born in Heidelberg and growing up there, Mannheim and Frankfurt am Main, he began playing keyboards in various rock and jazz ensembles while still at school. This was followed by years of study as a pianist and composer in London and Munich, among other places.

From the beginning he worked in all musical genres - his catalog of nearly 300 pieces includes 19 full-length operas, several ballets and works for dance and music theater, orchestral music, chamber and ensemble music, vocal and choral music (with a strong focus on Lied), church music, experimental and electronic music, instrumental concerts, music for children and young people, film music, as well as music for radio plays and open-air performances.

Together with Sandeep Bhagwati, he founded the still existent "ADEvantgarde Festival" for young composers in Munich, while he was still a student. He takes an active and critical part in German cultural life and is currently President of the German Composers' Association (DKV). In addition to his many articles for national and international print and online media, he regularly writes for the Bad Blog of Musick (which he founded), the most widely read blog for contemporary music in Germany. His focus is on satirical and often provocative articles on a wide range of topics related to today's culture and cultural politics. He is an advocate of the idea that music by living composers should play a bigger role in the classical music scene and is involved in the fight against abuse of power in cultural institutions. This makes him a passionate supporter of the younger generation of composers, whom he also supervises as a professor of composition at the Munich University of Music and Theater (since 2010).

Moritz Eggert's music is performed worldwide. Pieces from his cycle for piano solo "Hämmerklavier" belong to the most frequently performed piano works of our time, the song cycle "Neue Dichter Lieben" and the "kitchen opera" "Teufels Küche" are also well known.

His music was also often in the media spotlight: he wrote a “soccer oratorio” and the music for the opening ceremony of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, which was watched by over a billion people. The German tabloid press insulted him as a "porn composer" for his opera "Die Schnecke" and his opera "Freax" caused a scandal about the staging by Christoph Schlingensief. An eccentric collage of all Mozart's operas stirred tempers at the Salzburg Festival, as did his 'Footballet', which conservative audiences found a 'desecration' of the Vienna Opera Ball (and the first contemporary piece of music ever performed there). He likes to cross genre boundaries with his work, e.g. in joint concerts with the electro pop duo "2raumwohnung", the GebruederTeichmann or entertainer Harald Schmidt.

His "conspiracy myth" operetta "The Last Conspiracy" at the Vienna Volksoper is currently shown, new solo concerts with orchestra for the soloists Elisabeth Kufferath and Konstantyn Napolov are on the horizon. The interactive video opera “Kairosis” is also in preparation and is to be published on the web.

(18.10.2022)