Helmut Friedrich Lachenmann, born in Stuttgart on November 27, 1935, came from a family of pastors. He studied at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart from 1955–58 with Johann Nepomuk David (theory, counterpoint) and Jürgen Uhde (piano). Attendance at the Darmstadt Summer Courses (1957) led to an encounter with Luigi Nono, whose student Lachenmann became in Venice 1958–60.

In 1960–73 he lived in Munich as a freelance pianist and composer. From the beginning, his teaching activities (1961–73 in Ulm; 1966–70 in Stuttgart) were characterized by critical compositional reflection. The premieres of Fünf Strophen für neun Instrumente (1961) and the piano piece Echo Andante (1961/62) during the Venice Biennale and at the Darmstadt Summer Courses made Lachenmann known within the avant-garde. In 1965 he received the Culture Prize for Music of the City of Munich. After his only purely electronic music (Szenario, 1965; Ghent University), Lachenmann worked on the conception of a »musique concrète instrumentale,« which gained stylistic acceptance in 1968. Lachenmann was concerned with the aesthetic exposure of the energetics of sound bodies and sound processes.

In 1970 Lachenmann became a lecturer at the Pädagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg. In 1972–73 he taught a master class in composition in Basel. The Bach Prize of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 1972 confirmed the increasing public recognition of his work. In 1973 he moved to Stuttgart. In 1976 he was appointed professor of music theory and aural training at the Hanover University of Music. Teaching engagements at home and abroad (since 1972 several times lecturer at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, today in all relevant music centers of the world) attest to his international reputation. Lachenmann’s theorizing and critical updating of the category of the beautiful (1973, 1976a) found their way into the music-aesthetic discourse of new music. Lachenmann’s return around 1980 to previously excluded material–especially rhythmic-musical material from his pre-1957 phase–had the effect of consolidating style without abandoning innovative pretensions.

From 1981–99 he taught in Stuttgart as professor of composition (until 1988 also music theory). The opera Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern. Musik mit Bildern (after Hans Christian Andersen, 1990/96; rev. 1999) can be assigned to an artistic discourse on coldness that refers to the social climate of society. Lachenmann is a member of the Academies of Arts in Hamburg, Berlin, Brussels, and Munich, among others. Honors include the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1997, the Premio Fundación BBVA in 2010 (Spain), the German Music Authors Prize in 2015, honorary doctorates from the music academies of Hanover, Dresden, and Cologne, the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2010, and appointment as Commandeur des Arts et Lettres (Paris 2012).