Friedrich Cerha is something of a national institution in Austria. Over the past half century, his name has become synonymous with contemporary music—its creation, performance, teaching, and analysis.

In a pioneering effort in what was at the time an archconservative environment, he founded (together with Kurt Schwertsik) the ensemble “die reihe” in 1958 and has conducted numerous world and national premieres (of works by Cage, Boulez, Ligeti, and others) over the past decades. Between 1960 and 1997, he appeared with some of the world’s leading orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Concertgebouw as well as in opera houses in Berlin, Munich, and Buenos Aires.

Cerha has also been invited by Austria’s top new music group, Klangforum and by the ORF Symphony Orchestra to conduct his own works in addition to a varied repertoire.

As a professor of composition, Cerha has had considerable success with pupils such as Georg Friedrich Haas who have since established themselves as composers of the middle generation.

Friedrich Cerha is highly articulate in his writings on music. His program notes on his own compositions reflect an analytical mind and a capacity for looking at his creative process dispassionately. The same is true of the epochal work of reconstruction he did on the third act of Alban Berg’s Lulu (1962–78): he has released an “Arbeitsbericht,” a work report, recording in detail what Berg left behind and how he went about reconstructing the material. The complete Lulu has since become a staple of opera houses the world over.

Cerha is a quiet, reserved man with a wonderful sense of humor and remarkable talent as a public speaker. In private, he tends to be taciturn and either lets his wife, Gertraud, do the talking or utters a few words in response to a question or remark. One has to spend quite a long time in his company to see him smile or even laugh out loud and to realize how funny he can be.

The symbiosis of Gertraud and Friedrich Cerha is now something of a legend. Mrs. Cerha, whose tiny frame conceals an absolutely formidable energy, is an indefatigable but not uncritical advocate not only of Cerha’s music, but of the contemporary music scene as a whole, with a series of in-depth articles and lectures on it in and outside Austria.