Claus Kühnl

Important for him at this time were analysis courses in New Music with Klaus Hinrich Stahmer and, from 1978 to 1980, the Student Chamber Orchestra "Musici Allegri", which he himself conducted.

In 1983, he received a grant from the Cité internationale des arts in Paris where he met Tristan Murail and Henri Dutilleux, whose works he studied intensively.

His opera La petite Mort appeared in 1988 – a commission by the Frankfurt Feste (première 1991), and one year later the ensemble piece Duplum.

[3] He found the first signs of globalisation positive and worked to achieve a blending of various styles and influences from which a new "alloy" could be created.

After his return from Rome in 1992 he became composition teacher at the Peter Cornelius Conservatory in Mainz, a position which he gave up after one year.

From 1993 until 1997 he worked, with several long pauses, on the opera Die Geschichte von der Schüssel und vom Löffel (première 1998 in Bielefeld), after a children's book by Michael Ende, who Kühnl had met three times in Munich.

The major work of this period is the Concerto for Mandolin and 13 Instruments Voller Sonnen, which had its première in 2006 at the World New Music Festival in Stuttgart.