Heinz-Klaus Metzger

Born in Konstanz, Metzger studied piano under Carl Seemann in Freiburg im Breisgau and composition under Max Deutsch in Paris.

Later, he met Theodor W. Adorno, Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music.

He participated as a distinguished contributor to a series of important texts in the journal Die Reihe.

In the 1960s, Metzger was one of the first European commentators on John Cage, and spokesman of "compositional anarchy", which resulted in the Kölner Manifest of 1960, and serving as a copy editor of the magazine Collage in Palermo.

In 1969, he founded, together with his partner, composer and conductor Rainer Riehn, the Ensemble Musica Negativa, where they embraced the performance of radical new music.