Karl-Rudi Griesbach (14 June 1916 – 8 May 2000) was a German composer, librettist, dramaturge, music critic and academic teacher.
Born in Breckerfeld, Westphalia,[1] Griesbach attended a Gymnasium in Hamburg and subsequently studied composition with Philipp Jarnach and conducting with Eugen Körner at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln from 1937.
Griesbach was awarded, among others, the Martin-Andersen-Nexö-Kunstpreis [de] of the city of Dresden (1961), the Art Prize of the German Democratic Republic (1967) and the Patriotic Order of Merit (1976).
Griesbach's wife Margrit appeared as a pianist and interpreted mainly works of her husband.
For this reason he took up suggestions from Béla Bartók and also from Arnold Schönberg, but in the end he did not completely break with tonality and was, on the whole, a rather conservative composer for his generation.