Hendrik Hofmeyr


Hendrik Pienaar Hofmeyr is a South African composer. Born in Cape Town, he furthered his studies in Italy during 10 years of self-imposed exile as a conscientious objector. While there, he won the South African Opera Competition with The Fall of the House of Usher. He also received the annual Nederburg Prize for Opera for this work subsequent to its performance at the State Theatre in Pretoria in 1988. In the same year, he obtained first prize in an international competition in Italy with music for a short film by Wim Wenders. He returned to South Africa in 1992, and in 1997 won two major international composition competitions, the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition of Belgium and the first edition of the Dimitris Mitropoulos Competition in Athens. His 'Incantesimo' for solo flute was selected to represent South Africa at the ISCM World Music Days in Croatia in 2005. In 2008 he was honoured with a Kanna award by the Kleinkaroo National Arts Festival. He is currently Professor and Head of Composition and Theory at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, where he obtained a DMus in 1999.
Hofmeyr has completed more than a hundred commissioned works for, amongst others, the British duo Nettle&Markham, the Hogarth Quartet, the Vancouver Recital Society, the Latvian youth choir Kamēr, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, the South African Music Rights Organisation, the Foundation for the Creative Arts and the Cape Performing Arts Board. His oeuvre includes 6 operas, 2 ballets, 11 concertos and other orchestral works, 2 string quartets and other chamber and instrumental works, and many choral and solo vocal works.

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