Rolf Alexander Wilhelm

Rolf Alexander Wilhelm (23 June 1927 – 17 January 2013 ) was a German composer, film composer, arranger and conductor. Life Born in Munich, at the age of seven Wilhelm received piano lessons. Afterwards he attended the grammar school in Berlin and Vienna. From 1942 he studied piano with a special permission with Grete Hinterhofer and musical composition with Joseph Marx at the Wiener Musikhochschule. His war deployment as Luftwaffenhelfer and the subsequent imprisonment interrupted the musical career of Wilhelm, who returned to destroyed Munich in 1945 with a Notabitur. There he was able to continue his studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München from 1946 and passed the school-leaving examination in 1948. Among his teachers were Heinrich Knappe (conducting), Joseph Haas (musical composition) and Hans Rosbaud (master class) Even before that, in 1946, Radio München, the forerunner of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, produced The Canterville Ghost, one of its first radio plays after the Second World War. Through the mediation of his brother Kurt Wilhelm who acted as assistant director for the play, the nineteen-year-old composer received his first commission. The work was convin