Rolf Gehlhaar

Rolf Rainer Gehlhaar (30 December 1943 – 7 July 2019) was an American composer, Professor in Experimental Music at Coventry University and researcher in assistive technology for music. Life Born in Breslau, Gehlhaar was the son of a German rocket scientist, who emigrated to the United States in 1953 to work at a rocket-development research centre in New Mexico. Although he took an interest in music from the age of eight or younger, in the post-war years the family could not afford for him to learn an instrument, and so Rolf only began to play the piano at the age of fifteen, and at about the same time began to compose for fun. He took American citizenship in 1958 and studied at Yale University and the University of California, Berkeley. Initially, he had studied medicine, but soon changed his major to philosophy and the philosophy of science; then at Yale he attended a course in composition, which was an arousing experience. He moved to Cologne, Germany, in 1967 to become assistant to Karlheinz Stockhausen, and became a member of his performing ensemble. In 1969, together with Johannes Fritsch and David C. Johnson, he founded the Feedback Studio, Cologne, a new-music performance ce