Klaus Huber (30 November 1924 – 2 October 2017) was a Swiss composer and academic based in Basel and Freiburg. Among his students were Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Jarrell, Younghi Pagh-Paan, Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, and Kaija Saariaho. He received the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2009, among other awards. Life Born in Bern, Huber first studied violin and music pedagogy from 1947 to 1949 at the Zurich Conservatory with Stefi Geyer. From 1949 to 1955, he was a violin teacher at the Zurich Conservatory. At the same time he studied composition with Willy Burkhard. He continued his composition studies with Boris Blacher in Berlin. As a composer, Huber began with serial music influenced by Anton Webern. His international breakthrough came in 1959 with the world premiere of his chamber cantata Des Engels Anredung an die Seele at the Weltmusiktage (World Music Days) of the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik in Rome. Unusually for the time, he used consonant intervals within a strictly serial context. He became one of the leading figures of his generation in Europe, compared to Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He composed extensively for chamber ensembles, choirs, soloists and orchestra. His works for the theatre look for scenes beyond opera and oratorio. Huber was a socially and politically conscious composer and his music often conveys a humanistic message. He set texts by biblical prophets and medieval mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen. He was also inspired by texts of Augustine, Andreas Gryphius, Ernst Bloch, Heinrich Böll, and of Latin American liberation theologians. From the 1980s, Huber studied Arabic music and poetry and included their influences in his works. Huber taught music history at the Lucerne Conservatory from 1960 to 1963, and composition at the City of Basel Music Academy (1961–72) and at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (1973–90). He was also appointed director of the composition seminars at the Gaudeamus Foundation in Bilthoven, Netherlands, in 1966, 1968, and 1972. Additionally, he held international visiting professorships and composition classes in (among others) Paris, London, Geneva, Milan, Lyon, Montreal, Sarajevo, and Tatui (Brazil). Several of his students became internationally recognized composers, including Brian Ferneyhough, Michael Jarrell, Younghi Pagh-Paan (later his wife), Toshio Hosokawa, Wolfgang Rihm, and Kaija Saariaho. He was a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin from 1986. His manuscripts are kept by the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. Compositions An inventory of Huber's music