Rolf Rainer Gehlhaar (30 December 1943 – 7 July 2019) was an American composer, Professor in Experimental Music atCoventry University and researcher in assistive technology for music.
Born inBreslau, 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.[1][2] 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.[2] He took American citizenship in 1958 and studied atYale University and theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[1] 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.[2] He moved toCologne, Germany, in 1967 to become assistant toKarlheinz Stockhausen, and became a member of his performing ensemble.[1] In 1969, together withJohannes Fritsch andDavid C. Johnson, he founded the Feedback Studio, Cologne, a new-music performance center and publishing house. He later moved to England, where he became in 1979 a founding member of the Electro-Acoustic Music Association of Great Britain. In 2002 he Became Senior Lecturer in Design and Digital Media atCoventry University; at the time of his death he was Professor in Experimental Music at Coventry University, School of Art & Design. He also was a founding member of theBritish Paraorchestra and its technical director.
His works are for both acoustic and electro-acoustic media, though he is best known for his work with computer-controlled composition, and for hisinteractive installations such as Sound=Space (1985), HeadSpace (2000), CaDaReMi (2006), Walking on Earth (2007), and has for many years collaborated with Luis Miguel Girao of Artshare, Aveiro, Portugal.[3]
Gehlhaar, R., Girao, L. M., Rodrigues, P., Penha, R. "Instrument for Everyone: Designing New Means of Musical Expression for Disabled Creators",Casa da Música, Porto; DRHA 2010 Conference Proceedings, Brunel University 2010
Gehlhaar, R., Girao, L. M., Rodrigues, P. M., "CaDaReMi, an Educational Game",ICDVRAT Intl Journal for Disability and Human Development 2010.
Almeida, A. P., Girao, L. M., Gehlhaar, R. Rodrigues, P. and Rodrigues, H. "SOUND=SPACE: Music Perception in Action". InProceedings of 5th International Conference on Multimedia and Information and Communication Technologies in Education (Porto, April 2009), Formatex, 1199–1203.
Gehlhaar, R., Girao, L. M., Rodrigues, P. M., Almeida, A. P., 2008. "Musical Topologies in Sound=Space". In28th ISME World Conference. Bologna, Italy, (CD-ROM /ISBN9780980456028)
Almeida, A. P., Girao, L. M., Gehlhaar, R. and Rodrigues, P. "SOUND=SPACE Update at Casa da Musica". InProceedings of 2nd European Conference on Development Psychology of Music Perception (Roehampton, September 2008), Roehampton University, 80–84.
Almeida, A. P., Girao, L. M., Gehlhaar, R. Rodrigues, P., Neto, P. and Monica M. "SOUND=SPACE OPERA". inProceedings of 7th International Conference on Disability Virtual Reality and Associated Technologies withArtAbilitation (Maia, September 2008), ICDVRAT/University of Reading, 347–354.
Gehlhaar, R., Rodrigues, P., Girao, L, "Cybersong Nime'05, May 26–28, 2005". Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Schürmann, Hans G. 1976. "Lockerung von Phantasie oder Energieverläufe in der Zeit. Ein Gespräch mit Johannes Fritsch und Rolf Gehlhaar".Musica 30, no. 1 (January–February): 20–25.
Bachmann, Claus-Henning. 1978. "Die gespielte Mitbestimmung. Komponierte Orchester-Werkstätten. "Schweizerische Musikzeitung/Revue Musicale Suisse 118 (January–February): 20–26.
Gehlhaar, Rolf. 1968.Zur KompositionEnsemble: Kompositionsstudio Karlheinz Stockhausen, InternationalFerienkurse Darmstadt 1967. Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik 11, ed. Ernst Thomas. Mainz: Schott.
Gehlhaar, Rolf. 1991. "SOUND=SPACE: An Interactive Musical Environment."Contemporary Music Review 6, no. 1:59–72.
Gehlhaar, Rolf. 1996. "Three-Dimensional Sounds, or, An Acoustic Analogue of a Hologram: The Resolution of Complex Spectra through Spatial Phase-Shifting—A Report on Research Carried Out atIRCAM, 1979-1981"Feedback Papers, no. 41 (July): 8–16.
