Ludger Stühlmeyer

Ludger Stühlmeyer, born to a family of cantors in 1961, made his first musical footsteps under the guidance of his father. He received music lessons from the pianist and composer Musikdirektor Karl Schäfer at the Osnabrück conservatoire and from Winfried Schlepphorst at the Kirchenmusikseminar of the diocese of Osnabrück. After completing his A-levels at the grammar school at Melle, he studied church music, Early Music, and singing at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen. This was followed by studies of composition with Günther Kretzschmar, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Helge Jung. He attended seminars in Gregorian semiology with Luigi Agustini, Godehard Joppich, and Johannes Berchmans Göschl, and studied musicology, philosophy, and theology at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster; he concluded his studies with a doctorate at the faculty of philosophy. His grandfather, a ‘silent hero of the resistance’ against National Socialism who was deported to the concentration camp Emslandlager in 1940 for his support of the Catholic church and those persecuted by the Third Reich, had been employed at St Peter’s at Gesmold for 44 years. In 1980, Ludger Stühlmeyer became his successor. He was appointed as custodian of music in the diocese of Münster in 1988, and has been city cantor at Hof as well as director of music for the deanery of Hochfranken since 1994; he is also a tutor at the Erzbischöfliches Kirchenmusikseminar, and works at the Amt für Kirchenmusik in the archdiocese of Bamberg. His compositional technique aims to make auditory experiences a medium of communication. Concentrating the essence into the seemingly simple, it is his goal to open up the power of meaning inherent in self-referential sounds, a meaning that comprises philosophical thought as well as spiritual experience. His liturgical music is inspired by the Catholic liturgy and the relationship between words and music in Gregorian chant, which defines and realises composition as the sounding body of words. He was awarded the Ehrenurkunde of the free-state of Bavaria by the minister of state Christa Stevens in 2005. In 2011, Dr Harald Fichtner decorated him with the Johann- Christian-Reinhart-Plakette, the city of Hof’s highest award for special cultural achievements.