Johannes Kalitzke studied church music in Cologne from 1974 to 1976. He then studied piano and orchestral conducting at the International Music Academy Cologne, before pursuing composition there under York Höller. In the early 1980s, with support from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, he studied electronic music at IRCAM with Vinko Globokar, while also training under Hans Ulrich Humpert in Cologne.

His career as a conductor began with an appointment from 1984 to 1990 at the Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, where he became the director of Forum Neue Musik in 1986. Starting in 1991, he conducted the musikFabrik ensemble, serving as co-founder and artistic director. Since then, he has directed various ensembles and orchestras, including Klangforum Wien, Collegium Novum Zürich, Ensemble Modern, as well as the symphony orchestras of the NDR, the BBC, and the Munich Philharmonic.

In his compositions, Kalitzke draws heavily on cinema and literature, finding that film influences his approach to timing and that literature, like music, carries a connection to language in punctuation, semantics, and accentuation. He sees himself as a storyteller, a role that calls for a sense of dramaturgy, including awareness of hierarchy, contrasts, and dominant elements. His catalog includes both opera and film music, particularly for silent and expressionist films like The Weavers (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927), Warning Shadows (Arthur Robison, 1923), and The Hands of Orlac (Robert Wiene, 1924). This storytelling approach extends to instrumental pieces, like his aptly named concerto Story Teller (2016), in which the cello soloist takes on the narrative role, in a work inspired by the evocative and nightmarish images of Tim Walker’s fashion photography book. As one critic described it, “The relationship between the soloist and the orchestra reflects the vain revolt of the individual against the surge of media imagery and the saccharine allure of consumerism.”

Kalitzke’s work consistently reflects social critique. His philosophical and literary background informs both his search for theatrical and operatic subjects, as well as his desire to situate his own music within its cultural context. He explains, “Composing, writing literature, painting, are for me schools of differentiated perception. And this is what it’s all about. We must fight for this, as today, differentiated perception is rather blocked by the media.” This perspective is perhaps linked to the importance he places on nuances of accentuation in his compositions. Kalitzke often works with a limited set of notes and extremely small rhythmic cells, arranging these sequences in varied ways. This approach is particularly evident in Kafka Complex, a piece developed over two decades (1989-2006), where he uses the interaction of these elements to create a musical labyrinth,— a theme he also explores in his operas Inferno (2006) and Die Besessenen (The Possessed, 2009).

Kalitzke has given lectures at the Darmstadt Summer Courses since 1996, as well as at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. He also teaches for the German Music Council and has given lessons in orchestral conducting at the International Summer Academy of Fine Arts in Salzburg and at the Mozarteum since 2015. He has been invited to the Reina Sofia School of Music in Madrid and the Zurich Conservatory.

His works are published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Scholarships and awards

• Member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, 2015
• Member of the Berlin Academy of Arts, 2009
• Villa Massimo scholarship, Rome, 2003
• Bernd Alois Zimmermann Prize from the City of Cologne, 1990