© GRILL MEDIEN 2015
Thomas Lauck
Short biography
Thomas Lauck was born in Strasbourg in 1943. He regards his most important instructors to be
the nature that remains unspoiled by mankind, with its stones, plants and animals. His veneration
belongs to the great masters of music and of painting, sculpture, architecture and poetry.
After completing his medical studies in Freiburg im Breisgau between 1963 and 1968, Lauck
proceeded to attain certification as an ophthalmologist between 1970 and 1975 and ran his own
practice between 1975 and 1999. Lauck studied composition with Klaus Huber in Basel between
1971 and 1972. The year 1974 marked the first exhibition of his material pictures in a gallery in
Heidelberg. In 1975-76, Lauck attended courses in live electronics with Hans-Peter Haller at the
SWF Experimentalstudio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation (today the SWR Experimentalstudio).
In the years to follow, he attended compositional courses at the City of Basle Music Academy with
Dieter Schnebel, Kazimierz Serocki and Mauricio Kagel and later in Darmstadt with Karlheinz
Stockhausen. Lauck considers himself, however, to be self-taught. He is recipient of a number of
compositional prizes, among them those of the 1974 Hitzacker Summer Music Festival and the
1977 Gaudeamus Prize (Bilthoven, Amsterdam). In 1999-2009, Lauck was an auditor at the
University of Basel in the subjects of musicology and art history.
Lauck’s works have been broadcast and performed by first-rate soloists and ensemble across
Europe and the world, not least on tours throughout Southeast Asia and South America. Lauck’s
body of works, which particularly focuses on the genre of chamber music for the broadest range of
instrumentations, also encompasses vocal music as well as stage music, one orchestral work and
works with live electronics. The majority of Lauck’s works are published by the G. Ricordi & Co.
Munich.