RIP Peter Rabenalt

 

We mourn the loss of Peter Rabenalt

Our graduate and long-time professor, the composer and dramaturge Peter Rabenalt, passed away at the age of 87.

Filmuniversitat

August 27, 2024

 

"A man plays "jazzed-up" Bach for himself on a bus. This brief appearance by the composer Peter Rabenalt in Kurt Barthel's FRÄULEIN SCHMETTERLING is a forward-looking summary of the composer's work: from the 1960s onwards, the audience has had unusual listening experiences with him and gradually dismantles their resistance to these sounds," is the case in the Portrait of the DEFA Foundation. Influenced by a musical home, growing up with lessons in piano, accordion, clarinet and saxophone, the composer, who was born on July 16, 1937 in Semlin (Havelland) Peter Rabenalt in 1956, however, initially at the still young film school in Babelsberg. There he is one of the first cohorts in the production course. He impressively shares impressions of his student days at the then still German University of Fine Arts in the article "My teachers from the DEFA", printed in Luminosity 2018, the journal of the DEFA Foundation.

After graduating in 1960, he worked in the editorial office of the German Television Corporation, without losing sight of music. So he toured the country with a jazz quartet and finally his former fellow student won him over Kurt Barthel not only for this short appearance as an actor in MISS BUTTERFLY, but also for film music - the start of his career as a composer. In order to deepen his skills, he studied composition and composition at the "Hanns Eisler" Academy of Music in Berlin from 1970 to 1975. Peter Rabenalt leaves behind numerous musical works, which he composed for cinema and television films but also for the theatre, including the music for one of the few film musicals of the DEFA, ZILLE AND ICK , comes from his pen.

But he also always remained connected to the film school, returning to his alma mater as early as September 1962 as an assistant and research assistant in the field of dramaturgy, in order to pass on his knowledge to the next generation of students from the mid-1980s as a lecturer in sound and music dramaturgy, from 1985 as a professor of film and television dramaturgy and even after his retirement as a visiting professor - this also in various publications on the "Sound of Film". The lasting impression he left on his "students" becomes clear in the obituaries. "I will never forget how Prof. Peter Rabenalt looked me in the eye at the end of my entrance exam in Potsdam and said friendly "I think we understand you, Mr. Gößler!" As a student, I only had the pleasure of a lecture and his legendary film music and sound dramaturgy seminar, as he was already retired. Nevertheless, I always felt seen by Peter Rabenalt during the few encounters. Always understood. He was always interested, always curious. A great university teacher who has shaped generations. Including me, even though we had so little to do with each other. How nice that I was able to get to know him," writes Timo Gößler. Thomas Frick remembers him as a "professor who prepared himself at every hour, who developed his own dramaturgy, from which I still benefit today and to whom we owe a large part of our education". And also a film journalist Knut Elstermann pays tribute to Rabenalt in a Obituary: "One of the great film composers of the DEFA, wrote expressive, experimental new music (Your Unknown Brother), no pleasing soundtracks. As a professor at the Babelsberg Film University (I also listened to him) was an immensely stimulating, practice-oriented teacher, from whom I learned a lot about the methodology of film. A warm-hearted, noble, unpretentious person who gave everyone the good feeling of being perceived by him exactly."

We mourn the loss of our graduate and colleague, film artist, film scholar and teacher Peter Rabenalt!

RABENALT, Peter

Born: 7/16/1937, Semlin, Rathenow, Brandenburg, Germany

Died: 8/26/2024, Germany

 

Peter Rabenalt’s western – composer:

Blue Bird – 1979