Josef Anton Riedl

Composer of works for electronics, multimedia, and self-constructed instruments. Riedl was drawn to music from a young age, performing improvised works for piano and organ while still in gymnasium. His early life in Germany was complicated by his mother's Jewish heritage; nonetheless he was drafted very late into the Second World War, around 1944, only to be taken prisoner by Allied forces and held in a POW camp in France until 1947. Riedl was inspired by Edgard Varèse's Ionisation toward composing solely for percussion