Harry Halbreich (born February 9, 1931, Berlin) is a Belgian musicologist.[1]
He studied with Arthur Honegger and later with Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. From 1970 to 1976 he was Lecturer (German: Dozent) in Musical Analysis at the Royal Conservatory in Mons. He worked on numerous radio broadcasts and co-founded the Belgian music magazine Crescendo for which he has been major contributor.[1]
He is known for a number of books, articles and studies on modern and contemporary music, including monograph works on Messiaen, Claude Debussy, Arthur Honegger and Bohuslav Martinů. He has prepared musical catalogues of the works of Honegger and Martinů, and their works are therefore sometimes referred to by their H number. He assisted Nicolas Bacri in orchestrating Honegger's opera, La morte de Sainte Alméenne, originally written in 1918 for voice and piano; the new version was premiered in Utrecht on 26 November 2005, on the 50th anniversary of the composer's death.
Halbreich's interest in modern music has led to articles on composers including contemporary music, particularly Spectral music: Horatiu Radulescu, Iancu Dumitrescu, Ana-Maria Avram, Gérard Grisey, Tristan Murail, but also Iannis Xenakis, Giacinto Scelsi, György Ligeti, Edgard Varèse, George Enescu and Maurice Ohana. But he has also written on composers of the past including Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven.