The composers who made the most decisive contribution to the development of post-war music in Europe were all born in the 1920s: Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono, Berio and Ligeti, to name but five. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, at a time when half of Europe still lay in ruins, they began to look for the basis of a new kind of music freed from the fatal legacy of the past. But few of them reacted as directly or as sensitively to the catastrophe of the National Socialist period as did Hans Werner Henze. And this was true of him both as an artist and as a human being.