Blacher, Boris

Blacher, Boris (blä`khər), 1903–75, Estonian-German composer, b. Yingkou, China. Blacher lived for six years in Siberia. He studied in Berlin and in 1953 became the director of the West Berlin Conservatory of Music. Blacher wrote concertos for various instruments, numerous operas, including 200,000 Taler (1969; after Sholem Aleichem), ballets, chamber music, and song cycles. He experimented with variable meters or rhythmic rows, as in Ornaments (1953) for orchestra, sometimes producing a jazzlike effect, and with abstract operas concerned with human situations but without plot.