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, in which he was encouraged by Carl Orff, but this tack was derailed by his discovery of Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrète in 1951. Riedl worked with that composer's Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris, 1953-55, followed by stints at various electronic music studios, including at the Siemens Studio (also founded by Orff) from 1960-66. In Munich he directed the series "Neue Musik", overseeing premiers of pieces by Dieter Schnebel, Mauricio Kagel, and others. Typical of Riedl's works are Paper Music (1970) and Glas-Spiel (1977, for an array of glass tubes), in which each improvised performance is guided by a played back recording of a previous improvisation. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.