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Thomas Demenga

Swiss cellist and composer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 6, 2024
Entity authorityQ123617
Source-derived summary

Thomas Demenga (born 12 June 1954) is a Swiss composer and cellist.

Life and career

Born in Bern, Demenga studied with Walter Grimmer, Antonio Janigro, Leonard Rose and Mstislav Rostropovich and at the Juilliard School in New York, among others. He gives concerts as a chamber musician and soloist at all important festivals and music centres of the world. Since 1980, Demenga has been leading a training and soloist class at the Hochschule für Musik. From August 2001, Demenga was artistic director of the Davos Festival young artists in concert, which he directed for the last time in 2006.

At the Summer 2003 Lucerne Festival, Demenga performed as artiste étoile. An extensive series of CD recordings, published by ECM, documents his artistic work. In 2002, the last CD of his recording of Bach's solo suites in combination with works by contemporary composers Heinz Holliger, Elliott Carter, Sándor Veress, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Isang Yun and Toshio Hosokawa was released. Several of his recordings have been awarded the Vierteljahrespreis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik.

He performs in concerts with fellow musicians such as Heinz Holliger, Gidon Kremer, Thomas Larcher, Paul Meyer, Aurèle Nicolet, Hansheinz Schneeberger, Thomas Zehetmair and Tabea Zimmermann.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Thomas Demenga” as swiss cellist and composer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1954, 1980, 2001, 2006—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1954-06-12. The account is most persuasive where Thomas, Demenga and Swiss can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as swiss cellist and composer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 6, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q123617. VIAF identifies the subject as 90600914. The Library of Congress control number is n86859363. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1954, 1980, 2001 and 2006.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Thomas Demenga”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Thomas Demenga primary sources, Thomas Demenga archive and Thomas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Thomas Demenga”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Thomas Demenga” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.