Federal Cross of Merit for Younghi Pagh-Paan

Younghi Pagh-Paan was professor of composition at the University of the Arts (HfK) in Bremen from 1994 to 2011 and is the founder of the Atelier Neue Musik, which she developed into an important workshop for contemporary music. On October 29, 2025, the composer was honored with the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for her extraordinary life's work. Mayor Andreas Bovenschulte presented her with the award in the fireplace room of Bremen City Hall. There, it was said that Professor Pagh-Paan's achievements lay not only in her artistic standing and her innovative contributions to the development of new music, but also in her commitment to intercultural dialogue and the promotion of young artists. She also advocates for a female perspective on history and society and is a formative figure in Korean-German cultural exchange. The Ambassador of the Republic of Korea, Lim Sang-beom, also attended the ceremony.

Mayor Andreas Bovenschulte: "When you think of new music, you can't ignore Professor Younghi Pagh-Paan. She has shaped this genre like no other. She has also worked tirelessly to support young musicians. The ‘Atelier Neue Musik’ (New Music Studio) she founded at the University of the Arts has a reputation that extends far beyond Bremen."

Born in South Korea in 1945, Younghi Pagh-Paan grew up with both Western and traditional Korean music, which shaped her musical horizons from an early age. From 1965 to 1971, she studied at Seoul National University until she came to Germany in 1974 on a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She continued her studies at the Freiburg University of Music with renowned teachers such as Klaus Huber, Brian Ferneyhough, Peter Förtig, and Edith Picht-Axenfeld, graduating in 1979.

The political unrest in Seoul in 1968 had a lasting impact on the young music student. It became clear to her that progressive composition in Korea could not succeed by merely imitating Western models, but that a new Korean music had to take its own cultural roots into account.

Since the 1970s, Younghi Pagh-Paan has devoted herself with great artistic energy to connecting these musical worlds. She gained international recognition at the Donaueschingen Music Days in 1980. Her works, which reinterpret the essence of Korean musical culture using sophisticated Western compositional techniques, have attracted increasing attention at major new music festivals throughout Europe.

Professor Pagh-Paan has received numerous national and international awards for her life's work, including the UNESCO Rostrum Prize in Paris (1979) and the Bogwan Order from the South Korean government (2018). The Free Hanseatic City of Bremen honored her with the Medal for Art and Science in 2010, and in 2020 she was awarded the Grand Art Prize Berlin by the Academy of Arts.

In 2013, Professor Pagh-Paan handed over her compositional documents to the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, where they will be permanently archived and made available to international music researchers. She is currently preparing to establish her own foundation, which will be dedicated to promoting contemporary music with a special focus on the younger generations.

Younghi Pagh-Paan's successor at the HfK Bremen, Prof. Jörg Birkenkötter, pays tribute to the composer as follows:

"It is with great joy and sincere admiration that I congratulate my esteemed colleague and predecessor Prof. Younghi Pagh-Paan on being awarded the Federal Cross of Merit. This high honor recognizes a life's work that, in its consistency, poetic depth, and humanistic and ethical stance, extends far beyond the boundaries of mere musical creativity.

Younghi Pagh-Paan is an artist of rare integrity. Her work, which has borne an unmistakable signature from early on, unites different worlds: the tonal and spiritual culture of Korea with the expressive power of the European avant-garde. In her music, silence and energy, meditation and outcry, formal rigor and emotional freedom meet. She understands composition not as a technical exercise in craftsmanship, but as a form of thinking, feeling, and listening that leads to the depths of human existence. Her works speak of vulnerability and resistance, of memory and responsibility—themes she shapes with the utmost artistic sensitivity and inner truthfulness.

When Younghi Pagh-Paan accepted the position at the University of the Arts Bremen in 1994, a new chapter began for contemporary music in our city. With the founding of the Atelier Neue Musik, she created a place where artistic curiosity, intercultural exchange, and unconditional seriousness in the exploration of music in a social context come together. Under her leadership, the studio developed into a central forum for the music of our time—open to new ideas, radical in its thinking, characterized by a deep respect for the creative responsibility of each individual, and free from any dogmatism.

Her teaching was marked by a unique blend of rigor and compassion. She demanded a lot, but she never demanded anything that she herself did not exemplify to the highest degree: precision, dedication, truthfulness. Students who had the good fortune to learn from her repeatedly report an experience that went far beyond the craft of composing. She taught listening as an ethical practice – as the ability to listen sincerely, to encounter the other in sound, and to recognize responsibility for one's own actions in music.

Thus, Younghi Pagh-Paan became not only an artistic leader, but also a moral authority within the university. Her work has had a profound impact on the HfK Bremen and made it known far beyond the region. Many of her former students are now influential voices on the international music scene themselves – a testament to the lasting power of her teaching.

In addition to her pedagogical work, she has produced a significant body of compositions that have been performed on the world's major stages for decades – at the Donaueschingen Music Days, the Witten Days for New Chamber Music, and festivals in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Seoul, and elsewhere. Her music is valued for its uncompromising nature, its concentration, and its spiritual depth. It is never ingratiating, never superficially loud – and yet it has a power that leaves no one untouched.

The award of the Federal Cross of Merit honors not only an outstanding composer, but also a pioneer who has paved the way for many others through her example. For the University of the Arts Bremen, this honor is both a cause for gratitude and pride: gratitude for the time she spent working here, for the countless impulses she left us, and for the lasting intellectual legacy she established in our institution.

As her successor, I feel deep humility and gratitude for being allowed to continue working in her tradition. Her attitude—the uncompromising pursuit of truthfulness, her belief in the power of art, and her awareness of its social responsibility—remains a compass for me and many of my colleagues in our own work.

On behalf of the University of the Arts Bremen, I congratulate her wholeheartedly on this well-deserved award."