Reiner Bredemeyer was born in 1928 in Columbia. He studied music in Munich and settled in East Berlin in 1954, where he completed his composition studies with Wagner-Régeny, also working closely with Paul Dessau. Until 1994 he was active as composer and musical director of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. His widely coloured ouevre contains not only the most varied song-genres (from concert-songs to dramatic-songs) but also many works for different chamber ensembles and orchestra. Bredemeyer also composed important works for the stage, amongst them music to texts by Berthold Brecht. Reiner Bredemeyer died in 1995 in Berlin.