Claire van Kampen, Prolific Composer and Wife of Mark Rylance, Dies at 71

January 18, 2025 @ 3:53 PM

Claire van Kampen, a playwright and director who composed music for TV and theater and the wife of Mark Rylance, has died, her family said in a statement Saturday. She was 71.

Van Kampen, also a concert pianist and theater director, died in Germany surrounded by family. No cause was given.

Her music was featured on Broadway and in London productions including “Richard III,” “Twelfth Night” and others with her husband in the cast. Van Kampen worked at Shakespeare’s Globe for nearly 20 years, eventually becoming its first female director.

She also wrote “Farinelli and the King,” which Steven Spielberg urged her to turn into a screenplay, and composed the score for the production that started in London before it moved to Broadway.

Van Kampen and Rylance were working on a historic TV drama for Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment at the time of her death.

The family statement provided to TheWrap is below:

Dear Friends,

Our beloved mother, and wife, Claire Louise van Kampen, has passed peacefully this morning, Saturday the 18th of January at 11:47, in the ancient town of Kassel Germany, surrounded by her family. Concert Pianist, Composer, Musical Director, Theatre Director, Playwright, Mentor and Friend.  And one of the funniest, wickedest, most inspiring women we have ever known. Claire has died of cancer on Mark’s 65th Birthday. 

We thank her for imbuing our lives with her magic, music, laughter, and love. Ring the bell, sound the trumpets reverie, something is done, something is beginning. One of the great wise ones has passed.

Juliet and Mark Rylance