Adolf Brunner (composer)

Adolf Brunner (born June 25, 1901 in Zurich ; † February 15, 1992 in Thalwil ) was a Swiss composer , church musician , journalist , philosopher and humanist . With a variety of different activities, he had a major impact on the political and cultural life of Switzerland during the Cold War . As President of the Gotthard Association and radio journalist, Brunner was one of the leading figures in intellectual national defense ; As a church musician, he is an important reformer of Protestant church music and one of the most important Swiss composers of the 20th century .

Life

origin

Brunner's father Adolf Brunner-Lavater (1871–1943) was an architect, Brunner's mother was a member of the Lavater family , which had been a citizen of Zurich since the 14th century. He was the eldest of four sons, his younger brothers were Rudolf (* 1903), Hans (* 1906) and Walter (* 1913).

Brunner's family originally came from Erlenbach ; his great-grandfather had purchased a piece of land on Schanzengraben and built a Biedermeier house. An anecdote has been passed down from his grandfather Adolf Brunner-Staub (1838–1911), according to which Richard Wagner carried his parrot when he moved from the neighboring house on Sternengasse to his new apartment on Zeltweg in September 1851 .

Adolescent years

From the third school year Brunner took piano lessons from Fanny Leber, three years later violin lessons from Alice Doelly. A formative experience was the participation in the boys' choir in 1913 at the Swiss premiere of Gustav Mahler's 8th Symphony in the Tonhalle under Volkmar Andreae . Brunner attended elementary school and later high school, where he went to the same class as the later composer Conrad Beck and the journalist Arthur Welti . In 1919 he received his first composition lessons from his uncle, the composer Hans Lavater (1885–1969), who also introduced him to Wagner's musical dramas.

Studied in Berlin

In 1920 Brunner graduated from high school and took piano lessons from the concert pianist Walter Frey . In 1921 he moved to Berlin to take private lessons with Philipp Jarnach for nine months ; In 1922 he entered the composition master class at the State University of Music and studied with Franz Schreker , later with Walther Gmeindl . Among his fellow students were u. a. Felix Petyrek , Karol Rathaus , Paul Höffer , Berthold Goldschmidt , Jerzy Fitelberg and Ernst Pepping ; Brunner had a long-standing friendship with Pepping. In 1923 Brunner also applied for the Kapellmeister class and was selected from 160 applicants to work with Emil Bohnke , Julius Prüwer and Siegfried Ochs .

Brunner's academic years in Berlin fell in the post-war period after the First World War and shaped his worldview as well as artistically. So he broke with late romantic pre-war music and regarded the twelve-tone music of the Second Viennese School as a necessary overcoming of late romanticism. Brunner himself (like his colleague Pepping) pursued a transparent, linear polyphony, which was to find its perfection in the three-part movement and to fall back on forms of Renaissance and Baroque music .

In the summer of 1925 he completed both studies. Brunner turned down the offer of a Kapellmeister position at the Danzig City Theater and finally decided to become a composer.

France and Italy

After a short return home in Zurich, Brunner traveled to Paris in January 1926 for a two-year stay . There he took piano lessons from Huber's student Ernst Levy and met his childhood friend Conrad Beck, who lived in Paris. The transparent compositional art of the music of the Groupe des Six influenced Brunner's new style. On several trips through France, an extensive interest in the architecture of French cathedrals developed. During this time his first "valid" compositions fell - compared to his youthful works, all of which he destroyed.

Brunner then returned to Zurich, where in 1929 his final work Symphonic Orchestral Piece with Suite was premiered by the Tonhalle Orchestra under the direction of Volkmar Andreae.

In 1930 Brunner traveled to Palermo and spent a few weeks in Sicily and Naples , before moving to Rome for a few months . His stay in Italy fell during the fascist dictatorship under Benito Mussolini , which he experienced during a speech in Florence . From these experiences Brunner concluded:

“The longer I struggled with totalitarian ideology, the clearer it became to me that the demands of the present can only be met in freedom, ie in a society that stands by its pluralistic structure and draws the consequences from it, and that Europe is condemned to death if it continues to be governed solely by the sacro egoismo of its nations. "

Interwar period

Until the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Brunner commuted between Zurich, Berlin and Paris. In the late autumn of 1930 he moved to Berlin again and was confronted with the rise of National Socialism . There he made friends with the young, still socialist trade unionist Walter Pahl and advised him in his function as a liaison between the union president Theodor Leipart and the Schleicher cabinet . During this time the composition of some piano pieces and parts of the Missa a cappella fell . While attending an NSDAP election meeting in the Berlin Sports Palace, Brunner met Adolf Hitler after his speech and later described him as a "wild, fanatical, demonically obsessed philistine".

After the referendum on the head of state of the German Reich in 1934, he returned to Zurich, but kept traveling to Berlin to find out about current developments on the spot. In Switzerland he completed his mass, a partita for piano and orchestra and the first three sacred concerts . Through his former teacher Walter Frey, Brunner helped found the Forum Pro Musica (now the Zurich section of the International Society for New Music ) and was able to achieve many premieres of his works there. In the autumn of 1935 he returned to Paris for a few months; Through a childhood friend he came into contact with the writings of the theologian Emil Brunner and developed a profound relationship with the Christian faith .

Greece

In the spring of 1937 Brunner undertook a three-month trip to Greece , both to complement his impressions from the trip to Italy and to research the Christian origins in Hellenism :

“Anyone who bowed his knee before Christ had previously stood upright as a Greek. In this sense, I felt it appropriate that I, who professed Christ, should also endeavor to preserve the ancient heritage. Christian faith and humanism understood in a Christian way are the two pillars which my existence is called to support. "

In Trieste Brunner took a course steamer to Corfu and arrived via Patras to Athens ; From there he traveled to the Peloponnese , numerous surrounding islands and climbed Mount Parnassus - mostly on foot with a donkey . A visit to the monastic republic of Athos  was the highlight of the trip, where he studied Byzantine church hymn and neum notation as a rare non-Greek visitor . Brunner drove back to Switzerland through the Balkans via Istanbul .

Second World War

Shortly before the Second World War, Brunner stayed in Berlin for another three months to attend all rehearsals of his Missa a cappella by the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin . At the same time Austria joined the Third Reich , which prompted Brunner to travel again to France ( Reims , Paris, Dijon ) before the threatened outbreak of war . Back in Zurich he befriended the composer Robert Oboussier , who later became the godfather of his son Christoph. In the course of mobilization after the attack on Poland , Brunner was drafted into active service in Altdorf . He was released from service in July 1940.

Influenced by the indifference that Brunner had heard in civil society, Brunner became politically active and participated in the Gotthardbund resistance group, initially at the cantonal level, and from 1942 on at the national level as managing president to relieve chairman Theophil Spoerri . At the same time he met Conrad Beck's divorced wife, Emmy Jacot Descombes, and their two sons; They got married on October 23, 1941 and had two sons of their own, Georg (* 1943) and Christoph (* 1947).

During the war years Brunner was hardly active as a composer in favor of his political activities and family affairs. In the Gotthard Association, he initiated a new attempt at old-age and survivors' insurance (AHV), which had failed for the last time in 1936. The preliminary studies financed by the group met with approval from the parties and culminated in the creation of the AHV, which was adopted in a popular vote in 1947 . The Gotthardbund, headed by Brunner, looked after the secretariat of the action committee during the voting and coordinated it as the initiator of the negotiations in the background. A six-point peace program that he wrote after the end of the war as the basis for a joint post-war policy was rejected by the parties, however, whereupon Brunner withdrew and devoted himself again to composition.

Worked at Radio Zurich

At the end of 1948, Brunner received the request to set up a political department at Radio Zurich . After a brief hesitation and stipulating sufficient capacity for composing, he agreed and later described his drive as follows:

“In the twelve years in which I was head of the“ Politics and Current Issues ”[sic] department, I attached great importance to objective, comprehensive information for the audience and tried to have a loyal, free discussion for all political currents on the The constitution stands to allow space. "

This claim was revealed in the program Echo der Zeit , initiated by Brunner , which is still one of the most popular radio formats in Switzerland today, and is also today a model for political discussions in public broadcasting . Under the pretext of inviting two choir conductors to rehearsals, Brunner received a visa to enter the German Democratic Republic in 1950 ; he toured Berlin, Leipzig , Zeitz and Zwickau . Brunner processed his impressions from discussions with the population and SED party officials as well as the contrasts to the reconstruction in West Germany , which was supported by the Marshall Plan , in numerous radio reports.

Further trips abroad

In 1951, Brunner traveled with his family to Egypt for two months (including Alexandria , Cairo and Upper Egypt ). He made two summer stays in 1955 and 1958 on the island of Port-Cros in the south of France , where he made friends with the art-loving owner Marceline Henry and revised two orchestral pieces. newly composed. Further works in this creative period include choir and string works and three new sacred concerts . In the early summer of 1957, Brunner accepted an invitation to the Sibelius Festival (now the Helsinki Festival ); his report earned him congratulations from Jean Sibelius , who died shortly afterwards .

Church music activities

In 1954 Brunner founded the Swiss Working Group for Protestant Church Music and headed it until 1964. He collected the results of this activity in his publication Musik im Gottesdienst , which was based on the renewal movement of Protestant church music after 1920 . This was followed by an appointment to the liturgy commission of the Church Synod of the Canton of Zurich and, with the support of the Zurich Music Schools, founded the Institute for Church Music (today ecumenically integrated into the Zurich University of the Arts ); In return for the music schools, he served as a state examination expert at the Zurich Conservatory from 1962 to 1968, then until 1971 in the music commission of the Tonhalle Society in Zurich.

Late years

With the completion of his last composition ( Markus Passion 1971), Brunner, who was considered to be cautious and relentlessly self-critical, decided not to compose any further works and to devote himself to philosophy. A 12-volume script was created by 1987, which has not yet been published. At the end of the 1970s, Brunner decided that his artistic estate should be handed over to the Zurich Central Library . In early 1991, his wife, Emmy, died. Until the end, Brunner remained mentally healthy despite increasing age-related complaints; he died in February 1992 in his home in Thalwil.

plant

Compositions

Brunner strove for an institutional as well as a compositional renewal of Protestant church music in his works. In this area he created compositions with lasting success. His passion story based on the Evangelist Markus , premiered in 1975 in the Kreuzkirche (Dresden) , is regularly performed during Holy Week in Switzerland. His musical oeuvre includes choral and orchestral music as well as chamber music. His musical style is contrapuntal and transparent in terms of composition, which suggests the influence of the Concerto grosso .

Orchestral works

• 1925: Symphonic orchestral piece with suite
• 1928, rev. 1956: Concert music for orchestra (solo viola, orchestra)
• 1939: Partita for piano and orchestra (also received as an arrangement for 2 pianos)
• 1944: Concerto grosso (2 solo violins, string orchestra, timpani)
• 1956: Concert for large orchestra

Instrumental works

• 1929: String trio (violin, viola, violoncello)
• 1933, rev. 1956: 15 small piano pieces
• 1933: Sonata for piano
• 1936: Sonata for flute and piano
• 1937: Pentecost book for organ about the chorale "Now we ask the Holy Spirit"
• 1948: Sonata for violin and piano
• 1961: Three opening pieces for organ
• 1962: string quartet
• 1962: Choral variations for organ "Our Father in the Kingdom of Heaven"
• 1963: Small partita for organ "Now rejoice, dear Christians in common"
• 1979: Three little games with intervals for carillon

Vocal works with instrumental accompaniment

• Three sacred concerts (1939)
  • The parable of the ten virgins (4-part mixed choir, horn and strings)
  • Jesus and the adulteress (middle voice and organ)
  • Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well (3 solo voices, flute, string quintet and organ)
• New spiritual concerts
  • 1945: The Temptation of Jesus (4-part mixed choir a cappella)
  • 1947: The conversation with Nicodemus (tenor, bass, oboe, strings and organ)
  • 1963: The Christmas Gospel (4-part mixed choir and strings)
• 1970: Markus Passion (for two mixed choirs, solos, orchestra and organ)

Other vocal works for a cappella choir

• 1934: Missa a cappella (4-part mixed choir)
• 1938: The human being "received and nourished" (6-part mixed choir or female choir)
• 1938: Four old German love songs (3-part female choir)
• 1939: God is Spirit (final motet from "Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well", 4-part mixed choir)
• 1942: Five motets (4-part mixed choir)
• 1947: Proverbs after Angelus Silesius (4-part mixed choir)
• 1949: Four choir songs based on ancient texts (4-part mixed choir)
• 1952: Evening hike "Time can solve" (1-part or 2-part canon)
• 1952: Es state en Pflueg (2-part choir)
• 1952: Dedication "Man is not called to be happy" (3-part mixed choir)
• 1957: The old year has passed (4-part mixed choir)
• 1959: Four Seasons Choirs (4-part mixed choir)
• 1960: Sixteen slogan motets (4-part mixed choir)
• 1961: Eight unison chorales

Other vocal works for solo singing

• 1946: Christening cantata "And they brought little children to him" (high voice, violin, cello and organ)
• 1949: Three poems by JW Goethe (soprano, alto and viola)

Books

• New bourgeoisie. Thoughts on the founding of the Gotthard Association , Fretz & Wasmuth, Zurich 1940.
• Paths, detours, wrong turns. A memory book for my descendants , self-published, Zurich 1965.
• Music in worship. Nature, function and place of music in church services (2nd edition), Zwingli-Verlag, Zurich 1968.
• Philosophical fragments on an ontological basis (12 volumes), unpublished, written between 1971 and 1987.

Awards

• City of Zurich Art Prize (1965)

literature

• Bernhard Billeter: Adolf Brunner , in: Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Zürich , 1972 (156).
• Eduard Grüber: The composer Adolf Brunner and his passion story based on the evangelist Markus , Zurich 1994.
• Chris Walton (ed.): Adolf Brunner. Memories of a Swiss composer from the school of Philipp Jarnach and Franz Schreker , in: Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Zürich , 1997 (181).
• Bernhard Billeter: Nature and Man. On the philosophy of Adolf Brunner , in: Dominik Sackmann (ed.): Music theory and musical practice. Collected essays , Peter Lang, Bern 2004, pp. 93–106.

Discography

• Swiss composers (includes sonata for piano), Walther Frey (piano), Communauté de travail pour la diffusion de la musique suisse, CT-64-25, Lausanne 1964.
• In May Day (contains parable of the ten virgins), Chamber Choir of the Schaffhausen Cantonal School, Vivi-Singers, Edwin Villiger (conductor), ML 30-351, Schaffhausen 1970.
• A concert of contemporary Swiss music (contains sonata for flute and piano), André Jaunet (flute), Walther Frey (piano), Decca Records LXT 2658, London, approx. 1980.
• Organ landscapes of Switzerland (contains three entrance plays), Bernhard Billeter (organ), Pelca PSR 41014, Zurich 1981.
• Markus Passion , Berner Kantorei, Collegium vocale and Collegium musicum of the Evangelical Singing Community, Klaus Knall (lead), MGB CD 6176, Zurich 2001.
• The Christmas Gospel according to Lukas , Collegium Vocale Zurich, chamber music formation from Musicuria, Klaus Knall (conductor), MGB CD 6177, Zurich 2001.
• Swiss organ music (contains Whitsun Book), Jeremy Bines (organ), Guild GMCD 7253, 2003.
• Orchestral Masterworks from Switzerland (contains partita for piano and orchestra), Royal Scottish National Orchestra , Fali Pavri (piano), Rainer Held (conductor), Guild GMCD 7403, 2014.
• Man, become essential. Sacred works by Adolf Brunner (contains 16 slogan motets, three entrance plays for organ, Missa a cappella, Jesus and the adulteress, eight Silesius sayings), Iris Anna Deckert (soprano), Tobias Willi (organ), Ensemble Cantissimo, Markus Utz (conductor ), Spektral / SRF 2 Kultur SRL4-17156, Regensburg 2017.

Web links

• Publications by and about Adolf Brunner (1901–1992) in the Helveticat catalog of the Swiss National Library
• Literature by and about Adolf Brunner in the catalog of the German National Library
• Christoph Ballmer: Brunner, Adolf. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Biography and list of the estate of Adolf Brunner in the Zurich Central Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Chris Walton (Ed.): Adolf Brunner. Memories of a Swiss composer from the school of Philipp Jarnach and Franz Schrekers , in: Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Zürich , 1997 (181), p. 64.
2. ↑ Chris Walton (Ed.): Adolf Brunner. Memories of a Swiss composer from the school of Philipp Jarnach and Franz Schrekers , in: Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Zürich , 1997 (181), p. 68.
3. ↑ Chris Walton (Ed.): Adolf Brunner. Memories of a Swiss composer from the school of Philipp Jarnach and Franz Schrekers , in: Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Zürich , 1997 (181), p. 76.
4. ↑ Chris Walton (Ed.): Adolf Brunner. Memories of a Swiss composer from the school of Philipp Jarnach and Franz Schrekers , in: Neujahrsblatt der Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft Zürich , 1997 (181), pp. 95f.