Adolf Kern (composer)

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Adolf Kern (born November 9, 1906 in Stuttgart , † March 11, 1976 in Schwäbisch Gmünd ) was a German composer , church musician , organist , choir director and lecturer .

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His father, at that time a civil servant at the Königlich-Württembergische Staatseisenbahn , made it possible for him and his older sister to take piano and violin lessons , whereby the older sister had to teach the little brother to play the piano, because the father did not earn that much to give two children instrumental lessons enable.

At the teachers' college in Künzelsau , for which he had a scholarship , he received organ lessons for the first time , and from then on was obsessed with this instrument. At 17 he gave his first organ concert in which he the BACH by Franz Liszt played. In 1926 he began his studies at the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart , because the state of Württemberg no longer hired teachers for lack of money. He studied piano, organ and composition / composition with Professor Hermann Keller and conducting with GMD Carl Leonhardt and between 1929 and 1934 he passed the A-examination for Protestant church music , the state examination for teaching at secondary schools and the Kapellmeister examination. The tension between him and his father caused him to move from Stuttgart and to move to Ulm in 1927 . One reason was that the son incessantly needed money for notes and books, which was completely incomprehensible to the father. This incomprehension between father and son Adolf Kern was to last a lifetime: The father loved military parades , uniforms and brass music , which the son abhorred.

In Ulm he was organist at the cathedral , cantor at the synagogue and conductor at the city theater . In Ulm's neighboring town of Neu-Ulm , he worked as an organist and choirmaster at the Evangelical Church of St. Peter . The musical and social contacts to Jewish families in Ulm were to have a lasting impact on him, where he was particularly valued as an accomplished piano accompanist and chamber musician . He himself described this period between 1927 and 1932 as an absolute stroke of luck for his intellectual, artistic and human development, as the educated Jewish bourgeoisie showed him a path to intellectual and artistic freedom. In 1931 he organized a benefit concert in the synagogue for the benefit of the unemployed in Ulm.

In 1931 he was offered a job as a teacher on the condition that he quit the synagogue. After a conversation with the rabbi , he advised him to accept the state office and resign. He was denied permanent employment or even civil service during the Third Reich . His activities as a church musician were more than a thorn in the side of his superiors. The Süddeutsche Rundfunk commissioned him to compose music for radio plays and also broadcast his works, but he was not allowed to record or record them himself because he did not have a “microphone permit”. Obviously he refused to take a "microphone exam", which required proof of Aryan proof and, above all, membership in the NSDAP . The main rule was: the lower the party number, the sooner and more recordings you could make on the radio, regardless of the artistic quality.

The military service not was spared, and in 1943 he came to the hospital to Schwabisch Gmund. The duty doctor , an enthusiastic amateur - Geiger , enabled him making music and playing the organ by medically prescribed "holiday". Among other things, on the high holidays of the last years of the war he held the service at the Catholic Holy Cross Münster in Schwäbisch Gmünd. Kern, who joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1937 (membership number 5,890,850), was classified in the group of those not affected in the course of a panel proceedings.

Immediately after the end of the war, Adolf Kern was appointed headmaster at the state orphanage in Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1945 . From 1952 to 1972 he worked at the local pedagogical university , initially as a lecturer, from 1963 as professor for music education and didactics .

Many of Adolf Kern's compositions were created for practical reasons for a small circle of friends, for schoolchildren, students and later for his children. There is therefore an abundance of chamber music works with piano in a wide variety of settings, songs, but also works for orchestras , operas and operettas . His compositional style is based on the late Romantic period , with clearly manageable forms and a compelling harmonic logic. Many of his most important works were published by his daughter Anne Kern's aka music publisher , including several recorder sonatas , but also organ works and the so-called “preacher's choirs a cappella”. A recorder sonata was published by Möseler .

Adolf Kern died on March 11, 1976 in Schwäbisch Gmünd. Part of the estate is preserved in the Schwäbisch Gmünd city archive .

Works (selection)

  • Small suite for alto saxophone / Bb clarinet and piano (1929)
  • Two sacred songs for mezzo-soprano (soprano) and organ based on texts from Isaiah (1930), written for the synagogue in Ulm
  • Parodies for the Mind for voice, alto saxophone (partly) and piano
  • Seek the Eternal
  • Small suite for alto saxophone and piano
  • 24 pieces through all keys for piano
  • A cappella preacher's choirs
  • "John Riley" Suite of Variations in D minor for string orchestra
  • Prelude, adagio and chorale on "Oh how fleeting, oh how null" for recorder / flute and piano (1966)
  • Sonata for viola and organ in E minor (1974)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Duo in a minor. A recorder / transverse flute, piano. in: Old catalog on moeseler-verlag.de, accessed on October 1, 2015 ( Memento from October 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ All biographical information on the homepage of the aka-Musikverlag (Karlsruhe) of his daughter Anne Kern
  3. ^ Stadtarchiv Schwäbisch Gmünd, inventory D10. See Gmünder Tagespost of November 2, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Kern, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer, church musician, organist and cantor
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH March 11, 1976
Place of death Schwäbisch Gmünd