Alfred Stern (musician)

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Alfred Stern (born March 4, 1901 in Sanremo , Italy ; † September 11, 1982 in Zurich ) was a Swiss musician and composer .

Life

Alfred Stern was born in Sanremo and attended elementary school there. From 1914 he lived in Aarau , where he attended the district school and then the canton school (grammar school). During this time he played in the Aarau City Orchestra. For further training, Stern went to the Zurich Conservatory , where he studied violin with Paul Essek and voice with Alfredo Cairati . In 1927 he married Klara Müller (1901–1999) from Loten.

Stern initially worked as a music teacher at the Haubinda German Landerziehungsheim in Thuringia before taking over the direction of the youth orchestra in Zurich in 1929. In 1937 he founded the folksong choir Maibaum . He led singing and play courses at the adult education center in Zurich and in various schools, such as the Evangelical Teachers' Seminar in Zurich and the School for Social Work in Zurich. He was a private teacher for violin, viola, guitar and singing.

Alfred Stern's work includes his own compositions, arrangements of other works and numerous settings of poems , older folk songs and folk dances. He edited pieces by numerous Swiss and German writers, which he made available to a wider audience in this way. He set poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Friedrich Schiller , Angelus Silesius , Matthias Claudius , Sophie Haemmerli-Marti , Josef Reinhart , Gertrud Burkhalter , Gottfried Keller , Gottlieb Jakob Kuhn and many others to music, thus creating new folk songs. Stern edited, together with Klara Stern, song books with High German and dialect songs such as Röselichranz (1942) and Liedermeie (1951).

Stern's estate has been kept in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern since 1985.

Works (selection)

  • Filomela. Chanzuns, chanzunetas d'Engiadina. Zurich 1939.
  • Folk dances of Switzerland, Volume I. Hug & Co., Zurich 1941.
  • Roselichranz. Folk songs for children in Switzerland. Sauerländer, Aarau 1942.
  • Zwingli songs. Zwingli-Verlag, Zurich 1942.
  • Liedermeie. Swiss folk song book for people in traditional costume. Hug & Co., Zurich 1951.
  • Unspunnen dances. Hug & Co., Zurich 1957.
  • Songs of quadrilingual Switzerland. Christian Wegner, Hamburg-Wandsbek 1961.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Swiss Literary Archives, Bern, signature: SLA-Mus_AS.
personal data
SURNAME Stern, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss musician and composer
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Sanremo
DATE OF DEATH September 11, 1982
Place of death Zurich