Franz Xaver Gardeweg

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Franz Xaver Gardeweg (born March 5, 1944 in Opladen ; † November 8, 2006 in Bonn ) was a German church musician , composer and conductor .

Act

Gardeweg studied composition in Wuppertal with Ingo Schmitt , a student of Frank Martin , piano with Liliane Christowa-Watzke, viola and chamber music with Corneel Ruymen in Cologne and conducting with Wilhelm Schüchter in Dortmund. There he worked as Schuecher's assistant and then went to the opera in Münster as Kapellmeister on his recommendation. Tours as a violist in a string quartet have taken him to Belgium, France, Greece and Turkey. As a solo violist he played for a long time in the Wuppertal Chamber Orchestra.

As a full-time church musician, Gardeweg worked in Burscheid from 1977 as conductor of the Burscheid choir community .

Subsequently, from 1991 until his death in 2006, he directed the Bonn Bach Choir . During these years he intensified the collaboration with other choirs. The reunification of Germany made it possible to perform together with choir friends from Quedlinburg and Potsdam in the Beethoven Hall in Bonn .

Under his direction, the Bonn Bach Choir made several guest appearances in Italy, including 1999 at the Viterbo Baroque Festival with the B minor Mass by Johann Sebastian Bach and in 2000 as part of the “La Bibbia nella Musica” project in Lombardy with Matthäus -Passion .

Franz Xaver Gardeweg has composed around 60 works: Chamber music for a wide variety of instrumentations, over 100 songs, choral music, operas and 4 symphonies. At the composition competition in 1987, his horn quintet received an award from the International Horn Society, Lucerne. In 1990 the Independent Association for Music, Film and Stage Art in Pforzheim awarded him the 1st prize for his clarinet quintet. His stage works Die Nacht der Hexen , Valerio or the Riddle of the Magician as well as the chamber opera Erwin and Elmire (text after Goethe) have been performed with success several times.

Completed and performed choral works from 1991 to 2006

Under Gardeweg's direction, the great works of European choral literature were developed and performed with the Bonn Bach Choir: the oratorios The Seasons and The Creation as well as the Creation Mass by Joseph Haydn ; Masses No. 5 in A flat major and No. 6 in E flat major by Franz Schubert ; the oratorios Judas Maccabäus and The Messiah by George Frideric Handel ; the Christmas Oratorio , the B minor Mass and the St. John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach ; the Missa solemnis in D major op. 123 by Ludwig van Beethoven ; the sequence Stabat mater by Gioacchino Rossini ; Gabriel Fauré's Requiem ; A German Requiem op. 45 by Johannes Brahms ; the War Requiem by Benjamin Britten ; the Mass in D major op. 86 by Antonín Dvořák ; the Messa da Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi ; the oratorio Gurre-Lieder by Arnold Schönberg ; the Requiem D flat major by Robert Schumann and others

Compositions

  • 7 songs based on poems by Heinrich Heine :
    • No. 1: Dear friend
    • No. 2: Too fragmentary
    • # 3: gave me advice
    • No. 4: And you are only
    • No. 5: They sat and drank
    • No. 6: But the neutered
    • No. 7: But the neutered
  • The Chamber Choir (scores for 4-part mixed choir), Verlag Josef Butz, Sankt Augustin 1990:
    • Oh God, how painful it is to part
    • May comes with joy
    • I want to complain to heaven
    • I went for a walk once
    • There was a little rabbit
    • Many a bird flies
    • Heaven laughs
    • I cannot and do not like to be happy
    • A little song
    • Of all the girls
    • Mei (n) Schätzle is fei (n)
    • When spring days revive
  • Laudes Creaturarum. (Hymn; performed 2002)
  • Small gallows song cycle. (Song; performed 2003)
  • Stabat mater. (World premiere on March 21, 2004 in Bonn, Johanneskirche)
  • as editor:

Discography

Gardeweg was in charge of the following productions:

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gardeweg, Franz Xaver
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German church musician, composer and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH Opladen
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 2006
Place of death Bonn