Gerd Boder

Gerd Boder (born June 13, 1933 in Saarbrücken ; † June 2, 1992 there ) was a German composer.

Life

Gerd Boder received his first piano lessons from his father at the age of 5. During the Second World War the family was evacuated to Speyer , where he received professional piano lessons and was made familiar with harmony and contrapuntal laws. At the age of 14 he tried his hand at his first compositions.

Two years later he began studying at the State Conservatory in Saarbrücken, which was founded in 1947 and later became the Saar University of Music . He then moved to the French Conservatory in Poitiers ; He successfully completed his studies with a Prix ​​d'Excellence in piano and a Premier Prix in composition . From 1952 to 1954 he studied at the Conservatoire National in Paris with Jean Rivier and Noël Gallon in the subjects of harmony , composition and counterpoint . In 1955 he returned to the Saarbrücken Conservatory, where he graduated with honors in the subjects of conducting and composition (music) ; the latter he studied with Heinrich Konietzny . For three years, Boder also learned to play the timpani in order to be able to secure an economic basis as an orchestral musician. For a short time after his exams he worked as a music teacher at a grammar school and at the teacher training seminar in Lebach in Saarland .

After receiving the Villa Massimo ( Rome ) Prize in 1961 , he made his breakthrough as a composer. During his stay in Rome he married his wife Ursel and lived with her for another three years in the Italian capital, where he worked as a freelance composer. In 1964 he and his family moved from Rome to the Westphalian Körbecke (Möhnesee) , where he went through a lengthy creative phase. In the 1970s, Boder fell into a deep psychological crisis from which he could not free himself until his death. He moved back to Saarbrücken without his family and penniless, where he hoped in vain to find a job as a music teacher and where he died lonely in a nursing home after a long illness.

Oeuvre

At a young age, Boder was seen as the great hope of new music. His oeuvre includes around 180 compositions. He also wrote thousands of sheets of music as sketches or experiments. Nevertheless, he only gave 72 opus numbers, as many pieces were casual work or did not meet his own extremely high standards. Most of the compositions are from his most productive phase, from around 1955 to 1975.

Boder was primarily influenced by Béla Bartók and Alban Berg . He composed in almost all musical genres, only in the opera field he did not feel at home. The majority of his works are preserved in the Saarland State Archives (Saarbrücken).

Awards and honors

• 1963 and 1968: Stuttgart Prize for Young Composers
• 1963 Prix de Composition Prince Pierre de Monaco
• 1976 Saarland Art Prize , the most important cultural prize in the state

literature

• Kreutzer, Tomas: A bearer of hope - life and work of the composer Gerd Boder. in: Music in Saarbrücken - echoes of an eventful history (on behalf of Saarländischer Rundfunk, SR 2 <Kulturradio>). Ed .: Nike Keisinger, Ricarda Wackers. Saarbrücken: 2000. pp. 207-210
• Lücke, Martin: Gerd Boder: Life and Work, ed. from the city of Soest, Soest 2003

Web links

• Vita / work description on "Klangtext"
• Soester Anzeiger (from March 6, 2006)