Lorenz Giovanelli

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Lorenz Giovanelli (born March 18, 1915 in Frutigen ; † October 18, 1976 in Erlenbach im Simmental ) was a Swiss folk musician and composer .

Childhood and youth

Lorenzo Leonardo Domenico Giovanelli was born in Frutigen in 1915. His father, Lorenzo Erminio Giovanelli, was an Italian site manager who was involved in the construction of the Lötschberg railway line. His mother, Elisabeth Toneatti, was the daughter of an Italian engineer who had settled in Frutigen with his wife, who came from central Switzerland. When Lorenz was three years old, his parents moved with him to Italy. When his mother died soon afterwards, his father brought him to Frutigen to live with grandparents and aunts on his mother's side, where he grew up from then on. He never saw or heard from his father. Playing the hand organ became - as numerous photos show - his passion early on. "Ds Toneatteli", as he was called in school, taught himself to play the hand organ. "In six hours of music I learned something about the hand organ and fingering, while the music teacher told me: If you don't learn that in six hours, you will never learn it again," Lorenz once said in a radio interview. While still at school he made music together with his childhood friend Walter Isler, who played the clarinet. After leaving school, the two went to Boudry in French-speaking Switzerland for a year. Then Lorenz began an apprenticeship as a cheese maker in Noflen, while Walter Isler moved to Bern to work in an office. Because the Nofler cheese dairy soon fell victim to the unfavorable economic situation, Lorenz had to look around for another job and did an apprenticeship as a miller at the Stadtmühle Bern.

Music - profession and calling

Even as a young boy, Lorenz not only liked to make music himself, but also did everything to listen to others making music: "The foundation stone was laid by two theaters, one in Frutigen, the other in Reichenbach, where it was said that there would also be a manual organ", Lorenz liked to tell later. On Friday evening the schoolchildren were allowed to attend the main rehearsal of these theater performances for 50 cents, and Lorenz was happy to undertake the five and a half kilometer walk to Reichenbach: "On the way there, one was excited about this hand organ and the way home was again wrestling, because yes now heard and still had a little in the ears, "he recalled. Together with Walter Isler / clarinet, Hans Schmid / hand organ and Johann Grossen / bass, Lorenz Giovanelli founded the “Alpengruss” Chapel in Frutigen in 1932, the name of which was to be named in one go with his personal name. At the side of Alfred Kölliker, the first sound recordings were made in 1934 as a hand organ duet. By the end of his life he would finally record the astonishing number of nearly 500 dances on records. Until then he had only demonstrated his ability on the diatonic accordion, but at the age of twenty he followed the advice of the organ manufacturer Ernst Salvisberg and also learned to play the accordion off the cuff. And that should be a good decision: When the Second World War - and with it the economic crisis - began, it became increasingly difficult for Lorenz to secure an income for himself and his family in their traditional job. That is why he decided in 1941 to earn his living with music and became a professional musician. In the following years he made music with constantly changing players, mainly in Bern, Zurich and Lucerne. As a musician, he also often accompanied yodellers (including Jakob Ummel, Vreny Schmidlin) and traditional costume groups. After this period of lively musical activity, after the war he found his way back to his middle-class job as a miller, which he now pursued for a longer period in the Appenzell region. He later worked as a chauffeur in Thun and Spiez, among others. Lorenz Giovanelli's band "Alpengruss Frutigen" was never a long-term play community. Rather, it was constantly reforming itself, which was exactly in Lorenz's mind: "I had fun playing with this one today, with that one tomorrow and with another the day after tomorrow. That makes the whole thing interesting, everyone has their own peculiarity, You have to concentrate on again. Don't play with the same for years! That creates a routine that becomes so perfect that listening to music all at once is no longer nice, "he said with conviction in an address on his 60th birthday . His teammates included Emil Zwyer, Sepp Gehrig, Toni Amrein, Hubert Camenzind, Matthias Iten, Edy Keizer, Edi Steiner, Werner Büschlen, Fritz Bircher, Fritz Schranz, Fritz Tschannen, Ernst Feuz, Ernst Kröpfli and Ruedi Allenbach. For recordings, Lorenz Giovanelli only brought in first-class people, namely the two wind players Kaspar Muther and Seppi Vogel. But Jost Ribary, Max Cerutti, Sebastian Kaufmann or the accordionists Paul Zimmermann and Arthur Brügger also often lent him their support and made a considerable contribution to his success. Lorenz Giovanelli was a gifted impromptu player; he could neither read nor write notes. For many years, when asked about the sheet music for his pieces, he replied: "Buy a record and learn from it." Over the years he finally had many pieces written down and so a part of his 240 or so of his own dances was published by the publishers Hans Niederdorfer, Ernedy, Stucki and Grossmann.

family

At the end of the 1930s, Lorenz Giovanelli married Hedwig Lauber, the daughter of Sigristen at the time, in Frutigen. Over the years there were six children. The family lived in the house of Lorenz's grandparents Toneatti in Frutigen until 1960. In 1960 they were able to buy a house in Reutigen, where they lived from then on. In 1948 Lorenz Giovanelli, who until then had been an Italian citizen, was granted Swiss citizenship. His wife also played a major role in the fact that he was always able to follow his musical streak and at times turn his great passion into a profession: Hedi always looked after the right things at home, looked after the six children and also did various jobs to find something else Contribute to livelihood: At first she sewed and embroidered for many years at home - such as cloth bags for the Swiss Army or bed linen for trousseau - and when the children were older she worked in the laundries of various hotels. From Reutigen she sewed and mended for those in care in the asylum of Gottesgnad in Spiez.

On April 30, 1976, the country band "Alpengruss Frutigen" recorded again. Lorenz was reluctant to make these recordings: "There is really hardly an ensemble that is not immortalized in some way on the black disc. It would be totally useless to overwhelm the market even more," he let the unit manager Dölf Elseners know. Nevertheless, he was finally convinced by the recordings - and it would be his last: Six months later, Lorenz Giovanelli died after a short illness in the Erlenbach hospital. Even after almost 40 years his musical traces have not been erased: Many musicians from all over Switzerland still play his pieces today and for some he is still a great role model.

leisure

In addition to music, Lorenz Giovanelli also pursued other leisure activities very intensively. For example, he was one of the founding members of the Lötschberg yodelling group in Frutigen and also worked as an alphorn player and flag thrower. Another of his passions were cars: he got his driver's license in 1951 and later owned a Hotchkiss, a VW Beetle, a Triumph Spitfire, a Mercedes and a Lancia Aurelia B20, among other things. In the 50s and 60s, ski jumping became his great hobby: he did not jump from the jump table himself, but was the judge. In this role, too, he worked his way to the top and finally passed the test as an FIS jumping judge. During this time he became a good friend of Erich Recknagel, the former German ski jumping champion from the former GDR. In 1964 Lorenz Giovanelli took part in the Olympic Games in Innsbruck. During his missions he evaluated, among others, the Swiss ski jumper Andreas Däscher, to whom he dedicated the 1956 march "Däscher-Flug". In later years, Lorenz Giovanelli became an active crossbowman: around 1960 he was involved in the founding of the Armbrustschützengesellschaft Bubenberg-Spiez, later he belonged to the Crossbowmen Höngg and in 1974 he became President of the Crossbowmen Mülenen, where he was one of the driving forces behind the construction of the new shooting range. He also had his own shooting range in his home in Reutigen.

supporting documents

• Excerpt from the biography of Lorenz Giovanelli www.lorenz-giovanelli.ch

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kulturgutstiftung.ch. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 31, 2017 ; accessed on March 27, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ^ Reto Giovanelli, Mario Rubin, Renate Rubin: Lorenz Giovanelli, biography. Retrieved March 27, 2017 . 
3. ^ Reto Giovanelli, Mario Rubin, Renate Rubin: Lorenz Giovanelli, biography. Retrieved March 27, 2017 .