Margarete Dessoff

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Margarete "Gretchen" Dessoff (born June 11, 1874 in Vienna , † November 27, 1944 in Locarno , Switzerland ) was a German choir conductor and singing teacher.

Live and act

Emma Margarete Dessoff was born in Vienna in 1874 and came to Frankfurt am Main at the age of six when her father, the conductor Otto Dessoff , was appointed first conductor of the opera orchestra. She studied singing with Gustav Gunz and Marie Schröder-Hanfstängl (1892–97) at Dr. Hoch's Conservatory , where she later taught a choir class herself. In addition to the Dessoff women's choir , she led the Frankfurt Bach community for several years and founded one of the first madrigal associations in Germany in 1918, which also went on concert tours.

At the height of the inflation, Margarete Dessoff accepted an invitation to New York City , where she worked as chorus director at the Institute of Musical Art - later the Juilliard School of Music , a music academy modeled on the European conservatories. In the 1920s she founded several choirs, the women's choir Adesdi , the mixed choir The New York A Cappella Singers and the Vecchi Singers , with whom she realized the American premiere of the madrigal comedy L'Amfiparnaso by Orazio Vecchi in 1933 . In addition to her love of early music, she performed works by young and unknown composers with the courage to take risks. Her programs and concerts, designed with artistic intelligence, inspired contemporary composers to new works for choral singing, including Hans Gál , Erwin Lendvai , Hugo Herrmann , Marion Bauer , Lazare Saminsky and others. a.

After the withdrawal from active musical life it was a return to the now dominated by the Nazis Germany impossible. She emigrated to Switzerland , where she died on November 27, 1944 in Locarno . While it does not appear in the German historiography of modern choral singing, the Dessoff Choirs in New York City , which go back to their founding , carry their name to this day.

literature

  • Sabine Fröhlich: First Performance Anywhere: Margarete Dessoff (1874–1944), an important choir conductor. In: Music Theory. 20th year, Issue 1, 2005 ISSN  0177-4182 , pp. 61-85.
  • Peter Cahn : The Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main (1878–1978). Waldemar Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-7829-0214-9 (also: Frankfurt am Main, Univ., Diss., 1980).
  • Joachim Draheim, Gerhard Albert Jahn (ed.): Otto Dessoff (1835-1892). A conductor, composer and companion of Johannes Brahms. Musikverlag Katzbichler, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-87397-590-4 .
  • Sabine Fröhlich: Margarete Dessoff. Choir conductor on the way to the modern age . A biography, Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 2020, ISBN 978-3-95593-044-8 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Dessoff, Margarete
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dessoff, Gretchen (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German choir director and singing teacher
DATE OF BIRTH June 11, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 27, 1944
Place of death Locarno , Switzerland