Michael Aures

Michael Aures (born as Georg Aures; born November 27, 1888 in Amberg ; † October 4, 1982 in Nuremberg ) was a German music teacher at the Nuremberg Conservatory , zither virtuoso and composer of around 30 folk pieces of music.

Life

Michael Aures was born in Amberg as the son Georg of the musician Georg Aures. In the 1890s the Aures family moved to Nuremberg. He chose Michael Aures as his nickname and artist name. But in official documents he had to call himself Georg Aures.

He became a music teacher for guitar and accordion at the Nuremberg Conservatory. (In 1883 the “Städtische Musikschule” was built, for which a separate building was built at Maxplatz 50, which could be occupied in 1894. The director Carl Rorich, who was in office from 1914 to 1934, expanded the institution into a full-fledged music school Status of a “Municipal Conservatory of Music”. From 1939 to 1946 it was called “State Music School”. The building was destroyed in World War II.)

In his private life Michael Aures taught zither, because this instrument was not taught in the conservatory.

He was the chairman of the Association of Zither and Guitar Teachers in Nuremberg, Fürth and the surrounding area, based in Nuremberg, founded on October 20, 1926. Rehearsals took place in a pub on the Kettensteg. In 1933 the association disbanded.

Michael Aures was a member of the elite zither society "Münchner Kindl", which was founded in 1906. An applicant for membership first had to audition and only if the committee had found the quality of his game to be good could a decision on admission to the test be made.

With Franz Heinrich, chairman of the Nuremberg Zither Association in the 1920s, he met every Sunday in the 1920s and 1930s at the Hotel Deutscher Kaiser , Königstr. 55, played for afternoon tea. Together with a third zither player and supplemented with a guitar, they regularly played as a quartet in front of an audience. The gramophone was invented but was not used in popular music.

He was married to Rosl but had no children. Even as a pensioner , he taught zither and guitar in his private apartment in the Bleiweißviertel until old age . Michael Aures was proud to have won first prize in a mini harmonica competition, namely a mini harmonica , which he loved to play for his students and guests.

At the age of 87, he had to move to Gibitzenhof on Wattstrasse, as the multi-storey apartment building on Augustenstrasse (without a bathroom, but with a shared toilet on each floor) was demolished. Michael Aures died on October 4, 1982 at the age of 93 as the last of the generation of outstanding zither interpreters in Nuremberg. With him an era came to an end that hardly anyone knows today.

It can be found in the city address books:

• Aures Georg, musician, lives at Schützenstrasse 2 / I. (City directory from 1922);
• Aures Georg, musician, and Aures Michael Georg, music teacher, live at Schützenstraße 2 / I. (City address book from 1939);
• Aures Georg, music teacher, lives at Augustenstrasse 3. (city address books from 1949, 1952, 1962 and 1974);
• Aures Georg (no job details) lives at 3. Wattstrasse (city address books from 1975 and 1979).

Heinrich Schiede, Lexikon für das Zither- und Saitenspiel, Munich, 1994, says: “Aures Michael, Nuremberg, * September 27, 1888 - (?). Music teacher at the Nuremberg Municipal Conservatory, zither soloist Nuremberg Chamber Quartet, composer of entertaining art music. “Michael Aures' date of birth is incorrect.

Compositions (selection)

• Alpine greetings;
• Country wise men;
• In the evening in the parlor;
• Dragonfly, 2 parts;
• At the fountain;
• Marionettes;
• Mountain spring, romance;
• Ros'l Polka;
• Bergkraxler, 2 voices;
• Rottaler folk melodies;
• Memory of Hercules bath;
• Backpack full of landlords
• Memory of Salzburg;
• Walk in the Ore Mountains;
• Fantasy, caprice;
• Dance country;
• Mountainous;
• Tyrolean yodelling march;
• Greetings to Tegernsee, march;
• Under the Bavarian sky.

He published his works under the name Michael Aures.

Known students

• Olaf Detlefsen, state-approved instrumental teacher for concert zither;
• Werner Wittig, biographer of Michael Aures.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Amberg City Archives
2. ↑ own memories of Sigi2011
3. ↑ Werner Wittig, Die Zither in Franken, Nürnberg 2015, pp. 28, 38, 119.