Othmar Schoeck

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Othmar Schoeck (born September 1, 1886 in Brunnen , Canton Schwyz , † March 8, 1957 in Zurich ) was a Swiss composer and conductor . The song was at the center of his work. In terms of style, his work is "essentially indebted to the German-Austrian late romanticism ".

Life

Othmar Schoeck, the son of a painter, received piano lessons at an early age. After training at the Zurich Conservatory with Friedrich Hegar , Lothar Kempter , Karl Attenhofer and Robert Freund , he attended the master class for composition with Max Reger in Leipzig in 1907/1908 . He then worked as a choir director and piano accompanist in Zurich. From 1917 to 1944 he conducted the symphony concerts of the St. Gallen Concert Society in the Tonhalle there .

After his return from Leipzig, Schoeck quickly made a name for himself as a composer in Switzerland with songs, stage and choral works - including Drum Beats , Op. 26, from 1915, and often performed. In 1927 Schoeck's one-act play Penthesilea op. 39 (after Heinrich von Kleist ) was premiered at the Dresden Semperoper . It was there in 1937 that his four-act opera Massimilla Doni, Op. 50, premiered under the direction of Karl Böhm . His song cycle Lebendig Buried , op. 40, written on texts by Gottfried Keller , also shows “the masterful mastery of the stylistic devices of New Music ”. James Joyce was impressed enough when he played it back in 1935 by the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra to immediately translate one of the poems into English. It was later set to music by Samuel Barber and included in his work Three Songs (1972). In the 1930s, Schoeck orientated itself more towards classic models.

Schoeck is considered one of the most important song composers of the 20th century. Grown up in an art-loving family and through his education, Schoeck knew German-language poetry, especially that of German-speaking Switzerland. Thanks to his phenomenal memory, he was able to recite many poems by heart. He set poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Joseph von Eichendorff , Nikolaus Lenau (namely the Notturno for deep voice and string quartet) and Eduard Mörike to music . From Swiss poets he chose poetry cycles by Heinrich Leuthold , by Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and especially often by Gottfried Keller , whose main composer he has become. Well-known artists who worked for Schoeck all their lives include Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Arthur Loosli . Both recorded his most important works since 1950 and 1967 respectively. Schoeck's sonata for violin and piano op.16, the violin concerto quasi una fantasia op.21 , which he wrote for the violinist Stefi Geyer , his concerto for violoncello and string orchestra op.61, his horn concerto op.65 and the frequently played are also known Summer Night op. 58, a piece for pure string orchestra. Schoeck was friends with Hermann Hesse , with whom he exchanged letters for decades, and the painter Franz Wiegele from the Nötscher district .

In 1925 Schoeck married the German singer Hilde Bartscher (1898–1990), who later became the most important interpreter of his songs and with whom he had a daughter, Gisela (1932–2018). In 1928 the University of Zurich awarded him an honorary doctorate. After 1933 the demand for Schoeck's music increased in Germany. Although he disliked National Socialism politically, he accepted the Erwin von Steinbach Prize without hesitation on March 1, 1937 , which the Swiss press chalked up because “the award was obviously politically motivated. Schoeck, however, saw the award merely as an honor for his artistic work. " From a pragmatic point of view, one of his concerns was probably not to jeopardize his presence on the big German stages, for example at the world premiere of Massimilla Doni in Dresden in 1937 or Das Schloss Dürande in Berlin in 1943 .

In 1943 Schoeck received the Music Prize of the City of Zurich, where he also spent the last years of his life. A year later he suffered a heart attack that put an end to his work as a conductor and piano accompanist. Despite some performance successes, such as the pastoral interlude for string orchestra Sommernacht (1945), the concerto for cello and string orchestra (1947), and the concerto for horn and string orchestra (1951), Schoeck was not satisfied with its late effects. The post-war conditions were unfavorable for him, his work was considered "difficult" and, moreover, he had no students.

Schoeck died 10 years later. His grave is in the Manegg cemetery in Zurich .

To the work

Othmar-Schoeck-Brunnen in Zurich, sculptor Peter Meister

Max Lütolf judges (2011):

«Schoeck's conception of art was anchored in the tradition of the 19th century, especially in adhering to the principle of expression. Despite fundamental reservations, he opened up on the level of compositional concretization to the achievements of newer musical art, such as breaking up tonality, renouncing a continuous meter, mixing genre-specific features or experimenting in the field of instrumentation. In terms of content, both the vocal and the instrumental works revolve around topics such as art and life, man and woman, mind and body, the pure and the sick, nature, home and fatherland. His refusal to follow developments in music from the 1920s onwards hampered Schoeck's international recognition.
The recent reception of Schoeck's works has, however, made clear the need for a reassessment of the composer's position in music history. "

The performances of his opera Penthesilea in Basel (2007), Dresden (2008), Lübeck (2009), Frankfurt am Main (2011), Bonn (2017), Linz (2019), but also the numerous recordings, bear witness to the renewed interest in Schoeck's work des Notturno op. 47 since the mid-1980s as well as reproductions of this work all over the world.

In 2018, the Bern Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Mario Venzago gave a concert performance of a revision of the opera Das Schloss Dürande , in which the compromised work and in particular the difficulties of the libretto by Hermann Burte were carried out by a national fund project at the Bern University of the Arts "Decontaminated", the first production of this version was scheduled for 2019 in the Meiningen State Theater .

A detailed catalog of works can be found u. a. at Musinfo .

membership

He was a member of the Bern Singgesellschaft, for which he wrote a color cantus and several student songs.

Trivia

At the age of 12 Schoeck wrote a little opera based on the Karl May novel Der Schatz im Silbersee . The incomplete score was found in the Zurich Central Library and supplemented. "Old Shatterhand" is sung by a baritone, "Winnetou" has two arias as soprano. The reconstructed opera was heard for the first time during the 2003 Karl May Society conference in Plauen.

literature

  • Hans Corrodi: Othmar Schoeck. Image of a work. 1931, 3rd edition 1956.
  • Willi Schuh (Ed.): Othmar Schoeck. Celebration of friends on the 50th birthday. Zurich 1936.
  • Othmar Fries: Schoeck as an opera composer. In: Schweizerische Musikzeitung , No. 97, 1957, pp. 130–133.
  • Werner Vogel: A conversation with Othmar Schoeck. Diary entries. Zurich 1965.
  • Ferruccio Busoni : letters and dedications to Othmar Schoeck. In: Schweizerische Musikzeitung , No. 106, 1966, pp. 132–135.
  • Werner Vogel: Othmar Schoeck in personal reports and contemporary reports. Zurich 1976.
  • Derrick Puffett: The Song Cycles of Othmar Schoeck. Dissertation, Oxford 1976, Bern 1982.
  • Albert Knoepfli : Armin Rüeger and his friend Othmar Schoeck. In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 34, 1959, pp. 7–38. ( Digitized version )
  • Stefan Kunze, Hans Jürg Lüthi (ed.): Confrontation with Othmar Schoeck. Zurich 1987.
  • Matthias Bette: Preliminary news from a Karl May opera (about Othmar Schoeck's opera fragment “Am Silbersee”). In: Mitteilungen der Karl-May-Gesellschaft , Volume 20, Number 77, August 1988, p. 48 ff.
  • Elisabeth Schoeck-Grüebler (Ed.): Letters to Brunnen. Letters [Schoecks] to the family 1908–1922. Zurich 1991.
  • Chris Walton : Othmar Schoeck, a biography. Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag, Zurich / Munich 1994, ISBN 3-254-00168-0 .
  • Beat A. Föllmi: Practical directory of the works of Othmar Schoeck ( series of publications by the Othmar Schoeck Society. H. 2). Othmar Schoeck Society, Zurich 1997.
  • Max Lütolf: Othmar Schoeck. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  • Hanspeter Renggli: Othmar Schoeck . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 3, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 1627 f.
  • Beat A. Föllmi :  Schoeck, Othmar Gottfried. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , pp. 356-358 ( digitized version ).
  • Chris Walton: Othmar Schoeck. Life and Works. University of Rochester Press, Rochester NY 2009, ISBN 978-1-58046-300-3 . ( Eastman Studies in Music. )
  • Chris Walton, Martin Germann (eds.): Hermann Hesse and Othmar Schoeck, the correspondence. Culture Commission Canton Schwyz, Schwyz 2016, ISBN 978-3-909102-67-9 . (= Schwyzer Hefte ; Volume 105.)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Max Lütolf: Schoeck, Othmar. In: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz ., Accessed on February 19, 2013
  2. ↑ Brockhaus Encyclopedia , 19th edition, Volume 19, 1992, p. 475.
  3. ↑ https://www.fonoteca.ch/cgi-bin/oecgi4.exe/inet_fnbasedetail?REC_ID=21247.046&LNG_ID=DEU
  4. ↑ Michael Raeburn, Alan Kendall: History of Music. Munich 1993, Volume IV, p. 372.
  5. ^ Othmar Schoeck-Gesellschaft , accessed on June 3, 2012.
  6. ↑ Chris Walton: Othmar Schoeck, a biography ; Atlantis Musikbuch-Verlag, Zurich 1994; 412 pp., Ill .; ISBN 3-254-00168-0 ; see. especially the catalog raisonné p. 350–380 and register p. 397–407.
  7. ↑ There are 33 letters handed down from Hesse to Schoeck between 1920/1957, and 79 letters from Schoeck to Hesse from 1911/1956, edited: Chris Walton, Martin Germann (Eds.): Hermann Hesse and Othmar Schoeck, der Briefwechsel. Culture Commission Canton Schwyz, Schwyz 2016, ISBN 978-3-909102-67-9 . (= Schwyzer Hefte, Volume 105.)
  8. ↑ Lukas Näf ( memento of March 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on June 3, 2012
  9. ↑ This Local Info Zurich in May 2012 ( Memento of 19 September 2012 at the Web archive archive.today ), accessed on June 3, 2012
  10. ↑ Othmar Schoeck †. Obituary. In: Die Zeit , March 14, 1957, accessed on June 3, 2012
  11. ↑ Thomas Gartmann: How do you free an opera from Nazi ideas? NZZ, May 29, 2018.
  12. ↑ Catalog raisonné , accessed on June 3, 2012
  13. ^ Raimund Lang: Gaudeamus in the Wild West - On the 100th birthday of Karl May. In: Acta Studentica. Episode 181. Sept. 2012, p. 1ff.

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Schoeck, Othmar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss composer and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Fountain
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1957
Place of death Zurich