Otto Jochum

Otto Jochum (born March 18, 1898 in Babenhausen ; † October 24, 1969 in Bad Reichenhall ) was a German composer , choir director and music teacher . He was the older brother of Eugen and Georg Ludwig Jochum.

Life

The son of a Catholic teacher, organist, choir regent and director of the orchestra and theater association, after completing his teacher training, studied like his brothers at the Leopold Mozart Conservatory in Augsburg from 1922 to 1928 and at the State Academy of Music from 1928 to 1931 with Joseph Haas . In addition, he was organist at St. George's Church in Augsburg from 1921 to 1932 and head of the Singschulkollegium Augsburg (1922–1933). In 1932 he became director of the municipal singing school in Augsburg, where he founded the singing school teacher seminar and the municipal choir in 1935. Jochum was able to establish the Augsburg Singschulseminar as the first and only German training facility for singing school teachers against the resistance of the Reich Ministry of Education, but with the approval of the Reich Chamber of Music . In 1938 he was appointed director of the Augsburg Music Conservatory.

On May 1, 1937, Otto Jochum was accepted into the NSDAP at his request (membership number: 5.346.623). As early as 1934 he had been the head of the caretaker of the singing schools in the Reichsmusikkammer and in 1937 he was the choir leader of the Reich Association of Mixed Choirs for the districts of Munich-Upper Bavaria , Franconia , Saarpfalz and Bavarian Ostmark . The compositions he published at the time were shaped by the spirit of the times: The Youngest Day, Op. 28, Patriotic Hymne, Op. 54c, Flame Up, Op. 61, Ich bin ein Deutsches Mädchen, Op. 64,4, or Volkwerdung der Nation , Cantata on a German Celebration that was performed on Heroes' Remembrance Day in 1938 in the ballroom of the Deutsches Museum at the invitation of the NSDAP Gauleitung Munich-Upper Bavaria; The dedicatee was the Gauleiter of Swabia Karl Wahl . Our song was written in 1938 : Germany! op. 70, folk German hymn based on words by Arthur Maximilian Miller .

After the war he was the choirmaster of the "Jochum Choir" he founded in 1947 and the municipal music director in Augsburg. From 1951 he lived as a freelance composer in Weißbach near Bad Reichenhall .

He composed mainly choral works, including over 100 motets, 16 masses, 4 oratorios, 2 symphonies (which he dedicated to Goethe and Bruckner), a string quartet as well as song cycles and cantatas, as well as chamber music works and symphonies; he edited numerous folk song arrangements.

Awards

• 1932: German State Prize for Composition,
• 1958: Golden Ring of Honor from the Fuggermarkt in Babenhausen
• 1959: Federal Cross of Merit
• 1976: First award of an "Otto Jochum Medal" by the Swabian-Bavarian Singers' Association to personalities who have rendered services to the Swabian choir.

literature

• Stefan Jaeger (ed.): The conductors' book of Atlantis. An encyclopedia . Atlantis, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-254-00106-0 , p. 182.
• Carl Dahlhaus, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht (Ed.): Brockhaus-Riemann Music Lexicon . Volume 2. Atlantis-Schott, Zurich, Mainz 1995, ISBN 3-254-08397-0 , p. 261.
• Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933-1945 . Kiel 2004, p. 3425f. (CD-ROM dictionary).
• Heiko Bockstiegel:  Jochum, Otto. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 19, Bautz, Nordhausen 2001, ISBN 3-88309-089-1 , Sp. 773-776.

Web links

• Literature by and about Otto Jochum in the catalog of the German National Library
• Otto Jochum in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)