Paul Zoll (composer)

Paul Customs

Paul Zoll (born November 27, 1907 in Eifa , † December 27, 1978 in Wiesbaden ) was a German composer , pianist and music teacher .

Life

Paul Zoll comes from a family of teachers in which music traditionally played an important role. At the age of 4 he got his first piano lessons and at the age of 12 he accompanied art songs for the first time in public. From the age of 15 he gained practice as a choir director, initially as his father's deputy. At the secondary school, where he was valued for his musical talents, his talent for composing was already evident.

After graduating from high school, Paul Zoll continued his training in Giessen , where he studied music, German, English and geography. He passed the musical state examination with Arnold Mendelssohn and Friedrich Noack . After the state examination in 1931, he found his first job as a school musician at the German school in Athens. After his return in 1934 he taught at the Ludwigsschule in Darmstadt, and in 1939 he was given the task of setting up and running the municipal youth music school, which under him experienced an extraordinary boom. When the bombs of the Second World War destroyed his place of work and his apartment, this activity came to an end.

Thanks to his pianistic training, which was given its final polish through his friendship and almost ten years of collaboration with Max von Pauer , Paul Zoll was able to continue to be musically active as a freelance artist in the post-war chaos. He became known through his concert activities as a chamber music partner of the Dresden String Quartet and as a lied accompanist for the singers Heinrich Schlusnus , Lore Fischer, Ria Ginster and Gertrud Pitzinger.

From 1949 on, Paul Zoll worked as a music teacher, composer, pianist and choir conductor in Frankfurt am Main. As a teacher at the Goethe Gymnasium in Frankfurt, he built up the musical branch there. He has given concerts with the Neeber Schuler Choir at home and abroad. In 1969 Paul Zoll retired for health reasons and moved his residence to Ehlhalten im Taunus.

In the meantime he had also made a name for himself as a composer. Zoll knew how to write ambitiously without losing sight of the conditions of the human voice. As a result, his choral work has prevailed, so that his compositions and arrangements have been performed in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Holland, Sweden, England, Spain, North and South America, Canada, SW Africa and Japan.

The last years of his life were overshadowed by a serious illness (Parkinson's disease). He died in 1978 of pneumonia and was buried in the family grave in Altenburg near Alsfeld. The sociologists Ralf Zoll and Rainer Zoll are his sons.

style

At a time when most composers were experimenting with new compositional techniques and stylistic devices (such as twelve-tone technique or serial technique), Paul Zoll preferred a compositional style with the sparing use of dissonances, which is more common in late Romanticism (similar to Modest Mussorgski's pictures an exhibition - the old castle ) or in the transition to early modernity. The style is reminiscent of the early works of modern composers or when they composed "in the old style" or in the romantic style (folk song arrangements). The modern component of his music is the occasional unexpected harmonic twist. Zoll's instrumental works had relatively small ensembles. In keeping with his own character, which was far from loud, barking and modernistic, expressionism and indulging in dissonance was not his goal. He was interested in folkloric melodies and harmonies and knew how to give his compositions a special color with the help of church modes.

Works

Paul Zoll composed mainly secular choral pieces of various cast, including many arrangements of folk songs from most European countries, as well as North, Central and South America, as well as songs for voice and piano, orchestral works in small cast and chamber music.

requiem

Paul Zoll composed his greatest work, the Requiem, towards the end of his life. It occupies an interesting position in the series of Requiem settings. Similar to Johannes Brahms , Paul Zoll chose German texts for the sentences of his Requiem, but not biblical texts but excerpts from the tale Totenmesse , which was shaped by the horrors of war and published by the writer Ernst Wiechert in 1947. Paul Zoll dispenses with an opening movement in which the dead are prayed for eternal rest, but instead lets his Requiem, related to the dies irae of the Latin Requiem text, begin with an apocalypse, the dramatic scenes of which are simple, prayer-like calls for Kyrie eleison to be interrupted. The texts of the following movements are shaped by the omnipresent death and suggest that Paul Zoll was affected by his own expectation of death while composing. He lets a gloomy mood dominate them. Through the use of church-style melodies (based on the use of the Gregorian chant in old Requiem settings) and homophonic compositional technique with the sporadic use of imitation, he created an archaic simplicity and simplicity that, after the excursions of the late romanticists into the splendid, reverted to the real The essence of death. A late Romantic large orchestral line-up seemed to him unsuitable for this, he just made the woodwinds simple, the brass a little stronger in relation to this (3 horns, 3 trumpets, 2 trombones, 1 tuba), plus strings and timpani. Its instrumentation (and composition technique) achieves a transparency that makes the brass parts particularly clear and beautiful. Unusual, but in keeping with the text, is the inclusion of a children's choir in addition to the mixed choir. The vocal soloists (1 mezzo-soprano and 1 tenor) also exclusively take on roles from the text.

It was printed by the music publisher W.Müller (Heidelberg). The world premiere took place in 1977.

Inspired by Paul Zoll's Requiem, Hilger Schallehn and Norbert Studnitzki published a Requiem at Schott-Verlag in 1987, which was also based on the text by Ernst Wiechert. They took over the opening movement by Paul Zoll as well as some motifs from the following movements, which they then composed through according to their own taste and provided with extended instrumentation. This approach raises ethical questions. Despite the relationship in the fundamentals, the result deviates significantly from Paul Zoll's style and from his compositional intentions - so it should not be confused with the original.

Other works (selection)

• German-Bohemian orchestral suite - for flute, piano, trumpet and strings
• Rameau Suite - for flute, oboe, strings and continuo
• The main cantata for mixed choir, bass baritone and orchestra
• Spanish song play - cycle in 5 movements for mixed choir, piano and percussion instruments
• At the sounds of Fandango - Spanish dance song for male choir, piano and percussion instruments
• Iberian song game - for female choir, piano and percussion instruments
• Ode to music - for gem. Introduction "Nun hebet an", 4 solo voices and orchestra
• Nordic folk song set - 6 movements for male choir, solos, orchestra (piano)
• Moon over the Gypsy Carriage - 10 Serbian Gypsy songs for mixed choir, baritone and piano
• Neapolitan Choral Song Book - 9 movements for mixed choir and piano
• Greek folk songs - cycle in 4 movements for mixed choir and piano
• Klinge mein Pandero - Cycle in 5 movements for male, female and piano
• Lord of the Worlds - Lord of the People - cantata for male choir, upper choir, alto and baritone solo, wind instruments, timpani and organ (Str. Ad lib.)
• Our father - (based on a text by F. Grillparzer) for male choir and boys' choir, bass-baritone, wind instruments, timpani, organ (and str. Ad lib.)
• Night music - "The trees smell and remain silent" (M. Hausmann) for 2 mixed choirs a cappella
• Voices in the night - "A voice sings in the night" (H. Hesse) for 3 mixed choirs a cappella
• Morgenstern der Liebe - 3 movements for mixed choir
• Alles ist Sang - Suite in 5 movements for mixed choir a cappella
• Three choral dialogues - (16th century) for mixed choir
• Mensch und Leben - 4-part choral cycle in 5 movements
• An den Mond - Divertimento in 6 movements for mixed choir, male choir and female choir a cappella (M.Barthel)
• Two folk song cantatas - for male choir, soprano, strings ad lib.
• Praise the Lord, all of you - hymn for mixed choir and wind instruments
• The cantata from the dear audience - for lead singer (baritone), 2 mixed choirs and strings
• Bange Liebe - 4 movements for male and female choirs
• Glück des Sommer - 6 movements for mixed choir
• Between lakes and dark forests - 5 sentences about East Prussian folk songs
• Ewige Wiederkehr - calendar cycle in 12 movements for male choir a cappella (W. Meckauer)
• The young witch song - for women's or children's choir (OJ Bierbaum)
• Coastal Song - (after a Scottish folk tune) for women's or children's choir
• Windfreude - for women's or children's choir (P. Dehmel)
• The sparrow - "Today I sing you" (Catalan folk song) for women's or children's choir

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Zoll in the catalog of the German National Library
• Paul Zoll at Schott Music
• [1] - Spanish song game on YouTube
• [2] - Requiem on YouTube

swell

• Works and biographical data from the catalog raisonné from July 1972 (publisher: B. Schotts Söhne, Mainz) (provided by Ralf Zoll (a son of Paul Zoll))
• Concert programs of the Alsfeld Music Festival from 1980 and 1984. The founder and artistic director of the Alsfeld Music Festival was one of Paul Zoll's sons, the pianist Klaus Zoll, in the early 1980s.
• Data from the Goethe-Gymnasium Frankfurt
• Data from the German National Library (see also links)
• Sheet music for the Requiem by Paul Zoll