Rudolf Löw (composer, 1864)

Rudolf Löw-Schäfer (born September 30, 1864 in Basel ; † May 22, 1930 ibid) was a Swiss musician and high school teacher. He was the eldest son of the composer Rudolf Löw-Burckhardt .

Life

Löw attended the humanistic high school and received violin lessons from Friedrich Höfl and Adolf Bargheer. In 1880 he took over some services for his father as deputy organist at the Elisabethenkirche . Nevertheless, this kept him from a pure music career; Instead, at the suggestion of his uncle Theophil Burckhardt-Biedermann , Löw first studied classical philology at the University of Basel , and later also art history with Jacob Burckhardt and at the Humboldt University in Berlin .

After completing his degree, Löw entered the humanistic grammar school as a vicar in 1889 , followed by a permanent position in 1893. There he taught Latin and Greek at the intermediate level, he also gave singing lessons and led a boys' choir from the elite class, the "Elite Choir". In 1891 he was elected organist at the St. Albankirche and in 1898 as the successor to his deceased father at the Elisabethenkirche. In 1911 he founded the Basler Bach Choir together with other musical personalities around Münster organist Adolf Hamm , after the Basler Gesangverein and the Liedertafel, the third amateur choir in Basel; In 1914 he became its president, later also president of the Basel Organists' Association. Since his youth, Löw was also active as a violinist in the orchestra of the Allgemeine Musikgesellschaft .

Löw retired in the spring of 1929, but soon had to give up all other offices due to illness and died around a year later after a long and serious heart disease. He had been married to Marie Schäfer since 1895 and had four sons and a daughter with her. The third son died in 1918 as a teenager from the Spanish flu .

literature

• Wilhelm Burckhardt-Brenner: In memory of Mr. Rudolf Löw-Schäfer , Basel 1930.