Singgesellschaft Wetzikon
| Singgesellschaft Wetzikon | |
|---|---|
| Seat: | Wetzikon / Switzerland |
| Carrier: | Ref. Wetzikon parish |
| Founding: | 1755 |
| Resolution: | 1833 |
| Genus: | mixed choir |
| Founder: | Johannes Schmidlin |
| Head : | Hans Konrad Nägeli (last) |
| Voices : | over 200 ( SATB ) |
The Singgesellschaft Wetzikon was a choir founded by Johannes Schmidlin in 1755 . Contrary to the customs of the time, he was open to all classes of the population and also cultivated secular resp. folk songs. Thus the choir can be regarded as the first modern choral society in music history in today's sense .
history
The tradition of the Collegium musicum was preserved beyond the Reformation despite the church music ban by the Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli . Around 1600 this began to loosen up, in addition to new music colleges, church choral societies and singing societies for the musical organization of church services were now also established.
In June 1754 the pastor Johannes Schmidlin was called to Wetzikon . Inspired by his teacher Johann Caspar Bachofen , he began to compose his own sacred songs. After a few exercises in his own rectory with some parishioners, Schmidlin decided in 1755 to found a singing society. At times over 200 members sang in the choir, which was around 10% of the population of Wetzikon at the time. Rehearsals took place every Sunday in the Wetziker church. In 1768 Schmidlin founded his own music college, one of the first in a rural area.
After Schmidlin's unexpected death in 1772, his successor Hans Jakob Nägeli took over the management of the Singing Society and the Music College. During the Helvetic era , operations ceased from 1798 to 1804. In 1806 Nägeli died and his son Hans Konrad Nägeli took over the management. The long interruption and negligence resulting from Nägeli's many occupations caused the choir to decrease to around 100 members. He tried to secure the offspring with his own rehearsals for the confirmands before the afternoon service. After Nägeli's death in 1828, the music college and in 1833 also the singing society dissolved; its members spread out in newly formed choral societies in the region.
repertoire
The literature sung initially included sacred chants for worship, including the four-part psalm sentences by Claude Goudimel in the German version by Ambrosius Lobwasser , but also songs specially composed by Schmidlin for the choir. Secular chants were added later, including the patriotic Swiss songs based on texts by Johann Caspar Lavater , which Schmidlin published in 1769 and are considered the first secular folk chants in Switzerland. After Schmidlin's death, his pupil Johann Heinrich Egli suspended them in four parts, after which they became known beyond the country's borders.
Aftermath
The main innovations that characterized the choir were the unrestricted access for members of all classes, ages and genders as well as the inclusion of secular and patriotic folk chants, most of which Schmidlin composed himself in a popular and easily accessible musical language. In these points the Singgesellschaft differed from other groups that only accepted professional members in a limited number (mostly only men), such as the music colleges (e.g. the Singgesellschaft zum Antlitz, founded in 1620 ), or the Liedertafeln (e.g. the men's association in Greifenberg founded in 1673 or the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin founded in 1791 and the Berliner Liedertafel that resulted from it in 1809 ).
These ideals were later taken up by the Wetziker composer Hans Georg Nägeli - as a boy himself a co-singer of the Singing Society - and realized in 1810, first at the Zurich Singing Institute and later (with Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, among others ) in other pioneering music-pedagogical achievements that continued singing throughout the entire 19th century let the German-speaking area develop into a popular movement .
After the singing society was dissolved, no new choral society was able to establish itself in Wetzikon (among other things, two male choirs failed after a few years in 1823 and 1840). It was not until 1865 that newly founded choirs were able to maintain themselves in the community for the long term and are mostly still active today.
See also
literature
- Karl Nef : The Collegia musica in German Reformed Switzerland from its creation to the beginning of the 19th century. St. Gallen 1896.
- Article men's choirs. In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , Volume 13. Leipzig 1908, pp. 231-233.
- Hans Ehrismann: Wetzikons singer fathers and their legacy. In: Heimatspiegel , 10 (2002), pp. 73–78.
- Max Bührer (ed.): Bubikon - Wolfshausen. Two villages, one municipality. Bubikon 1981, Vol. 1, p. 252.
- HA Pierer (ed.): Universal lexicon of the present and the past. Altenburg 1845, vol. 17, p. 430.