Willy Sommerfeld

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Willy Sommerfeld (* 11. May 1904 in Gdansk ; † 19th December 2007 in Berlin ) was a until his death at the age of 103 years of active German silent movie - pianist .

Life

Willy Sommerfeld came into contact with music at a very young age: at the age of three, he became so seriously ill that the doctor had already given up on him. A friend of his sister's played him something on his zither every day . When Willy Sommerfeld unexpectedly got better, he wanted to become a musician.

His first instrument was a violin , but the tones were not varied enough for him. Eventually he learned to play the piano .

As a young adult he trained as a music teacher in his hometown of Danzig , after which he went to Berlin in the early 1920s . There he studied composition at the Stern Conservatory .

During that time he earned money in a silent film cinema , where he initially accompanied his professor from the conservatory, who played the piano, on the violin. Since the cinema owner could not afford two musicians at the same time, Willy Sommerfeld took over the film accompaniment on the piano. He then played to the films purely intuitively and not according to grades. According to his own statement, the images that he sees on the screen shoot into his brain and from there into his hands. Since it is very small, it is very quick. ( Quote ) At that time, he also met many actors, but he met very few of them.

At the end of the 1920s he took over the position of lecturer at a music publisher in Braunschweig . After work, he also accompanied films there in the Braunschweig cinemas.

In the early 1930s he switched to the Braunschweig State Theater ; At the beginning he held the position of Kapellmeister there, later he worked his way up until he even conducted the orchestra . When he refused to show the Hitler salute after a performance in 1933 , he was dismissed.

Around 1933, the director Helmut Käutner was looking for a pianist for his cabaret group Vier Nachrichtener . Willy Sommerfeld finally went on tour with this group until it was banned by the National Socialists .

Then he returned to Berlin. For the next three decades he worked as a composer and conductor , musical director, radio play and documentary film writer, theater music writer and music therapist .

At the beginning of the 1970s he met a colleague who was accompanying silent films at the Arsenal cinema in Berlin . Although Willy Sommerfeld was just preparing for retirement at the time, he stepped in for him and then continued these appearances regularly until the second half of 2007. He played without notes and said that before a performance he just wanted to know whether the film was funny or sad.

Honors

  • 2006 - Documentary "The Sounds of Silents - The Silent Film Pianist"

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sommerfeld, Willy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German silent film pianist
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 2007
Place of death Berlin