Othmar Schoeck: Life and Works

Description

The work of the late-Romantic Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957) has in recent years enjoyed a surge of interest. His 300 songs with piano accompaniment are now all on CD, as are his orchestral song cycles and five of his eight stage works. Yet despite an impressive discography featuring names such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Lucia Popp and Ian Bostridge, no biographical study of Schoeck has ever been available in English. Chris Walton, author of Richard Wagner in Zurich: The Muse of Place, charts the turbulent course of Schoeck's life and career with care and candor, from a rampant youth to midlife monogamy and an old age ravaged by fears of neglect. He traces Schoeck's relationships to musicians such as Max Reger, Ferruccio Busoni, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Paul Hindemith, and Igor Stravinsky, and to writers Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and James Joyce. New light is also shed on Schoeck's uneasy relationship with Nazi Germany and its culmination, for him, in public humiliation and private catastrophe. As an accompanist, Schoeck was an arch-Romantic master of rubato; as a conductor, he was a fervent champion of the new; and in his compositions, he moved from late-Romanticism through a modernist vortex to emerge in full mastery of an individual musical language both sensuous and stringent. In this thorough new biography, Walton places Schoeck the man and the artist squarely in the context of his time. Chris Walton is Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and Managing Director of the Orchestre Symphonique Bienne in Switzerland. He is the recipient of the 2010 Max Geilinger Prize honoring exemplary contributions to the literary and cultural relationship between Switzerland and the English-speaking world. Introduction: Schoeck and the Swiss Childhood and Youth Wolf amidst the Sheep Leipzig, Munich, and an Awful Little Moustache Back in the Fold Hermann Hesse, via the Dentist Look Back in Melancholy Chamber Music The Art of Counterpoint Busoni The Picture on the Wall Touch of Venus Silent Bronze Sucking Sweet Folly Self Portrait, with Sandwich Elegy Goodbye to Geneva The Bee in the Rose Raging Queen Storms in the Pigeon Loft Into the Vortex Wrong-Note Rag Hildebill Variations and Fugue on an Age-Old Theme Put to the Wheel Gisela Lost in the Stars Whores and Madonnas ". . . he can write music all right . . ." Tea with (Ms.) Hitler Aryanizing Music Arms and the Man Castles in the Air Goering's Bullshit Collapse The People at Home The Reckoning Transfigured Summer Nights Silent Lights Fair Measure Rather Nice Horn Sleepless in Wollishofen Echoes and Elegies Running on Empty Epilogue Othmar Schoeck: Concise Work Catalogue and Discography Notes Bibliography Index