Singing out of faith

Musical life needs personalities who normally escape the focus of popular music history because they have left no significant mark either as performers or composers. They work as church musicians, music teachers, music researchers or program managers. The Dutch-born musician Ina Lohr (1903-1983) made her mark on Basel's musical life in all four of these areas. She grew up in a culturally-minded and music-loving family and acquired a broad musical education at an early age. She came to Switzerland in 1929 to study composition. Ina Lohr was one of the founders of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and was a highly regarded lecturer in basso continuo, Gregorian chant, hymnology and domestic music. She was also a keen advocate of the renewal of church music in the period around the Second World War. Making music with lay people was particularly close to her heart, and singing together as a congregation met an essential need for her as a believing and therefore singing Christian. This mission led her to teach at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Basel and to give numerous courses and lectures to mixed and specialist audiences on fact-based yet contemporary church music. She was also interested in improving music and recorder teaching in public schools. As a decades-long collaborator of Paul Sacher in organizing the concerts of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, as a rehearsal preparer and rehearser of this choir, she contributed significantly to the success of Sacher's concert enterprise throughout almost its entire existence. Lohr, who championed Honegger, Krenek, Milhaud and especially Stravinsky, also proved to be an expert in new and contemporary music from the very beginning.

So it was high time that a female author delved into the life and various fields of activity of Ina Lohr, who shaped musical life in Basel for half a century and was one of the pioneers of early music! Anne Smith, herself a teacher at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis for almost forty years, has now published a comprehensive biography of this musician, who has also escaped women's music history, and has read countless letters, conducted interviews and compiled musical sources.

Reading the book, one gains an impression of the willpower and hard work of an admirable musical personality, but also of her crises, some of which were caused by illness. At the same time, it provides insights into little-known facets of musical life in Basel and the history of the Schola Cantorum. In her monograph, Anne Smith places a clear emphasis on Lohr's changing relationship with Paul Sacher, with whom she worked in various institutions. Not only does Lohr's contradictory personality come to life, but Sacher also appears in a remarkably new light. Although all the texts are also quoted in the original languages, the publication would benefit from a translation into German.

Anne Smith: Ina Lohr (1903-1983). Transcending the Boundaries of Early Music (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis Scripta 9), 514 p., Fr. 82.00 (print), Fr. 66.00 (e-book), Schwabe, Basel 2020, ISBN 978-3-7965-4106-3