Around Othmar Schoeck
"Passé composé. Neoclassicism in Switzerland" - The book accompanying the Othmar Schoeck Festival 2021 proves to be a reader on Swiss music history in the first half of the 20th century.
The "Accompanying book to the Othmar Schoeck Festival 2021" is more than just this and in a certain sense also less. The choice of themes and the composers dealt with are based on the programs played in the festival concerts. Nevertheless, only a few texts (such as Heinrich Aerni's comments on Paul Müller-Zürich, Raffaele d'Alessandro and Hans Schaeuble or Katrin Spelinova's interview with the composer Cécile Marti) are actual concert introductions.
For the most part, the booklet contains mixed essays that aim to achieve different things: Chris Walton gives a condensed outline of his book on Richard Flury, Michael Schneider a short biography of Peter Mieg, Cristina Urchueguía an account of her preoccupation with Walter Furrer, Anselm Gerhard deals with different perspectives of Schoeck's Lied art in three analyses. While neoclassicism was the guiding star of the festival program, the booklet does not take the trouble to fully illuminate this reference or even to advance to new interpretations of this difficult music-historical concept. Only Sibylle Ehrismann's portrait of the Aargau composer Werner Wehrli makes reference to this epoch. Rather, the result is a collection of texts that come together in a refreshingly unagitated way to form a stimulating reader on Swiss music history in the first half of the 20th century. The reflections are supplemented by interviews, for example with Marc Andreae about his grandfather, the conductor and composer Volkmar Andreae.
However, the source texts are real gems, on the one hand Arthur Honegger's Souvenirs sur Othmar Schoeckwhich show the protagonist from unexpected angles, but above all the two sensitive essayistic observations by Schoeck's older brother Walter from the 1940s, which are astonishingly topical in this country today: "Despair grips me at the senselessness of general annihilation for the sake of a few [...]. Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and the others are no longer what they were, because the destroyers like to put the world in such a state of poverty that it is happy for security and bread and makes fools of those for whom a poem or a song is edification [...]. I will try to practise some more."
Passé composé. Neoclassicism in Switzerland, book accompanying the Othmar Schoeck Festival 2021, edited by Alvaro Schoeck and Chris Walton, 134 p., Fr. 15.00, Müsigricht, Steinen 2021, ISBN 978-3-9524842-7-2
