Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Musical Examples
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Schoeck and the Swiss
- 1 Childhood and Youth
- 2 Wolf amidst the Sheep
- 3 Leipzig, Munich, and an Awful Little Moustache
- 4 Back in the Fold
- 5 Hermann Hesse, via the Dentist
- 6 Look Back in Melancholy
- 7 Chamber Music
- 8 The Art of Counterpoint
- 9 Busoni
- 10 The Picture on the Wall
- 11 Touch of Venus
- 12 Silent Bronze
- 13 Sucking Sweet Folly
- 14 Self Portrait, with Sandwich
- 15 Elegy
- 16 Goodbye to Geneva
- 17 The Bee in the Rose
- 18 Raging Queen
- 19 Storms in the Pigeon Loft
- 20 Into the Vortex
- 21 Wrong-Note Rag
- 22 Hildebill
- 23 Variations and Fugue on an Age-Old Theme
- 24 Put to the Wheel
- 25 Gisela
- 26 Lost in the Stars
- 27 Whores and Madonnas
- 28 “… he can write music all right…”
- 29 Tea with (Ms.) Hitler
- 30 Aryanizing Music
- 31 Arms and the Man
- 32 Castles in the Air
- 33 Goering's Bullshit
- 34 Collapse
- 35 The People at Home
- 36 The Reckoning
- 37 Transfigured Summer Nights
- 38 Silent Lights
- 39 Fair Measure
- 40 Rather Nice Horn
- 41 Sleepless in Wollishofen
- 42 Echoes and Elegies
- 43 Running on Empty
- Epilogue
- Othmar Schoeck: Concise Work Catalogue and Discography
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
28 - “… he can write music all right…”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Musical Examples
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Schoeck and the Swiss
- 1 Childhood and Youth
- 2 Wolf amidst the Sheep
- 3 Leipzig, Munich, and an Awful Little Moustache
- 4 Back in the Fold
- 5 Hermann Hesse, via the Dentist
- 6 Look Back in Melancholy
- 7 Chamber Music
- 8 The Art of Counterpoint
- 9 Busoni
- 10 The Picture on the Wall
- 11 Touch of Venus
- 12 Silent Bronze
- 13 Sucking Sweet Folly
- 14 Self Portrait, with Sandwich
- 15 Elegy
- 16 Goodbye to Geneva
- 17 The Bee in the Rose
- 18 Raging Queen
- 19 Storms in the Pigeon Loft
- 20 Into the Vortex
- 21 Wrong-Note Rag
- 22 Hildebill
- 23 Variations and Fugue on an Age-Old Theme
- 24 Put to the Wheel
- 25 Gisela
- 26 Lost in the Stars
- 27 Whores and Madonnas
- 28 “… he can write music all right…”
- 29 Tea with (Ms.) Hitler
- 30 Aryanizing Music
- 31 Arms and the Man
- 32 Castles in the Air
- 33 Goering's Bullshit
- 34 Collapse
- 35 The People at Home
- 36 The Reckoning
- 37 Transfigured Summer Nights
- 38 Silent Lights
- 39 Fair Measure
- 40 Rather Nice Horn
- 41 Sleepless in Wollishofen
- 42 Echoes and Elegies
- 43 Running on Empty
- Epilogue
- Othmar Schoeck: Concise Work Catalogue and Discography
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
On 14 and 15 January 1935 Schoeck conducted his Lebendig begraben in the Zurich Tonhalle, with Loeffel as soloist; Bruckner's Fourth Symphony comprised the rest of the program. A couple of days later, a man dressed as a tramp knocked at the door of Schoeck's home on the Lettenholzstrasse. When the door opened, he asked, in German: “Does the man live here who composed Lebendig begraben? I‘d like to meet him.” It was James Joyce. He was visiting Zurich to see his opthalmologist, Alfred Vogt, and—being a music lover—had ventured into the Tonhalle for the concert on the fourteenth. He wrote to his daughter-in law the next day as follows:
Helen, please go out and buy Kassell's German-English, English-German Dictionary and sit down with Giorgio to study, first of all, the text of Gottfried Keller's poem sequence Lebendig begraben which I forward under separate cover together with piano score for bass voice by Othmar Schoeck. I heard this sung last night by the Bern bass Fritz [sic] Loeffel … bought the score just now and have rung up Prof. Fehr to ask O.S. to sign it for Giorgio…. If I can judge by last night he stands head and shoulders above Stravinsky and Antheil as composer for orchestra and voice anyhow. I did not know Keller wrote this kind of gruesome-satiric semi-pious verse but the effect of it on any audience is tremendous…. Schoeck is a type rather like Beckett who gets up at 2.30 p.m. his wife says. But I hope to catch him before he falls asleep again. But he can write music all right.
- Type
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- Information
- Othmar SchoeckLife and Works, pp. 204 - 214Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009