-
Composer
Modest Petrovich Mussorgskij
| 1839-1881
-
Songwriter / Librettist
Heinrich Heine
| 1797-1856Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) is regarded as one of the most important German poets of the 19th century. He was born in Düsseldorf and is best known for his lyric poetry, which combines Romanticism with sharp social criticism. Many of his works deal with love, nature and freedom. Because of his political views, Heine lived in exile in Paris for many years.
He also occupies a prominent place in the history of music. His lyrical texts were set to music by numerous composers and had a particularly profound influence on the Romantic art song. Robert Schumann, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Hugo Wolf, in particular, created musical works of enduring significance based on Heine’s poems. The poetic combination of linguistic simplicity, emotional depth and often ironic ambiguity offered composers a wide range of possibilities for musical interpretation. As a result, Heine’s poetry became a central part of the Romantic art-song repertoire and continues to influence vocal music to this day.
Personal details
-
Arranger
Clytus Gottwald
| 1925-2023The choral conductor, composer and musicologist Clytus Gottwald (1925 - 2023) made significant contributions to contemporary choral music. As editor for New Music at Südfunk Stuttgart and founder and director of the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, he was in productive exchange with his contemporaries, Pierre Boulez, Mauricio Kagel, György Ligeti, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen and many others. With his Schola Cantorum, a 16-voice chamber vocal ensemble, Gottwald decisively shaped the a cappella choral culture of the highest technical level that is taken for granted today. Clytus Gottwald's transcriptions of piano songs and instrumental pieces for unaccompanied choir are appreciated by choirs all over the world. Modelled on the style of Ligeti, his works set the highest of musical standards. Clytus Gottwald has received several awards for his services, including the Cultural Prize of Baden-Württemberg in 2009, the European Church Music Prize in 2012, and the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014. His importance for the development of contemporary choral music cannot be overestimated. Personal details