Robert Schumann / Clytus Gottwald (arr.) Four Eichendorff-Songs. Vocal transcription by Clytus Gottwald

Robert Schumann is still primarily known as a composer of piano and lieder and as a symphonic composer. In his later creative years, however, he saw the composition of choral music as an important focus of his work. Even today, it is important to discover a largely unknown Schumann, whose choral music masterfully combines popular appeal and artistic ambition. Carus offers Schumann's complete works for mixed choir and for female choir a cappella and with piano. They demonstrate his love of experimentation, his sensitivity in the selection and musical realisation of the texts and, last but not least, his independent choral style, which places particular emphasis on refined details in the composition. Personal details

The 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