Caspar Diethelm

Last updated March 18, 2019

Caspar Diethelm (31 March 1926 – 1 January 1997) was a Swiss composer.

Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a country situated in western, central and southern Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The sovereign state is a federal republic bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a landlocked country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning a total area of 41,285 km² (15,940 sq mi). While the Alps occupy the greater part of the territory, the Swiss population of approximately 8.5 million people is concentrated mostly on the plateau, where the largest cities are to be found: among them are the two global cities and economic centres Zürich and Geneva.

Education

Born in Lucerne, Diethelm studied at the Conservatory and the School of Church Music there (now both divisions of the Lucerne Musikhochschule).^[1] He studied composition privately with Johann Baptist Hilber (1891–1973) and Albert Jenny, and took master classes with Paul Hindemith and Arthur Honegger, which had a significant influence on him, in addition to summer courses in Darmstadt with Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono. He completed his education as a conductor with Ernst Hans Beer and Alexander Krannhals.^[1]

Lucerne is a city in central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of the country. Lucerne is the capital of the canton of Lucerne and part of the district of the same name. With a population of about 81,057 people, Lucerne is the most populous town in Central Switzerland, and a nexus of economics, transportation, culture, and media of this region. The city's urban area consists of 17 municipalities and towns located in three different cantons with an overall population of about 250,000 people.

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Career

From 1963 to 1993 he worked as a docent in music history, topics in music theory, composition and chamber music at the Lucerne Conservatory. At the same time he conducted his own works at home and abroad, as well as giving numerous lectures and writing well received essays.

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Works

Diethelm composed some 343 works in his lifetime, amongst them over 100 for full orchestra, chamber orchestra and string orchestra including eight symphonies, concertos for almost every instrument and a ballet; 40 works for choir with orchestra, instrumental ensemble or organ, including three oratorios and numerous cantatas; several works for a capella choir, including several masses and motets; more than 20 works for wind ensemble and brass band; and an extensive repertoire of chamber works ranging from solo instrumental pieces to nonettes and including six string quartets, solo sonatas for all instruments, 22 piano sonatas, and numerous works for unusual combinations of instruments.^[1]^[2]

In addition to works which make great demands on the performer and the listener, he also composed numerous works for amateurs, such as the Concerti Diletti for amateur string orchestra, choral and song works and masses for amateur choirs; and chamber and piano works for instructional use.^[1] He also made numerous arrangements and reconstructions of other composers' works, such as the Flute Concerto by F. X. Stalder, the Sinfonia Concertante by Constantin Reindl, quintet arrangements for clarinet and string quartet, and arrangements for string quintet of works by Mozart.

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Style

Diethelm's sonic palette is highly distinctive, and through its expressivity and vitality has an immediate impact on the listener. The composer engaged intensively with the latest tendencies in music, including twelve-tone music, atonality, serialism and aleatorics, but always rejected the straitjacket of dogmatism. Instead, he developed his own characteristic style,^[1] influenced by Jenny, Hindemith, Honneger and Hans Martin.

The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition devised by Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and associated with the "Second Viennese School" composers, who were the primary users of the technique in the first decades of its existence. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale are sounded as often as one another in a piece of music while preventing the emphasis of any one note through the use of tone rows, orderings of the 12 pitch classes. All 12 notes are thus given more or less equal importance, and the music avoids being in a key. Over time, the technique increased greatly in popularity and eventually became widely influential on 20th-century composers. Many important composers who had originally not subscribed to or even actively opposed the technique, such as Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky, eventually adopted it in their music.

Atonality in its broadest sense is music that lacks a tonal center, or key. Atonality, in this sense, usually describes compositions written from about 1908 to the present day where a hierarchy of pitches focusing on a single, central tone is not used, and the notes of the chromatic scale function independently of one another. More narrowly, the term atonality describes music that does not conform to the system of tonal hierarchies that characterized classical European music between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. "The repertory of atonal music is characterized by the occurrence of pitches in novel combinations, as well as by the occurrence of familiar pitch combinations in unfamiliar environments".

In music, serialism is a method of composition using series of pitches, rhythms, dynamics, timbres or other musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though some of his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as a form of post-tonal thinking. Twelve-tone technique orders the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, forming a row or series and providing a unifying basis for a composition's melody, harmony, structural progressions, and variations. Other types of serialism also work with sets, collections of objects, but not necessarily with fixed-order series, and extend the technique to other musical dimensions, such as duration, dynamics, and timbre.

His music is characterised by Swiss elements and generally pursues a broad melodic linearity. Harmonically, he uses free tonality; his rhythms are sometimes elementary, characterised by a strong impulse towards the dance and a preference for large, uneven cycles. He placed great importance on the use of predictable, completable forms, such as the sonata form with its basis in duality, the Lied, the rondo, arched and embedded structures; however, within these he always sought individual and variable solutions.

In his later works, he turned to a more meditative approach, greater spirituality, and influences from non-European music and modes of thought.^[1] In this light he has been referred to as "someone who dealt cleverly with psychic phenomena [including] in his compositions."^[3] One example is his 1987 chamber music work Das Rad des Lebens (the wheel of life).

Honours

1969: Obwalden Art Prize
1985: City of Lucerne Art Prize^[1]

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References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Vie, Caspar Diethelm, at fattore.com; tr. Daniel Fattore from programme notes for performance of Das Rad des Lebens(in French)
↑ List of works by Caspar Diethelm, at Klassika (in German)
↑ Antons, Klaus (2007). O Fortuna!: Zur archetypischen Symbolik des Lebensrades (in German). Stuttgart: Kurz. p. 80. ISBN 978-3-932105-11-1. jemand, der sich geistreich mit seelischen Phänomenen auseinandersetzte und dies auch in seine Kompositionen einfliessen liess.

External links

Caspar Diethelm at the German National Library

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[Bio-1] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Vie, Caspar Diethelm, at fattore.com; tr. Daniel Fattore from programme notes for performance of Das Rad des Lebens(in French)

[2] List of works by Caspar Diethelm, at Klassika (in German)

[Antons2007-3] Antons, Klaus (2007). O Fortuna!: Zur archetypischen Symbolik des Lebensrades (in German). Stuttgart: Kurz. p. 80. ISBN 978-3-932105-11-1. jemand, der sich geistreich mit seelischen Phänomenen auseinandersetzte und dies auch in seine Kompositionen einfliessen liess.