Walter Draeger Explained

Walter Draeger (14 December 1888 – 24 January 1976) was a German composer and music educator. Er war Professor an der and the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar. In 1955, war er Mitinitiator der ersten Hallische Musiktage.

Life

Draeger was born in 1888 as the son of a teacher and organist in Batzlow near Freienwalde in the Province of Brandenburg. From 1898, he lived in Berlin,[1] where he lived until the Reifeprüfung from the .[2] Von 1908 bis 1913 studierte er Geschichte, Romance studies and musicology[1] an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin. In 1913, he was awarded his doctorate there with the dissertation Das alte lübische Stadtrecht und seine Quellen Die Referenten der Arbeit waren Dietrich Schäfer and Michael Tangl.[3] During his studies, he spent two years in Grenoble and Paris (Sorbonne). Until 1944, he was active as a Studienrat at the in Berlin.

After the First World War, he was musically trained by Otto Taubmann at the Berlin University of the Arts and by Franz Schreker. It was only after 1945 that he emerged as a composer. From 1949 to 1952, he taught music theory and composition at the Quedlinburg Conservatory. In 1952, he moved to the, where he was appointed a professor in 1953. From 1955 to 1963, he taught music theory and composition at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar. He retired in 1958.

In terms of composition, Draeger devoted himself in particular to instrumental music. On the one hand, he dealt with the Volkslied. On the other hand, a connection "to traditional genres as well as an inclination to classicist thinking and simple, transparent fracture" (Grützner 2004) can be recognised.[4] From 1925, his chamber music and song cycle were broadcast on the . The majority of his early works, however, were destroyed in his Berlin flat during the war in 1944.[1] According to Gilbert Stöck, he "sometimes distanced himself critically from some of the dogmas of Socialist realism"; the composer pursued a neo-Romantic style.[5]

In 1951, he was elected to the central committee of the Verband der Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler der DDR (VDK). Außerdem war er Gründungs- und Vorstandsmitglied des Arbeitskreises Halle im VDK und als solcher neben Fritz Reuter, Walther Siegmund-Schultze, Gerhard Wohlgemuth und anderen einer der Initiatoren der 1955 veranstalteten 1. Hallische Musiktage.[6] From 1956 to 1959, he served as the first chairman of the Thuringia district association of the VDK.[1]

Draeger was married to Eva, née Hartmann, and was the father of a son.[2] The composer died in Weimar at the age of 87.

Awards

Work

Orchestral music

Concertante music

Chamber music

Piano

Opera

Vocal music

Publications

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Hans Rudolf Jung: Walter Draeger zum 75. Geburtstag. In Musik und Gesellschaft 13 (1963), pp. 742f.
  2. Walter Habel (ed.): Wer ist wer? the German Who's Who. 14th edition in Degeners Wer ist's? Arani, Berlin 1965, .
  3. Walter Draeger: Das alte lübische Stadtrecht und seine Quellen. Berliner Dissertation, 1913.
  4. Vera Grützner: Musiker in Brandenburg vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart. Jaron, Berlin 2004,, pp. 52f.
  5. Gilbert Stöck: Neue Musik in den Bezirken Halle und Magdeburg zur Zeit der DDR. Kompositionen, Politik, Institutionen. Schröder, Leipzig 2008,, .
  6. [Thomas Buchholz]
  7. Verband Deutscher Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler, Musik-Informationszentrum (ed.): Komponisten und Musikwissenschaftler der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Kurzbiographien und Werkverzeichnisse. 2nd expended edition, Verlag Neue Musik, Berlin 1968, pp. 45f.
  8. Adrian Gaster (ed.): International Who's Who in Music and Musicians' Directory. 8th edition, Melrose Press, Cambridge 1977, .
  9. https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/884473707 Musiker in Brandenburg vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart

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