Bildnis des Musikers Hermann Suter, 1922

Hermann Suter (28 April 1870 – 22 June 1926) was a Swiss composer and conductor.

Biography

Born in Kaiserstuhl, Aargau, Suter studied in the conservatories at Basel, Stuttgart and

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

, under Hans Huber and Carl Reinecke. He was an organist and conductor in Zurich from 1892 to 1902, after which he moved to

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS ...

, where he lived to his death. He was director of the Basel Conservatory from 1918 to 1921. One of his pupils at Basel was

Richard Tauber Richard Tauber (16 May 1891 – 8 January 1948) was an Austrian tenor and film actor. Early life Richard Tauber was born in Linz, Austria, to Elisabeth Seifferth (née Denemy), a widow and an actress who played soubrette roles at the local theat ...

who sang three of his songs at the Olten Music Festival in June 1912.

Compositions

Suter's compositions contain echoes of

Brahms Johannes Brahms (; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, pianist, and conductor of the mid-Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, he spent much of his professional life in Vienna. He is sometimes grouped with ...

, Strauss, Mahler, and many other composers who Suter conducted at Basel. Much of his output is for chorus, both accompanied and unaccompanied; the best-known of his works is the

oratorio An oratorio () is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is ...

'' Le Laudi'' (The Praises) or ''Le Laudi di San Francesco d'Assisi'', based on the

Canticle of the Sun The Canticle of the Sun, also known as Laudes Creaturarum (Praise of the Creatures) and ''Canticle of the Creatures'', is a religious song composed by Saint Francis of Assisi. It was written in an Umbrian dialect of Italian but has since been ...

, written in the summer of 1923 in Plaun da Lej, in

Engadin The Engadin or Engadine ( rm, ;This is the name in the two Romansh idioms that are spoken in the Engadin, Vallader and Puter, as well as in Sursilvan and Rumantsch Grischun. In Surmiran, the name is ''Nagiadegna'', and in Sutsilvan, it is ...

e, and premiered on 13 June 1924 in Basel. By 1930 the oratorio had been performed over eighty times in nearly as many cities.

Wilhelm Furtwängler Gustav Heinrich Ernst Martin Wilhelm Furtwängler ( , , ; 25 January 188630 November 1954) was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. He was a major ...

led the

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

premiere, and the work was acclaimed in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

, Stockholm,

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, and a host of smaller German cities. Other compositions include a symphony (1914), a

violin concerto A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ensemble (customarily orchestra). Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up thro ...

(1921), three string quartets (1901, 1910, 1921), a

sextet A sextet (or hexad) is a formation containing exactly six members. The former term is commonly associated with vocal ensembles (e.g. The King's Singers, Affabre Concinui) or musical instrument groups, but can be applied to any situation where six ...

for strings (1920), and numerous songs. *The first US performance of ''Le Laudi'' may have been in 1930 at St. Mark's Church, New York City. *The first professional performance of ''Le Laudi'' in the US was in June, 2000, at the

Neal S. Blaisdell Center The Neal S. Blaisdell Center is a community center near downtown Honolulu, Hawaii. The complex has a multi-purpose arena, concert hall, exhibition hall, galleria, meeting rooms, Waikiki Shell and others. Constructed in 1964 on the historic Wa ...

, Honolulu. *The American Symphony Orchestra gave the US Premiere of Suter's Violin Concerto, Op. 23 in 2008. *The UK premiere of ''Le Laudi'' took place in Cambridge on 21 June 2009.

References

External links

* * * 1870 births 1926 deaths 19th-century male musicians 20th-century conductors (music) 20th-century male musicians Romantic composers Swiss classical composers Swiss male classical composers Swiss conductors (music) Male conductors (music) People from Kaiserstuhl, Aargau State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart alumni 20th-century Swiss composers {{Switzerland-composer-stub