Maria Schüppel (1923 – 27 June 2011)
was a German composer, educator, pianist and pioneering
music therapist who composed works for
lyre and voice, and experimented with electronic music.
Schüppel was born in
Chemnitz. After her father’s death, her family moved to Gorlitz, where she studied piano with Eberhard Wenzel. She later studied music in Dresden, Breslau, and Weimar, and passed her state examination in Weimar in 1945. She worked as a music teacher and at Weimar Radio, composing art songs and folk songs. In 1950, Schüppel found a job in East Berlin, where she gave harpsichord and clavichord recitals and studied the
trautonium
The Trautonium is an electronic synthesizer invented in 1930 by Friedrich Trautwein in Berlin at the Musikhochschule's music and radio lab, the Rundfunkversuchstelle. Soon afterwards Oskar Sala joined him, continuing development until Sala's de ...
(an early electronic synthesizer) with
Oskar Sala
Oskar Sala (18 July 1910 – 26 February 2002) was a German composer and a pioneer of electronic music. He played an instrument called the Trautonium, an early form of electronic synthesizer.
Early life
Sala was born in Greiz, Thuringia, Germany ...
. She worked at the German University of Music (today the Hanns-Eisler-Musikhochschule) until 1957 when she moved to West Berlin to focus on music therapy. She traveled throughout Europe and studied or collaborated with Hans Heinrich Engel,
Karl Konig, Anny von Lange, Hermann Pfrogner, Edmund Pracht, Gotthard Starke, and Rudolph Treichler.
Together with Heldegard Prym,
Schüppel developed the
anthroposophical music therapy (AnMt) training course in Berlin at the Musiktherapeutische Arbeitsstätte (Center for Music Therapy) in 1963 and directed it until 1993.
AnMt was based on an approach developed by
Rudolph Steiner to address the patient’s spiritual health as well as his or her physical health. In 1994, the German Society of Music Therapy awarded Schüppel with honorary membership for her work in developing the field of music therapy.
Schüppel’s compositions included:
Chamber
*''Mercury Bath'' (lyre)
*''Music in Three Movements in the Baroque Style'' (lyre)
*''Suite'' (lyre)
*''Zweistimmige Fassung der Festmusiken'' (soprano and alto lyres)
Vocal
*art songs
*“Auf dem Mond” (voice and lyre)
*folk songs
*“Solve et Coagula: Raunendes Feuer” (voice and electronics; text is Feuerlied from the Celtic myth “Die Kinder des LIr”)
References
External links
Listen to music by Maria Schüppel
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schuppel, Maria
German women composers
Music therapists
1923 births
2011 deaths