Thomas Schmidt-Kowalski (21 June 1949 – 5 January 2013)Death notice
(also has birthdate) was a German

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

. Schmidt-Kowalski was born at

Oldenburg Oldenburg may also refer to: Places *Mount Oldenburg, Ellsworth Land, Antarctica *Oldenburg (city), an independent city in Lower Saxony, Germany **Oldenburg (district), a district historically in Oldenburg Free State and now in Lower Saxony *Olde ...

in 1949.Thomas Schmidt-Kowalski: Sinfonie Nr.3, Cellokonzert, CD booklet, Naxos 8.551212. He studied composition at the Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

under

Frank Michael Beyer Frank Michael Beyer (8 March 1928 – 20 April 2008) was a German composer. Active as well as a composition teacher, performer and culture functionary, he was one of the leading figures in post-war Berlin musical life. His works have been progr ...

(1971) and at the

Musikhochschule Hannover A music school is an educational institution specialized in the study, training, and research of music. Such an institution can also be known as a school of music, music academy, music faculty, college of music, music department (of a larger in ...

under

Alfred Koerppen Alfred Koerppen (16 December 1926 – 5 July 2022) was a German organist, music pedagogue, composer and academic teacher. He taught composition and music theory at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover from 1948 to 1991. His composition ...

(1972–77). In the course of his studies, Schmidt-Kowalski turned from the musical avant-garde and chose to write in a more traditional vein. Since the late 1970s he worked as a freelance composer, mainly writing commissioned works for soloists and events. His compositions have been performed in

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, and

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, and have been recorded on the Naxos label. Schmidt-Kowalski latterly emerged as a conductor of his own works.

Tonal language

Schmidt-Kowalski's works are fully tonal, and their design and harmony is essentially derived from 19th-century practice, with emphasis on the melodic element. He saw the musical

Romantic Romantic may refer to: Genres and eras * The Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement of the 18th and 19th centuries ** Romantic music, of that era ** Romantic poetry, of that era ** Romanticism in science, of that e ...

not as an era, but as transcending time, and thus did not consider his

tonality Tonality is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the single pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is call ...

and romanticism to be at all nostalgic. His output focused on chamber and orchestral music. His style has been compared to those of Schumann, Dvořák, and Saint-Saëns.
Rob Barnett, Review of Thomas Schmidt-Kowalski, Symphony No. 3 and Cello Concerto (Naxos 8.551212), Musicweb-international. In the view of critic Jill Barlow, Schmidt-Kowalski "manages to bypass 20th-century modernism by doing a 'Sturm und Drang' of his own in 21st-century terms, making himself a 'must' for today's German concert, disc, and radio audiences.""First Performances," ''Tempo'' 61, issue 239 (January 2007): 68.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt-Kowalski, Thomas German composers 1949 births 2013 deaths Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover alumni People from Oldenburg (city) 20th-century German musicians