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Born: August 20, 1936 - Nürnberg, Bavaria, Germany
Died: July 3, 2006 - Berlin, Germany |
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The German choral conductor, organist, music pedagogue, and musicologist, Peter Schwarz, was since 1961 organist and Kantor at the Kaiser-Friedrich-Gedächtnis-Kirche in Berlin-Tiergarten. There he founded the Berliner Cappella and the Ars-Nova-Ensemble Berlin. With both ensembles he performed internationally recognized performances of old and new music. As an organist, he undertook concert tours to many countries. He taught at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin since 1981, where he was appointed Full Professor in 1987. He cultivated intensive contacts with numerous contemporary composers. The concert series "musica nova sacra", which he organized with great commitment each year, could be considered a forum of contemporary music. In 1996 he was awarded the "Deutschen Kritikerpreis für Musik" in recognition of his merit and in September 2000 in Mannheim the "Johann Wenzel Stamitz-Preis".
Peter Schwarz founded the Ars-Nova-Ensemble in 1987. The twelve members of the chamber choir were all vocally trained. The members of the ensemble, in addition to their concert engagements with the Ars-Nova-Ensemble Berlin, also worked as soloists and gave concerts with the Rundfunkchor Berlin. A primary task of the ensemble was to make the audience acquainted with rarely performed works of modern music. The repertoire of the Ars-Nova-Ensemble was very extensive and varied. It included works of classical modernism such as Arnold Schoenberg, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Olivier Messiaen, Mauricio Kagel, Luigi Nono, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Isang Yun or Kurt Weil as well as the choral music of previously less known composers. Also worthy of mention is the commitment to the music of the Eastern European, especially the Polish and Romanian composers. |
