Johannes Weyrauch


Johannes Weyrauch was a German composer and cantor.

Life

Childhood

Weyrauch was born on 20 February 1897 in Leipzig. His mother, Maria Große, who had received a thorough musical education and worked in several cantor houses, introduced her son to sacred music at an early age. His father, Friedrich Louis Weyrauch, was a merchant by profession and was able to finance his son's attendance of the. Through his stepbrother, Weyrauch got in touch with the music of Richard Wagner, which had a decisive influence on his musical life:
Parallel to his schooling at the Gymnasium, Weyrauch became a pupil of Helene Caspar, a music teacher and writer known around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, who introduced him to the literature of the First Viennese School and that of Johann Sebastian Bach. In addition to these lessons, the Gewandhaus member Ernst Nissen gave him violin lessons. After ten years of working with Helene Caspar, she realized that she could no longer teach her talented student anything, so she arranged for him to be taught privately by Curt Beilschmidt, who taught theory and piano at the Leipzig Conservatory.
When Weyrauch took his Abitur in 1916, it was not possible for him to begin studying music immediately, as he was drafted that same summer and, after training as a machine-gunner, was ordered to serve on the Western Front. After the end of the war, the now 21-year-old returned to Leipzig and realized his plan to study music at the Leipzig Conservatory.

Study period

Weyrauch chose piano as his main subject with the indication to change to the organ later. The lessons were given to him by Robert Teichmüller; the music theory teacher was Otto Wittenbacher. Weyrauch took composition lessons with Stephan Krehl, from whose school famous musicians like Rudolf Mauersberger emerged. However, Weyrauch c0hanged composition teachers during the course of his studies and found in Sigfrid Karg-Elert a competent musical personality who appealed to him greatly. Karg-Elert's musical language was initially oriented towards late romantic sounds, but he also mixed these with impressionistic aspirations of Claude Debussy and the sound world of an Alexander Scriabin.
In addition to practical and theoretical music studies, Weyrauch also attended musicological lectures and exercises with Hugo Riemann, Hermann Abert and Arnold Schering. In addition to Karg-Elerts polarity theory, Riemann's function theory had a great influence on Weyrauch's first works. In 1922 Weyrauch finished his studies at the Leipzig Conservatory and followed a call to Erlangen, where Wilhelm Becking had established a seminar for musicology. Becking persuaded Weyrauch to write a dissertation with the topic: Der sinfonische Aufbau bei Anton Bruckner, but he did not finish this work. Weyrauch commented on this fact with the following words:

Start-up

After abandoning his dissertation, Weyrauch returned to Leipzig and now had to consider how he was to make a living, since composing alone did not provide him with enough money to live on. On the recommendation of his former piano teacher Robert Teichmüller, Weyrauch was able to accept a position as a lecturer at the Musikverlag Litolff in Braunschweig in 1923. However, he did not devote his full attention to the position, as he was composing during working hours, which led to a disagreement with the chief editor. As a result, Weyrauch quit the position and returned to Leipzig. To secure his livelihood, he gave private piano lessons. One year later Weyrauch married Maria Henriette Luise Winter, who was almost 11 years older than him.
In the same year, Weyrauch gained insight into the ideas of the "" through the mediation of his wife. He came into personal contact with the founders, the singing teacher Clara Schlaffhorst and the piano teacher Hedwig Andersen, and received new impulses for his own vocal work. In addition, Weyrauch was inspired by the German Youth Movement and the that emerged from it. Weyrauch was particularly impressed by the strong influence of the singing movement on Protestant church music, which led to a new discovery Heinrich Schütz' and the Volksliedes. Weyrauch had personal contact with the two leading figures of the singing movement - Walther Hensel, the founder of the "Finkensteiner Bund" and Fritz Jöde, the initiator of the Musicians' Guild. Inspired by the breathing school and the youth music movement, Weyrauch decided to become a music teacher at the Leipzig Volkshochschule. Together with Hans Mlynarczyk, he founded the "Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Musik" at the Volkshochschule. Tasks and goals, which were anchored in the spirit of the youth movement, were outlined as follows:
With this proclamation, both founding members rebelled against the common concert business, because in their opinion a passive audience was only a "music consuming sham community". The work at the adult education centre led to Weyrauch establishing a choir which soon after its foundation gained nationwide recognition. With the help of Karg-Elert, his sphere of activity was expanded in 1929 with a teaching position for music theory at the State Conservatory in Leipzig, which he was only able to hold for a short time, however, as he had to be dismissed due to the dearth of funds.

Life under National Socialism

After losing this post, Weyrauch also lost his main job, as the National Socialists closed all adult education centers shortly after seizure of power in January 1933. Weyrauch's singing circle could only continue to exist if he placed himself under church supervision. By the end of the 1920s he had already begun to concentrate his practical work with the Singkreis as well as his compositional work on the field of church music. Thus the decision matured in him to become a cantor.
In 1934 Weyrauch began external organ studies at the Church Music Institute of the Leipzig Academy of Music with Friedrich Högner. Weyrauch had been taking private organ lessons with Günther Ramin since the mid 1920s. Högner and Ramin, for example, also trained Hugo Distler in Leipzig until he dropped out. In summer 1935 he passed the church music C-examination and took over the part-time position of cantor at the in Leipzig.
Shortly before the war, Weyrauch passed the B-examination for church musicians, but he had to leave the cantor's office inactive after the outbreak of the war, as he was called up in 1940 as a state gunner and assigned to guard the prisoners. Already after a few weeks he could take up the office of cantor again - now at the, because he was released into the reserve. Towards the end of the war, Weyrauch had to resume his military service and was taken to the Eastern Front in Poland after radio engineering training. He no longer had to intervene in the war events, because the German troops were already on the retreat. After a six-month war captivity in Schwedt, Weyrauch was able to return to Leipzig, where he resumed his position as cantor and became a member of the younger Thomanerchor at the request of Thomaskantor Günther Ramin voice training. However, Weyrauch soon gave up the position due to an excessive workload.

Turning to church music

In October 1946 Weyrauch was appointed as a lecturer in composition and music theory at the rebuilt Leipzig Academy of Music, which was renamed the Mendelssohn Academy. Among his students were Volker Bräutigam, Diethard Hellmann, Lorenz Stolzenbach and Siegfried Thiele. Dwindling membership in the churches due to the anti-church attitude of the time prompted Weyrauch to compose simpler works which took into account the reduced size of church choirs. Sometimes he composed only 2- or 3-voice movements or even one-voice vocal works with organ accompaniment.
In 1951 Weyrauch again took up the position of cantor at the Heilandskirche in Leipzig-Plagwitz and held this position until his voluntary retirement in 1961. He made his position as cantor at the Heilandskirche available to enable his student Volker Bräutigam to start his professional life immediately. While it was still easy to give up this office, the following year the emeritus weighed far more heavily. Weyrauch was to continue teaching composition and theory for another five years at the Leipzig Academy of Music. After his dismissal as professor, he resigned from the composition association of the GDR, as he had not received any respect or support. 1962 was also the year in which Weyrauch became a member of The Christian Community without leaving the Evangelical Church. In Weyrauch's opinion, the act of consecration of man to the Christian Community is only service in the 20th century that he could accept.

Travel age and last years of life

The retirement age opened up completely new travel opportunities for GDR citizens. Contacts to West German publishing houses were established and friends all over Germany were visited. In 1967 Weyrauch finally ended his teaching activities at the Academy of Music. Also in this year Weyrauch wrote his "Musical Testament", which contains 15 aphoristic thoughts and represents the essence of his compositional work.
The care of his wife, who was already almost blind and in need of care, did not allow Weyrauch to devote himself to composing. The years of care now also led to states of exhaustion and vegetative complaints. At the beginning of 1970 he was admitted to a hospital in Leipzig, but recovered again. On 15 October 1970 his wife Luise died, which is why he only composed a little. In 1972 he moved to a retirement home. After his 80th birthday in 1977, a rapid decline of his physical and mental powers began. Weyrauch died on 1 May 1977 at the age of 80 and was buried at Gundorf Cemetery.
The place at the community centre in, in the district Gundorf of this municipality he lived for several decades, was renamed in his honour "Johannes-Weyrauch-Platz".

Basic artistic attitude and musical influences

The author of Johannes Weyrauch's biography describes the basic musical attitude in this way
Weyrauch's biography makes it easy to see that there is an artistic-spiritual relationship between his basic Christian attitude and his work that is never abandoned. This relationship is particularly expressed through the reflection on certain categories of values: clarity, avoidance of all superfluous things and the use of economical and simple musical means. His tonal language seems conventional, it is not rich in surprising turns. He does not work towards moods, gives no impressions and renounces tonal opulence in favour of a clear, transparent sound. Extensive experiments are as alien to his music as one-sided musical driving forces, if one disregards some works from his early creative period. In that Weyrauch's music is simple, avoids excessive loudness, effect, sound voluptuousness and voluptuousness, it possesses a high degree of clarity, comprehensibility and expressiveness. The simplicity and deliberate simplicity of the musical style, especially in the late works, is by no means a lack of craftsmanship, but the result of a long personal and thus also artistic maturation period.
Weyrauch himself speaks of four stages of development that characterize his work. Artistically, there are no hard breaks or extreme reorientations, which is why the style periods flow into each other and have developed naturally. The stylistic periodicity is structured as follows:
The expressive style of the early phase is influenced by his Leipzig teachers, who felt committed to the music of the 19th century and had a central role model in Max Reger. But not only Reger, but also Alexander Scriabin served Weyrauch - especially in the field of harmonics and counterpoint - as an ideal in this period. The functioned as a counterpart to the music of the 19th century, since it dismissed it as light music or empty, virtuoso performance music and sought its salvation in the music of the "Old Masters" - for example Heinrich Schütz, but also Johann Sebastian Bach - and their genres and forms. Their endeavour was to make music accessible and practise it together and to overcome the separation between the audience and the performing musicians. Due to the return to baroque compositional techniques, the horizontal, harmonic compositional thinking of the 19th century was replaced by a linear voice leading, a process that can also be traced in Weyrauch's early compositions. The harmonically complex sound structures, as he was taught in the "Leipzig School", are taken back by the contact with the singing movement in his second creative period and replaced by clear chords with tonal roots. In the third creative period, the simplifying tendencies intensify, resulting in a further reduction in the complexity of the melodic structure, which is why Weyrauch himself coined the word "Paupertät style" for his music of this period. Archaic elements such as motifs influenced by Gregorian chant or free-flowing melodies that are not subordinated to a rigid bar scheme characterize the compositions. In addition to the stylistic reorientation, the anti-Christian basic attitude promoted in the GDR also led to a loss of members in the churches, which is why Weyrauch wrote simple movements for small ensembles for practical reasons. He described his last creative period as a "style of mirrored spiritual ideas", in which he dispensed with decorative elements in the individual voices in favour of clear diction in the overall arrangement of the works. The tonal language, which becomes harsher and more brittle, deliberately dispenses with "musical beauty" and places the meditative element more strongly in the foreground. This last style period represents a culmination of all compositional styles.
As was already evident in the classification of the stylistic periods of Weyrauch, various compositional currents flow into his oeuvre. However, the surroundings of Leipzig with its great names such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Robert Schumann and Max Reger also exerted an obligatory influence. A central course was already set after the first compositions, as the decision against the avant-garde was made here. The four piano pieces, which take up the tonal language of Scriabin, could have become Weyrauch's foundation stone in overcoming tonality. But instead of following this widespread trend, a conscious departure from this method of composition was made in favour of a turn towards a traditional musical language that is quiet, meditative and free of all obtrusiveness and externalities.
Three worldviews - anthroposophy, The Christian Community and the Berneuchen Movement - also determined Weyrauch's essence and work. The spiritual worldview of anthroposophy, founded by Rudolf Steiner, who was interested in Weyrauch as a silent observer, seeks an individual, yet systematic approach to phenomena of the supersensible world. Inspired by this doctrine, but nevertheless understood as an independent religious community, the Christian Community, which was founded by theologians under the guidance of Friedrich Rittelmeyer and with the help of Rudolf Steiner, has become apparent. The Berneuchener Kreis, which came into being around 1920, was an evangelical movement whose aim was to reform the church and to resacralize everyday life.
During his almost sixty-year creative period, Weyrauch left behind an extensive œuvre of 100 operas, with a focus on Musica sacra. In addition to music for wind and string instruments, compositions for organ dominate the instrumental music. Numerous meditations, chorale preludes and partitas to church songs testify to Weyrauch's basic religious attitude. In the field of vocal music, too, a clear predominance of sacred music can be observed; here, the preference for choral music is conspicuous, while solo works are hardly to be found. Above all motets, introits and cantatas to sacred or biblical texts dominate the picture, whereas large forms such as oratorios, masses or passions are almost completely absent.
All the organ works have been recorded by the cantor Michael Vetter on a total of three CDs. In contrast, only one CD with selected vocal works exists, which was recorded by the Leipzig Vocal Ensemble under the direction of the Thomaskantor Georg Christoph Biller in cooperation with the Central German Chamber Orchestra. Biller, who was still able to experience Weyrauch personally, was commissioned by the latter shortly before his death to maintain and perform his works. Many works have been published by various publishing houses, including the Musikverlag Joachim Kaschta, Carus-Verlag and Breitkopf & Härtel.

Systematic Catalogue of Works

Instrumental music

Music for chamber orchestra

Vocal music

Sacred music

Secular music

Literature

Individual works on collective CDs