Hugo Distler

Hugo Distler (June 24, 1908 – November 1, 1942) was a German composer.

He was born in Nuremberg and is known mostly for his church choral music. He attended Leipzig Conservatory first as a conducting student with piano as his secondary subject, but changing later, on the advice of his teacher, to composition and organ. He became organist at St. Jacobi in Lübeck in 1931. In 1933 he married Waltraut Thienhaus. In the same year he joined the NSDAP. Distler also taught at the School for Church Music in Spandau, and became a professor of church music in Berlin in 1940.

Becoming increasingly depressed from the death of friends, aerial attacks, job pressures, and the constant threat of conscription into the German army, he committed suicide in Berlin at the age of 34. He chose to end his life by his own hand (with fumes from his own gas oven) rather than be conscripted into the Wehrmacht.

His work is polyphonic and frequently melismatic, often based on the pentatonic scale. Because of these characteristics, his work was stigmatized by some Nazis as "degenerate art." Distler enjoyed his first success in 1935 at the official "Kassel Music Days" (Kasseler Musiktage).

Bibliography

* Hugo Distler: "Funktionelle Harmonielehre". Kassel 1940.
* Wolfgang Jennrich: "Hugo Distler". Berlin 1970.
* Ursula Herrmann: "Hugo Distler. Rufer und Mahner". Berlin 1972.
* Ursula v. Rauchhaupt: "Die vokale Kirchenmusik Hugo Distlers. Eine Studie zum Thema „Musik und Gottesdienst“". Gütersloh 1963.
* Alexander L. Suder (Hgrs.): "Hugo Distler". In: "Komponisten in Bayern". Band 20. Tutzing 1990.
* Casper Honders: "In der Welt habt ihr Angst". In: Dietrich Schuberth (Hrsg.): "Kirchenmusik im Nationalsozialismus". Kassel 1995, S. 144-153.
* Dirk Lemmermann: "Studien zum weltlichen Vokalwerk Hugo Distlers. Analytische, ästhetische und rezeptionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Mörike-Chorliederbuches". Frankfurt am Main 1996.
* Stefan Hanheide (Hrsg.): "Hugo Distler im Dritten Reich". Osnabrück 1997.
* Bettina Schlüter: "Hugo Distler. Musikwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen in systemtheoretischer Perspektivierung". Elektronische Ressource CD-ROM. Stuttgart 2000.
* Winfried Lüdemann: "Hugo Distler. Eine musikalische Biographie". Augsburg 2002.