Among composers whose fortunes were
foreshortened by war, few have a more tragic tale to tell than that of German composer Hugo Distler. Born
in Nuremburg but based in Lübeck, Distler was steeped in the North German, Lutheran
tradition of Johann Sebastian Bach, yet became absorbed in the music of older traditions and
those of his time –- in early Distler pieces one can hear traces of Stravinsky,
Ravel, and
Busoni. He
reached musical maturity early and arrived at a heady combination sometimes referred to as
“neo-Baroque,” as opposed to neo-classical, which drew upon the clean and balanced
music of the late 18th century as model. A dedicated church musician and teacher, most of
Distler’s music is either for chorus or for organ; another instrument to which he was
devoted was the harpsichord, which had few adherents in the 1930s, and his Harpsichord
Concerto was the only large scale instrumental work Distler produced that he also heard.
In much of
Hugo Distler’s music, one can hear in his seeming obsession with repetitive figures and
painstaking development of small ideas a tendency towards high holy minimalism in a specific
sense and European postmodernism in a general one; neither style would emerge until more than 30
years after he died. Among his detractors were Germany’s National Socialists, who labeled
Distler a degenerate artist based on the premiere of his Harpsichord Concerto and blocked the
publication of its third movement. Like most Germans in the 1930s, Distler had joined the Nazi
party in 1933; he had won his publishing contract with Bärenreiter in 1935 owing to
successes at that year’s Kassel Music Days. However, within one year both Distler and
Bärenreiter were already feeling the heat from above. Over time, the Nazi hierarchy began to
view Distler less as a key cultural component within the Third Reich and more as an able-bodied
Party member who ought to be able to take up arms and join the Wermacht, an option that the
gentle and deeply religious composer couldn’t stomach. By 1941, Distler was composing his
last known music, teaching in Berlin and while still under contract, his works were no longer
being published. On November 1, 1942, the 34-year-old Distler took his own life rather than to
answer his inevitable conscription, not wanting to follow in the footsteps of an elder brother
already fallen in the cause.
Given his sorry circumstances and brave
stand against forces that would have made him a faceless agent of the Nazi regime one might
expect lionization of Distler’s work in the immediate post-war period, but this was not to
be. Bärenreiter took on a limited republication of some compositions in the 1950s and
garnered a small amount of interest, but Distler’s chromatically altered, poly-pandiatonic
music landed like a thud in an era when most European art music was caught up in a kind of
analogy to quantum mechanics. While over time, Distler’s music gained some ground among
sacred musicians, he did not join the canon of Western music as a whole. The year 2008 brought
the observance of Distler’s centenary and witnessed the premiere recordings of his works
for piano and the Schauspielmusik zu “Ritter Blaubart,” orchestral music for a puppet play
long thought lost, but discovered in a locked cabinet in 1999; it had never been performed. Most
recordings of Distler are fostered in some way by his publisher; they seldom feature sympathetic
and dedicated performers and are usually done on the cheap. While the obstacle of his adherence
to tonality has been bridged, there are other objections to Distler being raised from second-tier
to first-tier status; the idea that his music is technically accomplished but impenetrable, like
Max Reger,
or the notion, common in Germany, that Distler is only celebrated as he was so badly treated, and
that any recognition of his work ties into “German guilt” about the Second World War.
Distler’s music is the best refutation for either charge, and those able to connect with
good recordings of it will discover his intoxicating mixture is unique, blending old and new into
a texture that is unquestionably modern and forward-looking for its time, never mundane and
always to some degree challenging -– much as the best 21st century music has
been thus far.
Bernd
Stegmann, Berliner Vokalensemble -
Distler: Führwahr, er trug unsere Krankheit Op. 12/9 (1941) 
Anne
Galovitch, harpsichord; Jos van Immerseel, Anima Eterna - Harpsichord Concerto, Op. 14
(1936)
Stefan
Malzew, Neubrandenberger Philharmonie -
Distler: Schauspielmusik zu “Ritter Blaubart” (1940)
Arturo
Sachetti - Distler: Chorale Partita on “Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland, Op. 8/1 (1932)
Recommandations
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and reject those that you are not interested in
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