 photo: © Lothar Knessl  L’oubli bouilli |
GÖSTA NEUWIRTH (*1937) I can with a clean conscience take up Doderer’s dictum of having “no biography,” but rather “just the … collected deeds of an environment which came to be more or less by accident,” for which the following notes on the “subject” may be sufficient: Gösta Neuwirth was born in Vienna in 1937. From 1939 to 1953 he lived in Ried, Upper Austria. He attended primary school, secondary school. He began with violin lessons and wrote his first composition in 1944. He listened avidly to records at home: The Firebird and The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky. Around 1950, at the local “America House,” he heard music by Schoenberg, Ives, Varèse and Cage. He passed his Matura exams in Graz in 1953/54 and played Webern’s op. 7 for a course given by Harald Kaufmann. Thereafter in Vienna, he studied composition with Karl Schiske, as well as musicology and theatre science at the university. He also co-founded DIE ARCHE (a theatre). In 1959 he published a book on Franz Schreker. In 1962 his dissertation on the Jewish composer was rejected, for which reason he went to Berlin in 1963. In 1968 he earned his doctorate at the Berlin’s Free University. From 1973 to 1982 he taught in Graz. From 1983 to 2000 he was a professor at the Academy of the Arts in Berlin. Since the end of his tenure there he has lived in the southwest German city of Freiburg, which university appointed him honorary professor in 2009. He has already bequeathed his compositional legacy to the music department of the archive of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin. Ich kann mir ohne Skrupel Doderers Dictum angeignen, „keine Biographie“ zu haben, sondern „nur die ... angesammelten Titel einer gewissermaßen versehentlich gesetzten Umwelt“, wofür folgende steckbriefliche „Subjekterei“ genügen mag: Gösta Neuwirth, geb. 1937 in Wien. 1939-1953 in Ried/OÖ. Volksschule, Gymnasium. 1944 erste Komposition, Geigenunterricht. Hört zuhause Schallplatten: Feuervogel und Sacre du printemps von Strawinsky. Um 1950 im dortigen Amerika-Haus: Musik von Schönberg, Ives, Varèse und Cage. 1953/1954 in Graz, Matura, spielt für Harald Kaufmanns Seminar Weberns op.7. Danach in Wien: studiert Komposition bei Karl Schiske, Musik- und Theaterwissenschaft an der Universität. Theater DIE ARCHE. 1959 Buch über Franz Schreker. 1962 wird die Dissertation über den jüdischen Komponisten abgelehnt, daher seit 1963 in Berlin. Promotion 1968 an der Freien Universität. 1973-1982 Lehrtätigkeit in Graz. 1983-2000 Professor an der Hochschule Der Künste in Berlin Seitdem in Freiburg i. Br., 2009 Honorarprofessur an der dortigen Universität. Nachlaß zu Lebzeiten in der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Archivabteilung Musik. |