Hugo Distler's music was cultivated by the brilliant choirmaster and composer Konrad Lechner during my time as a student at the Musikhochschule in Freiburg and was by no means considered outdated at the time. We sang all the movements of the Mörike songbook. I am also thinking here of the performance of the Christmas story for soloists and choir a cappella. The choral works of Ernst Pepping were also cultivated. I clearly remember a beautiful motet entitled Jesus and Nicodemus. We perceived this music as a renewal movement in the Schützian sense, whereby the German language was presented in a new way on this basis. I have developed these ideas further in some of my motets.

Bertold Hummel (conversation with Schmidt-Mannheim, January 1998)

Biography

Konrad Lechner, * 24.2.1911 in Nuremberg; + 14.12.1989 in Kirchzarten; German composer, music teacher, conductor and cellist, studied cello with Disclez, R. Metzmacher and H. Becker, conducting with H. Knappe and Cl. Krauss, composition with C. Orff, K. Marx, J. Haas, J. N. David and W. Fortner. In 1934/35 he was cellist at the Bavarian State Opera, in 1934 cellist in E. Fischer's piano quartet and in 1935 in his chamber orchestra, undertook concert tours as a fiddle and flute player with his fiddle trio from 1936-39 and was director of the Munich Bach Society Choir from 1939-44. After working as a lecturer at the Mozarteum Salzburg (1941-45), he was conductor of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra and from 1948-53 professor at the State University of Music in Freiburg im Breisgau (conducting, composition, university choir and orchestra). From 1953-58 L. was director of the Städtische Akademie für Tonkunst in Darmstadt, where he continued to teach composition, conducting, violoncello and viola da gamba.

Works

Symphonic concerto (1948); a requiem (1952); Musik zu jedermann (1947); a psalm cantata (1956); string trio (1951); 2 sonatas and a sonatina for KI; Lamento after an old Italian text for choir (1955), motet "Laß alles was Du hast" (A. Silesius, 1955) and songs.