From 1947 to 1954, Bertold Hummel attended chamber music lessons with Emil Seiler at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg. Seiler encouraged him to seek his talent as a cellist in chamber music rather than virtuosity. Hummel played with Seiler in public concerts and accompanied him as a continuo player on radio recordings. The two musicians remained in close contact until Seiler's death.

Prof Emil Seiler in Memoriam
by Kai Köpp (Freiburg)

An era has come to an end. Emil Seiler passed away on 21 March 1998. 21 March 1998, a man who embodied the history of the viola and viola d'amore in the 20th century like no other. His interest in new music proved to be trend-setting, and his services to early music are inestimable. In addition to his recordings of new music, it was his more than 16 discs of early music for the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft that made music for viola d'amore accessible to a wider audience for the first time since the 1950s.

Emil Seiler was inspired not least by Paul Hindemith, who had been inspiring him to write new viola compositions and experiment with the historical instruments in the Berlin instrument collection since 1929. Werner Eginhard Köhler emphasised Emil Seiler's merits as an advocate of the viola d'amore as early as 1938 in his dissertation on the viola d'amore and writes with regard to Hindemith and Seiler, whom he subsequently mentions:

"Artists of the younger generation...have worked assiduously for a revival of viola d'amore playing and have earned particular merit by making the old valuable original literature, still awaiting evaluation and publication in the libraries, accessible to a wider circle of listeners."

A well-known photo shows Hindemith and Seiler at a performance in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, where both are playing on so-called "treble violas" or viole d'amore without resonance strings.

Harry Danks provides information on Emil Seiler's biography in his book on the viola d'amore (Halesowen 1976, p. 102) and Maurice Riley in the first volume of his "History of the Viola" (Ann Arbor 1980, p. 360). Nevertheless, it seems appropriate to devote special attention to the life's work of this deserving man. Based on the material provided by his widow and daughter, which also contains an autobiographical sketch, a detailed biography of Emil Seiler will therefore be traced.

1 Musical training

Born on 5 February 1906, Emil Seiler grew up in a music-loving Nuremberg family. He received his first violin lessons at the age of 8 from members of the municipal orchestra in Nuremberg. It is interesting to note that his first teacher, Mr Vibrans, actually played first horn in the orchestra. However, the lessons must have been so good that Seiler later received violin lessons from the first concertmaster Jean Wagner and was even allowed to play alongside his teacher on the concertmaster's stand at children's performances of the Nuremberg orchestra. Wagner's lessons consisted mainly of duo literature: Mozart, Pleyel, Mazas, Spohr etc.

After completing a three-year bank apprenticeship, Emil Seiler began his music studies at the Nuremberg Conservatory in 1925 with Seby Horváth, a pupil of Albert Rosé. Seiler soon became his favourite pupil. According to Seiler, the lessons consisted of Sevcik's bow and finger technique as well as etudes by Klatt, works by Bach and the sonatas by Grieg and Pfitzner. Horváth also encouraged Seiler's emerging teaching talent by letting him teach his son. Seiler remarks in his memoirs: "The joy of teaching remained with me until the end of my life."

Every week, under Horváth's direction, there were chamber music lessons in which Emil Seiler played the viola in the Steich quartet. Working on Zoltán Kodaly's Trio for 2 violins and viola became an unforgettable key experience for him. With this work, Horváth not only awakened Seiler's interest in new music, but also his love for the sound of the viola, and Seiler writes "from now on it became my own instrument."

In 1928, Emil Seiler continued his studies at the Berlin Academy of Music under the 30-year-old Professor Joseph Wolfsthal, who was a student of Flesch. This made it necessary to switch from the Viennese Rosé technique to the Flesch system. Wolfsthal's assistant, an elderly lady by the name of Schiemann, helped him with the changeover through her daily repetition. Seiler was particularly moved by the works of new music that he studied with Wolfstahl (Hindemith, Milhaud, Stravinsky), but he was also encouraged by his teacher to play Bach's works from the original. During this time, Emil Seiler, like almost all Wolfstahl students, was a member of the Michael Taube Chamber Orchestra and played in the chamber orchestras of Hans von Benda and Edwin Fischer.

In 1929, Professor Wolfstahl had Emil Seiler rehearse the viola d'amore sonata by Paul Hindemith, who was a professor of composition at the Berlin Hochschule, and introduced him to the composer. This led to an intensive collaboration, particularly in the field of early music, as in the following years Seiler gave numerous concerts as Hindemith's chamber music partner, the centrepiece of which was regularly Biber's Partita in C minor for two violas d'amore. Under the direction of Curt Sachs, Emil Seiler was given the opportunity to learn the viola d'amore, viola pomposa, various other violas, pochette and even nail violin on original instruments. These instruments came from the former royal collection of musical instruments, which at that time was still part of the Berlin Academy of Music in Charlottenburg and today forms the centrepiece of the Berlin Instrument Museum. (Unfortunately, the viola d'amore instruments in particular are no longer preserved today, as they have been lost since being evacuated during the bombing and were probably destroyed). Sachs also produced a film about old instruments at the UfA, in which Seiler took part.

Subsequently, Hellmuth Christian Wolff invited him to demonstrate the viola d'amore at Berlin University and enabled him to view and copy old manuscripts with viola d'amore literature in the State Library. On this occasion, Emil Seiler also met Vadim Borissowsky, with whom he had a lasting friendship and whom he visited in Moscow in September 1971.

In February 1932, the violinist Joseph Wolfstahl fell ill with pneumonia while travelling in America and died at the age of 34 while still on the trip. After the sudden death of his violin professor, Emil Seiler continued his studies with Professor Hans Mahlke in Berlin, with whom he now studied exclusively viola. Six months later, when Emil Seiler played a solo sonata by Hindemith and Milhaud's Viola Concerto op. 108, dedicated to Hindemith, at his final examinations, he received derisive remarks about his commitment to new music, because in 1932, a year before the National Socialists came to power, the ultra-conservative view of music had also gained ground in Berlin. At that time, no one could have guessed that Emil Seiler would one day become the successor to his teacher Mahlke at the Hochschule der Künste in West Berlin, not least because of his commitment to Hindemith's works.

2 New and old music in National Socialist Berlin

After 1933 came "bitter times" (Seiler): the Prenzlauer Berg Folk Music School, where Emil Seiler and the composer Harald Genzmer taught and where Hindemith gave lectures, was immediately closed. Many leading figures in musical life went abroad: Klemperer, Ullstein, Richter, Fuchs, etc. On Hindemith's recommendation, Emil Seiler taught Otto Klemperer's son and Ullstein's daughter. Curt Sachs had also left Germany and was now working in Paris on his "Anthologie sonore", a collection of records with examples from 2000 years of music history. In this context, Sachs planned a disc recording of the Biber Partita with Hindemith and Seiler on the viola d'amore around 1935. It is regrettable in many respects that this recording never materialised for political reasons, as it would have been an extremely valuable sound document of those Berlin pioneering deeds in the field of the viola d'amore.

Hans Mersmann prepared radio programmes with new chamber music for Deutschlandsender Berlin in collaboration with Hindemith and Seiler. In 1933, however, he was dismissed from the Technische Hochschule Berlin because of his commitment to new music. In his last programme in 1934, which Mersmann was only able to watch from the sidelines, Emil Seiler played Paul Dessau's Sonatina for viola and piano and Paul Hindemith's Heckelphone Trio. A few months later, Hindemith was banned from performing by the National Socialists. Seiler collected the unique recordings of all the recordings in which he participated, which he received from the radio on discs.

From 1935 to 1943, Emil Seiler was the co-ordinating solo violist in the newly founded orchestra of Deutschlandsender Berlin. In the first three years, Walter Trampler (+ September 1997) played with him on the podium as second co-ordinating solo violist. Outstanding conductors were: Richard Strauss, Herbert von Karajan, Hans Rosbaud, Carl Schuricht, Willem Mengelberg, Clemens Kraus, Karl Böhm, Oswald Kabasta, Robert Steger and Rudolf Schulz-Dornburg. Emil Seiler also taught at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory from 1935 to 1943 and at the Academy for Church and School Music in Berlin from 1940 to 1943. From 1941, Seiler was also responsible for chamber music at Deutschlandsender Berlin. The programmes he played were mostly limited to baroque chamber music with viola d'amore, as new music was not broadcast.

Nevertheless, Emil Seiler continued to play new compositions, for example in regular house concerts at the home of the "degenerate" painter Emil Nolde in Berlin, which his wife organised together with the pianist Frau Tscharner. He also took part (1942-43) in the three-weekly Sunday matinees at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Music Library, where new chamber music was performed. Together with the pianist Edith Picht-Axenfeld, he played works by Harald Genzmer, Johann Nepomuk David and Caesar Bresgen.

3 Happy years in Austria

In 1943, the first bombs fell in Berlin and the Seiler family's flat was destroyed. Due to the unrest caused by the bombing, the special department for early music at the radio station, which Seiler headed, was relocated to Austria. Emil Seiler chose the following musicians for the move to the Bruckner-Stift St Florian near Linz: Walter Gerwig (lute), Lisedore Häge (harpsichord), Thea von Sparr and Werner Tietz (recorder). In his memoirs, Seiler emphasises that none of his fellow players were members of the National Socialist Party. Emil Seiler was criticised by the Reich director Glasmeier for his negative attitude towards the party.

During this time, he made numerous recordings of early music, especially for Deutschlandsender Prague. But new music was also cultivated. The composer Johann Nepomuk David, whom Seiler knew from performances of his works in Berlin, had moved from bombed-out Leipzig to his birthplace of Eferding near Linz. He repeatedly visited Emil Seiler at the Bruckner-Stift, as he himself had been a choirboy in St Florian in his youth. While listening to the old music, he said: "I will also write old music, and in a completely different way." He dedicated his solo sonata for viola op. 31 no. 3 to Emil Seiler and composed further works for the musicians around Seiler (sonata for lute op. 31 no. 5, duos op. 32 for flute and viola, recorder and lute, clarinet and viola). Seiler also composed the Duo Sonata op. 31a for viola d'amore and viola da gamba (1942) and the Variations on an original theme op. 32 no. 4 (now op. posth.) for the same instrumentation (1945).

In connection with David, Seiler reports an interesting incident in his memoirs, which was also laughed about in St Florian: In the 1940s, the power bar in Germany found it disturbing that Johann Nepomuk David, as director of the Leipzig Academy of Music, had an Old Testament name. So the Lord Mayor of Leipzig urgently recommended that the composer drop his name and take the name of "Richard Wagner, who was so much admired by Hitler" instead. It goes without saying that the Austrian David rejected this request.

Three weeks before the end of the war, Seiler, Gerwig and Tietz were drafted into the military in Linz, the so-called "Volkssturm". Werner Tietz, who was engaged to the harpsichordist Lisedore Häge, was killed in the final days of the war. Emil Seiler was taken prisoner by the Americans and was released shortly afterwards with a serious illness. On his return to St. Florian, which the Americans had moved into in the meantime (they called it the "Happy Abbey"), he no longer found the radio recordings of his chamber music programmes, including works by Stravinsky and Hindemith. Seiler's search for his precious sound documents remained unsuccessful in the years that followed.

4. as a professor in Germany

From autumn 1945, Emil Seiler was contracted as principal violist in the orchestra of the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Here he met Johann Nepomuk David, who had meanwhile become the director of the Mozarteum. In Salzburg, Emil Seiler once again devoted himself to the new music for viola, which had been suppressed during the Third Reich. Eleven years after Hindemith's works were banned from performance, Emil Seiler was the first to perform one of his compositions on German radio again: in 1946, as solo violist of the Mozarteum Orchestra, he played the "Schwanendreher" from Hindemith's handwritten parts, as no printed material was available in Austria. A few weeks later, he followed this up with Walton's Viola Concerto.

At Christmas 1946, all Germans were expelled from Austria and Emil Seiler travelled to Freiburg via Munich and Nuremberg. There he initially became a lecturer at the Freiburg College of Music in 1946 before being appointed professor of viola, viola d'amore and chamber music in 1947. In the chamber music circle around the director of the conservatory, the flautist Gustav Scheck, he again devoted himself to new and early music (concert tours with Debussy trio and solo sonatas by Reger and Hindemith).

From February 1955, Emil Seiler accepted an appointment at the Berlin Hochschule as successor to his former teacher Prof Hans Mahlke. There he endeavoured to build on the spirit of his own Berlin student days. In the instrument collection, Emil Seiler found a duplicate instrument of Hindemith's viola d'amore, which had also been made by Sprenger. He commented: "Hindemith liked playing the Sprenger viola d'amore very much as it held its tuning very well." In the university archives, he found Hindemith's written legacy with many copies of works for viola d'amore and other historical instruments. Seiler's list from memory reflects the repertoire of those Berlin pioneers in the field of the viola d'amore: Petzold: Suite for viola [d'amore] alone Ariosti: at least 3 sonatas for viola d'amore and continuo Biber: 1st partita for 2 violas d'amore and continuo 2nd partita for 2 violins and continuo Rust: 2 sonatas for viola d'amore and piano at least 6 sonatas for violin and piano Piano at least 6 sonatas for violin and bc. by Biber (which Hindemith had often played in concert) Stamitz: Duo Sonata (viola d'amore and violin) Since the 1950s, more than 16 discs with early music have been produced in the archive series of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, which have been awarded the "Grand prix du disque", among other prizes. This made music for viola d'amore accessible to a wider audience for the first time. In addition, 11 discs with viola music were released by the Elektrola company and three recordings by the Colosseum company, in which Emil Seiler brought the original musical instruments of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg to life. Even before the war, Emil Seiler recorded his first disc as viola soloist in the tone poem "Harold in Italy" by Hector Berlioz.

Some of his numerous pupils were inspired by Emil Seiler to play the viola d'amore. In addition to his intensive teaching activities, Seiler devoted many years to working with the Berlin String Quartet, with whom he travelled extensively abroad. The other members of the quartet were the violinists Rudolf Schulz and Willi Kirch and the cellist Lutz Walther.

Seiler's handwritten list of works dedicated to him includes 13 compositions for viola; Seiler does not mention any works for viola d'amore, not even David's compositions mentioned above. There is possibly another list of viola d'amore compositions for which he is the dedicatee. The viola list is reproduced here in full:

David Solo Sonata Frank Mich. Beyer Sonata for viola and organ Genzmer Sonata for viola and piano Tiessen Amselrufe for viola and piano Hannenheim (pupil of Schönberg) 1st Suite for viola and piano + Kl. Theodor Wagner Lamentatio f. Br. and Kl. Wilh. Keller Psalmenweisen Br. and Kl. Konr. Roetscher Triptychon Br. and K. Gottfried Müller Canzone f. [Br. and Kl.] Tiessen Ophelia f. Br. and Kl. Ahrens Son. f. Viola and organ Bertram Sonata for viola and organ Gotthold Ludwig Richter 3 pieces for viola and organ "Es ist genug"

Emil Seiler retired in 1974 and no longer gave public concerts. He moved to Freiburg and founded the "Pflüger-Stiftung" music kindergarten, where children were introduced to playing the violin at an early age. When the Pflüger Foundation was reorganised in 1977, Emil Seiler left this institution and has since led a secluded life in Freiburg.

Emil Seiler took part in the 1988 international viola d'amore congress in Stuttgart as guest of honour of the "Viola d'amore Society of America". A separate presentation was dedicated to his services to the instrument. On 5 February 1996, he celebrated his 90th birthday and received honours from the city of Freiburg, the Berlin Senate and the Viola d'amore Society.

Emil Seiler lived only a few minutes' walk from the author's home in Freiburg, who was fortunate enough to have many stimulating conversations with him over the past six years and even received a few lessons. On 21 March 1998, Emil Seiler's eventful life came to a peaceful end after 92 years. His death is a loss for all those who hold the viola d'amore close to their hearts.