Bertold Hummel dedicated his Three Marian Frescoes for organ op. 42 to Carl Winter.

... implevit eum Dominus spiritu sapientiae ... On the death of Carl Winter (1898-1988)

On 17 May 1988, at the age of 90, Cathedral Prebendary Professor Monsignor Geistlicher Rat Dr. Carl Winter in Freiburg was called from this life. An important personality of Musica Sacra with a work of rare complexity has passed away.

Carl Winter, born on 4 November 1898 in Gommersbach in the Jagst Valley, grew up in Mannheim, where his father was a teacher and organist at St. Josef's Church. His parents, a Catholic family of teachers in which music played an important role, moulded him early on. He had to spend the First World War in the field. When he returned home, he began studying Catholic theology in Freiburg and entered the Collegium Borromaeum in 1919. He was ordained a priest in 1923. After years of pastoral work as chaplain in the parish of St Urban in Freiburg, he was able to pursue a second degree at the Regensburg School of Church Music and at the University of Munich, where the Passau cathedral organist Otto Dunkelberg and the musicologist Rudolf von Ficker were his key teachers. After completing his doctorate with a highly acclaimed dissertation on Ruggiero Giovannelli, Carl Winter became cathedral organist at Freiburg Minster in 1934 and remained there for the next 38 years. This marked the beginning of his work as a priest and artist. The solemn liturgy became his central concern. In his improvisations, he sought to emphasise the sublime nature of traditional Catholic worship and to proclaim the message of faith through music. He also took care of the next generation of church singers by supervising a boys' choir at Freiburg Minster. He set up the cathedral organ concerts from 1934 - in difficult times and against the obstruction of those in power at the time. In the post-war period, attendance increased steadily, so that the summer Freiburg Minster Organ Concerts at times had more listeners than the city symphony concerts and have become an integral part of the cultural life of the Breisgau metropolis.

Carl Winter found himself in great distress on 27 November 1944 during the bombing raid on Freiburg, which reduced almost the entire old town to rubble and left the Gothic cathedral intact. Carl Winter was the cathedral's air-raid warden and survived the bombing inside the cathedral, but had to witness how all his relatives who were visiting him perished in his house next to the cathedral without being able to help. When they were rescued, he is said to have first come across a sheet of music with the chorale "Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan": this terrible stroke of fate affected him deeply and left its mark on him for many years.

After the Second World War, he became the favourite confessor of the men of Freiburg. When Freiburg's men finally returned home after many years of war and captivity, they gratefully went back to church in large numbers, especially to the cathedral, which had been preserved in the midst of the ruins. On Saturdays, crowds of people formed in front of the confessionals in the choir aisle behind the high altar. They asked Carl Winter for wise advice, and years later, when confession was generally no longer in such high demand, Carl Winter's office remained "busy" in anticipation of priestly encouragement from a clergyman who had experienced suffering himself and understood the men.

After the war, his work at the Freiburg State University of Music also began. Carl Winter was soon included in the circle of those who founded the Freiburg University of Music on Münsterplatz in 1946. He became one of its first organ lecturers. He gladly took up the wish from the circle of school music students for a training programme for Catholic church music and put it into practice in 1947 with the establishment of a study programme for Catholic church musicians, from which important organists and choirmasters and in turn university lecturers emerged. In this new dimension of his work, he was particularly interested in liturgical organ playing in church services, as he himself practised in the Minster of Our Lady, as well as the history of church music, liturgical science and the interweaving of music in the church with the events of worship. His lectures were characterised by a wealth of knowledge about the development of musical and liturgical forms. With his profound humanistic, philosophical and theological education, he was able to awaken deep understanding. Not only was the music of the past the subject of his constant scholarly research, concretised in the important monograph on Ruggiero Giovannelli and in the works on early Latin oratorio, but he also pursued the music of the present with keen interest, as his work on Igor Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum proves. With his amiable nature, he made lasting friends among colleagues and students. His high esteem found expression in the honourable commission to give the celebratory speech "Music - Cult - Culture" on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Freiburg University of Music. Like a cantus firmus, this idea pervades his writings and speeches and his work on the Music Council of the German-speaking General Cecilia Association, borne by the idea of the power of the spirit that pervades music.

In 1965, he was able to realise a long-cherished wish and hand over the new organs built by the companies Marcussen, Rieger and Späth in Freiburg Cathedral. He was happy to be advised by his friends and guest organists at the summer cathedral concerts, such as Fernando Germani and Anton Heiller. Even though he had already handed over the office of cathedral organist to other hands in 1972, he continued to look after his remaining cathedral organ concerts for a long time, both organisationally and artistically.

His priestly work, which he had begun as cathedral prebendary, continued for a long time. This included his resolute commitment to a mission station in Settipatti in India with a sanatorium for leprosy patients, his preparation of converts and his care of people in spiritual need.

May he, who was a convincing example to so many of the safety and security of faith, now enjoy the bliss of eternal light according to the words of the tractus of the funeral mass "lucis aeternae beatitudine perfrui".

(Hans Musch in MUSICA SACRA 108, 1988, P.. 327-328)

 

Obituaries and tributes

Dr H. G.: Dr Carl Winter, 60 years a priest (ord. 1.7. 1923). In: Musica Sacra 103, 1983, pp. 485-486. l J. A. [=Johannes Adam]: Priest and artist. On the death of the Freiburg organist Carl Winter. In: Badische Zeitung, Freiburg, 24 May 1988 / Theo Schrimpf - confessor of the Freiburg men's world (Letter to the editor. In: Badische Zeitung, Freiburg, 7 June 1988 / n.d.: Obituary. In: Konradsblatt, Karlsruhe, 19 June 1988 ( = abridged version of the obituary held at Winter's funeral by Auxiliary Bishop Wolfgang Kirchgässner). / Hans Musch: ... implevit eum Dominus spiritu sapientiae ... On the death of Carl Winter (1898-1988). In: Musica Sacra 108, 1988, pp. 327-328. Christoph Schmider: Carl Winter: 1998-1988/chs. - In: Freiburg Biographies. - 1st ed. - Freiburg im Breisgau, 2002 - pp.298-299. Christoph Schmider: Winter, Karl bzw. Carl Joseph: rk., priest, cathedral organist, musicologist. - In: Baden-Würtembergische Biographien. - 2. 1999. - S. 487-489.

Selected bibliography of Winter's writings

Ruggiero Giovannelli (c. 1560-1625). Successor to Palestrina at St Peter's in Rome. A stylistic-critical study on the history of the Roman school at the turn of the 16th century. Ntünchen 1935 (= Schriftenreihe des Musikwissenschaftlichen Seminars der Universität München, Vol. 1). / The organ of the Freiburg Minster. Built by Orgelfabrik Welte & Söhne, Freiburg i. Br. Freiburg, Herder, no date. [1937]. / Anton Bruckner's mission for our time. In: CVO. Zeitschrift für Kirchenmusik 69, 1949, pp. 138-142 / Canticum Sancti Marci. Strawinsky's (sic!) new sacred choral work. In: Musica Sacra 77, 1957, pp. 8-17 / The organ works of the Freiburg Minster. Freiburg, Christophorus, 1965 / The organ works in the Minster of Our Lady Freiburg im Breisgau. In: Musica Sacra 86, 1966, pp. 40-46 / Music - Cult - Culture. Lecture on the occasion of the 34th General Assembly of the ACV in Salzburg. In: Musica Sacra 95, 1975, pp. 225-240 (compiled by Christoph Schmider).