Siegfried Reda (27 July 1916 – 13 December 1968) was a German composer and
pipe organ
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a Musical keyboard, keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single tone and pitch, the pipes are provide ...
player.
Life
Born in
Bochum
Bochum (, ; ; ; ) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia. With a population of 372,348 (April 2023), it is the sixth-largest city (after Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Essen and Duisburg) in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous German federa ...
, Reda studied with
Ernst Pepping
Ernst Pepping (12 September 1901 – 1 February 1981) was a German composer of classical music and academic teacher. He is regarded as an important composer of Protestant sacred music in the 20th century.
Pepping taught at the and the . His mus ...
and
Hugo Distler
August Hugo Distler (24 June 1908 – 1 November 1942)Slonimsky & Kuhn, ''Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'', v. 2, p. 889 was a German organist, choral conductor, teacher and composer.
Life and career
Born in Nuremberg, Distler att ...
at the
Spandauer Kirchenmusikschule
The (Spandau school of church music) was a music academy in Spandau, Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1929, it was housed in the in Spandau and was closed in 1998. The schools choir appeared and recorded as the Spandauer Kantorei. It was located in ...
and was an organist in Bochum,
Gelsenkirchen
Gelsenkirchen (, , ; ) is the List of cities in Germany by population, 25th-most populous city of Germany and the 11th-most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher, Emscher River (a tribu ...
and Berlin. In 1946 he became director of the Institute for Protestant Church Music at the
Folkwang University of the Arts
The Folkwang University of the Arts is a university for music, theater, dance, design, and academic studies, located in four German cities of North Rhine-Westphalia. Since 1927, its traditional main location has been in the former Werden Abbey in ...
in
Essen
Essen () is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, as well as ...
, and also served as a professor of organ and composition. In 1953 he became church music director at the
St.-Petri-Kirche in Mülheim an der Ruhr. His students included ,
Magdalene Schauss-Flake Magdalene Schauss-Flake (25 July 1921 – 24 September 2008) was a German composer and organist who gave recitals throughout the United States and Europe.
Biography
Schauss-Flake was born in Essen, where she studied church music at the Folkwang Sc ...
,
Gisbert Schneider and .
Reda died in
Mülheim an der Ruhr
Mülheim, officially Mülheim an der Ruhr (, ; ; ) and also described as ''"City on the River"'', is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany. It is located in the Ruhr Area between Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen and Ratingen. It is home ...
. at the age of 52.
In 1996, a
square
In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...
in Mülheim an der Ruhr was named after him.
Selected works
Reda is regarded as one of the most active forces in the renewal of Protestant
church music
Church music is a genre of Christian music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclesiastical liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn.
History
Early Christian musi ...
after the Second World War. Accordingly, he mainly wrote music with
liturgical
Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembra ...
references, including three ''Choral concertos'' for organ (1946-1952), ''Psalmbuch'' for solos and choir ''
a cappella
Music performed a cappella ( , , ; ), less commonly spelled acapella in English, is music performed by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Rena ...
'' (1948-1949), ''Die Weihnachtsgeschichte'' for
tenor
A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...
solo, speaker and 5-part choir (1949), ''Ecce homo'' for 4 voices choir (1950), ''Easter story'' for solos and choir ''a cappella'' (1951), ''Marienbilder'' for organ (1955), ''Orgelsonate'' (1960), and ''Requiem vel vivorum consolatio'' for solos, choir and orchestra (1963).
Bibliography
* Siegfried Bergemann: ''Chormusik für das Jahr der Kirche''. In ', 83. Jg. 2016, booklet 1,
*
: ''In der Tradition zum Aufbruch. Siegfried Reda (1916–1968)''. In Ulrich von Brück (editor): ''Credo musicale. Komponistenporträts aus der Arbeit des Dresdner Kreuzchores''.
Bärenreiter
Bärenreiter (Bärenreiter-Verlag) is a German classical music publishing house based in Kassel. The firm was founded by Karl Vötterle (1903–1975) in Augsburg in 1923, and moved to Kassel in 1927, where it still has its headquarters; it ...
, Kassel 1969,
* Rudolf Faber, Philip Hartmann (editor): ''Handbuch Orgelmusik''.
''Handbuch Orgelmusik''
/ref> Bärenreiter/Metzler, Stuttgart und Weimar, 2002. .
* Elisabeth Reda: ''Die Kirchenmusik als Ort der Erinnerung. Siegfried Reda zum 100. Geburtstag''. In: ''Forum Kirchenmusik'', 67. Jg. 2016, booklet 6, (the author is a granddaughter of the composer)
References
External links
''Ein Mensch ist in seinem Leben wie Gras''
on Musicanet
''Die Verkündigung der Geburt unseres Heilandes nach Worten MArtin Luthers "Kinderlied auf die Weihnacht Schristi" für Singstimme und Instrumente''
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reda, Siegfried
1916 births
1968 deaths
People from Bochum
20th-century German classical composers
German classical organists
Kirchenmusikdirektor