Margarete Dessoff

Margaret " Gretchen " Dessoff ( born June 11, 1874 in Vienna, † November 27, 1944 in Locarno, Switzerland ) was a German choral conductor and voice teacher.

Life and work

Emma Margaret Dessoff was born in Vienna in 1874 and came six years to Frankfurt am Main, as her father, the conductor Otto Dessoff, was appointed Kapellmeister of the opera orchestra. She studied singing with Gustav Gunz and Marie Schroeder - Hanfstaengl ( 1892-97 ) at Dr. Hoch 's Conservatory, where she even taught a choir class later. In addition to the Dessoff'schen female choir she directed several years the Frankfurt Bachgemeinde and founded in 1918 one of the first Madrigal associations in Germany, which also undertook concert tours.

At the peak of inflation Margarete Dessoff accepted an invitation to New York City, where she served as Chorus Director at the Institute of Musical Art - later worked Juilliard School of Music, a music academy modeled after the European academies. She founded in the 1920s, several choirs, women's choir Adesdi, the mixed choir The New York A Cappella Singers and Vecchi Singers, with which they carried out the 1933 American premiere of the madrigal comedy L' Orazio Vecchi Amfiparnaso of. In addition to her love of early music led them with courage to take risks on the work of young and unknown composers. Your designed with artistic intelligence programs and concerts encouraged contemporary composers to create new works for the choir, including Hans Gál, Erwin Lendvai, Hugo Herrmann, Marion Bauer, Lazare Saminsky among others.

After retirement from active musical life of her has not been possible to return to the now dominated by the Nazis in Germany. She emigrated to Switzerland, where she died in Locarno in 1944. While they do not appear in the German historiography of modern choral music, held in New York City the Dessoff Choirs, dating back to its foundation, its name until today.