Hans-Joachim Koellreutter

Hans -Joachim Koellreutter ( born September 2, 1915 in Freiburg im Breisgau, † 13 September 2005 in São Paulo, Brazil ) was a German -Brazilian composer, flutist, conductor and music educator.

Biography

After studying music he emigrated from the Nazis in 1937 to Brazil, where he started in Salvador to teach music. He founded a new movement in Brazil, the Música Viva, which occurred against the nationalism in folklore. Other members of the movement were Cláudio Santoro, Guerra Peixe, Edino warriors and Eunice Catunda. He fought fellow composers, Mozart Camargo Guarnieri about, who accused him of robbing the composers of their roots. He led Brazil in the twelve-tone music, which Arnold Schoenberg had developed and came into contact with the music of Brazil's indigenous peoples, which also influenced his work.

In the 1940s Koellreutter was one of the most influential music professors in Brazil. Among his students, among others, Antônio Carlos Jobim, who got Koellreutter in his youth lessons in piano and harmony, but also João Mendes and many more. He also founded music schools in São Paulo and Salvador.

Under Koellreutters influence some other European composers came to Brazil. This includes about Ernst Widmer, who came in the 1950s from Switzerland to Bahia to participate there in Koellreutters newly established free music seminars. Henry Jolles was also called by Koellreutter to Brazil, he worked from 1952 at the Escola Livre de Música in São Paulo.

In 1964 Koellreutter moved first to Rio de Janeiro until he worked in the late 1960s and 1970s for the Goethe Institute in India and Japan, where he studied classical music of both countries. In 1975 he returned to Brazil and continued his activity continued as a teacher and composer.