As is widely known, the Swiss Reformer Huldrych Zwingli banned organ-playing in the Zurich churches in 1524, and followed this one year later by a ban on singing in church. Hymns were reintroduced in 1598 (albeit one-part hymns with no accompaniment), but the ban on the organ remained in force until the early 19^th century. In the first decades after its reintroduction, little new church music of substance was written in Zurich or the surrounding area, despite the fact that the German composers Theodor Kirchner and Hermann Goetz worked as organist in nearby Winterthur. The most popular genre among the natives remained the male-voice chorus as established by Hans Georg Nägeli, set to texts that were often of a patriotic nature. Zurich church music blossomed, however, in the first half of the 20^th century. Several major composers worked for a while as church musicians – such as Paul Müller-Zürich – while even those whose career was outside the church contributed to the quickly-growing repertoire of Zurich Protestant church music. Several gifted organists were also working in Zurich at this time, and many new works were inspired or commissioned by them.

This CD offers a representative selection of choral and organ music by composers living in Zurich in our century. It is notable that there are stylistic similarities to be found among them, for many Swiss-German composers of the time tended to a Neoclassicism after the manner of Hindemith. Two exceptions are also to be found on this CD, however, namely the late-Romantics Othmar Scheock and Josef Scheel (the latter is also an exception in geographical terms, for he spent most of his working life in St Gall, not Zurich). The archives of all these composers lie today in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich (Zurich Central Library).

Hans Schaeuble was born in 1906 in Arosa, the son of the wealthy owner of a chemist’s shop and his German wife. From 1927 to 1931 he attended the Leipzig Conservatory, his teachers being Hermann Grabner for composition and Adolf Martienssen for piano. In 1931 he moved to Berlin, where his first successes as a composer, achieved both on the radio and in the concert hall, were underlined by a contract with Bote and Bock. It was they who in 1936 published the Five Choruses a Cappella that are recorded here. In 1939, Schaeuble moved back to his native Switzerland. In the summer of 1941, however, when the immediate danger of a German invasion of his homeland receded, he returned to Berlin, remaining there until autumn 1942. This was one of the reasons why Schaeuble later suffered repeated reproaches for having been supposedly too well-disposed towards the Third Reich. His love of Germany and things German often finds expression in his diaries of the time, but they also show that he had no sympathy for National Socialism.

Schaeuble’s compositional successes of the 1930s were not repeated after the Second World War. He composed less and less, and at the end of his life he spent his time making repeated revisions of his earlier works. After his death in 1988, a foundation was set up according to the terms of his will, its function being to support young musicians and musicologists who play his music or write about it. The foundation awards two scholarships each year to young musicians, and supports the publication of CDs such as the present one.

Meinrad Schütter was born in Coire in 1910. He took lessons with Antoine-Elisée Cherbuliez (who later became professor of musicology in Zurich), though he remained essentially self-taught. His open-mindedness and his constant willingness to learn is proven by the fact that as late as the 1950s, he decided to study with Paul Hindemith. Schütter’s own music was discovered and furthered by Hermann Scherchen and Alexander Schaichet in the late 1930s (both conducted orchestral works by him). This early success did not lead to greater fame, partly because the Second World War intervened. Schütter’s fate was shared by several other talented Swiss composers of his generation who found little public sympathy after the War. Only now is Schütter’s music receiving the recognition that it deserves, his works being played regularly at home and abroad. His invention Adorazione dei Pastori (1991) and the partita Mit meinem Gott geh’ ich zur Ruh (1992) were first performed by Albert Bolliger in Bombay in 1993.

Josef Gallus Scheel was born in 1879 in Treherz, near Leutkirch in Germany. He studied at the Church Music School in Regensburg, then in Rome. From 1907 to 1913 he was director of the cathedral choir in Constance, then served as capellmeister of the cathedral in St Gall for over thirty years – at the same time, incidentally, that Othmar Schoeck was director of that city’s symphony concerts. Scheel’s Fantasy Sonata op. 37, of which the first movement, Praeludium, is recorded here, was published by Böhm in Augsburg and was probably composed in the early 1920s. Josef Scheel died in St Gall on 31 January 1946.

The oeuvre of Paul Müller-Zürich includes almost all genres, though it was primarily his church music that made his name known internationally. He was born in Zurich in 1898, studied with Philipp Jarnach and Volkmar Andreae at the Zurich Conservatory, and then with Jean Batalla in Paris. Müller-Zürich was appointed to the Zurich Conservatory in 1927 as a lecturer in music theory, and remained there until 1968. As teacher, conductor, composer and organiser he was one of the most significant personalities in the Swiss musical life of our century. He was awarded the Music Prize of the city of Zurich in 1953, and in 1958 received the composition prize of the Swiss Musicians’ Association, whose president he became in 1960.

In his early works, the late-Romanticism of his teachers can still be detected, while the influence of Neoclassicism became increasingly evident throughout the 1920s and ‘30s. Although he retained an open mind regarding the stylistic and technical progress that took place during his lifetime, he maintained a critical distance as a composer. In an interview in the early 1970s, he said: ‘I believe in tonality, in the triad as the foundation of harmony, and in the seven diatonic and twelve chromatic steps of the scale’. Paul Müller-Zürich died in Lucerne on 21 July 1993.

Adolf Brunner was born in Zurich in 1901. His first composition teacher was his uncle, Hans Lavater. In 1921, Lavater moved to Berlin, where he took private lessons with Philipp Jarnach, then moved to the Conservatory (the ‘Staatliche Hochschule für Musik’), where he studied with Franz Schreker, Walther Gmeindl and Siegfried Ochs. Brunner’s fellow students included Jerzy Fitelberg, Ernst Pepping and Berthold Goldschmidt. In 1925, Brunner returned to Zurich. During the Second World War, Brunner was a leading member of the ‘Gotthard Bund’, an anti-fascist association. As a composer and administrator, he was particularly concerned with the renewal of the Protestant church music tradition. In 1960, the Zwingli-Verlag of Zurich published his book entitled Wesen, Funktion und Ort der Musik im Gottesdienst (On the nature, function and place of music in the liturgy), and in 1962 he was joint founder of the Institute for Church Music in Zurich. Brunner died on 15 February 1992. The Eight Aphorisms to texts by Angelus Silesius recorded here were composed in 1947.