Biography of Leon Schidlowsky

E-mail: Leon@Schidlowsky.com

The composer and painter Leon Schidlowsky was born on 21 July 1931 in Santiago de Chile. Schidlowsky pursued his secondary studies at the Instituto Nacional de Chile in Santiago from 1940-47 and studied the piano with Roberto Duncker at the Conservatorio Nacional de Chile in Santiago from 1942-48. He later studied composition with Adolfo Allende and Fré Focke, as well as harmony, philosophy and psychology at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago from 1948-52. He completed his studies in Germany at the Musikhochschule Detmold from 1952-54. After his return to Chile he was a member of the avant-garde ensemble Tonus in Santiago and served as its director from 1958-61. He served as director of the music library at the Instituto de Extención Musical, Chilean University in 1961-62 and as secretary-general of the Asociación Nacional de Compositores from 1961-63. He also served as director-general of the Instituto de Extención Musical from 1962-66. In 1965, Schidlowsky was appointed Professor of Composition at the Conservatorio Nacional. He participated in the “Festival of the Three Worlds” in Mérida, Venezuela in 1968, with lectures and discussions with the composers Krzyztof Penderecki and Luigi Nono. In the same year he received a Guggenheim Fellowship in order to write an opera, which he completed in Germany. In 1969, he was appointed Professor for Composition and Music Theory at the Samuel Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In 1979 he was granted a Sabbatical Year, which he spent in Hamburg. Schidlowsky received several fellowships from the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), and stayed in Berlin for various periods (1980-81; 1992-93; 1999-2000), where he composed and painted. He participated in several Festivals of music in America and Europe and received numerous honours and prizes, such as the First Prize in the 60^th anniversary competition of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (1996, for Absalom), and the ACUM Prize (2000, for his entire oeuvre), which is given by the Israel Composers Association. He receives the Engel Prize for his original work and the investigation of Jewish music, given from the city of Tel Aviv in june 2007. Leon Schidlowsky has given various courses in Composition in several countries; and he has helped to form and influence a whole generation of composers in Israel. His works have been played in numerous countries, such as Germany, Argentina, Chile, USA, France, Holland, England, Israel, Italy, Venezuela, with different orchestras under conductors such as Aldo Ceccatto, Errico Fresis, C. Gottwald, Robin Griton, J. P. Izquierdo, E. Karkoschka, Herbert Kegel, L. Foss, Zubin Metah, Hermann Scherchen, Ingo Schulz and K. Vetter.

As an admirer of Arnold Schönberg´s music, Schidlowsky began his carrier as a composer in the tradition of the Second Viennese School. Later he began to use serial techniques, and to experiment with various tonal concepts (atonal, aleatory, graphic notation), but always on the understanding that music has a deeper significance which transcends absolute art, which can open up a path for a human being to find a way to himself (Schidlowsky: “Art itself has not only one meaning. It includes and encompasses all senses, questions and all answers. I think that art is a way to us.”).

Leon Schidlowsky has written dramatic and vivid works, like his orchestral pieces Caupolicán, Kristallnacht, Invocation, Llaqui, New York, Epitafio para Hermann Scherchen, In Eius Memoriam, Lux in Tenebris, Prelude to a Drama, Absalom, or his graphic music Missa Sine Nomine, (In Memoriam Victor Jara), Greise sind die Sterne geworden, and Deutschland ein Wintermärchen. In these works, as in other works of his, percussive elements in the vocal and instrumental parts play an important role. His post-avantgarde music (after 1983) uses traditional notation again, and is composed in an atonal style.

Many of his works make reference to his Jewish-Israeli identity and to the history of the Jewish people, as well as to his interest in and protest against the political and social situation in Chile and Latin America. The scores of his graphic music have been shown in various exhibitions linked to concerts, such as in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (1979), Kunsthaus Hamburg (1980), the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen (1982), and the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken (1996). Among his numerous works, three operas stand out: Die Menschen (1969, Opera in 4 Acts, after Walter Hasenclever), Der Dybbuk (1993, Opera in 3 Acts after Shlomo An-Ski), and Before Breakfast (1998, a Monodram after Eugene O'Neill).

Leon Schidlowsky lives in Tel Aviv. On the occasion of his 75^th Birthday he received homages in Tel Aviv and Berlin, where three CDs of his music were published. One of these recordings was made at a concert given in his honour in September 2006 (it is possible to order the CDs from ingo.schulz@emmaus.de).

On Schidlowsky have given their opinion:

- The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, who said about Caupolicán, the music set by Schidlowsky to a poem of Neruda`s from Canto General: „In my opinion, this is a work of extraordinary significance and great beauty”.

- The conductor Hermann Scherchen, in a letter after the premiere of Schidlowsky`s Llaqui by the Lugano Radio Symphony Orchestra: „Your work has character. It is passionate, hard and excitable. Really it belongs to the powerful expressionist world“.

- The music critic and musicologist H. H. Stuckenschmidt wrote in his memories “Born to hear” about the premiere of Schidlowsky`s New York in the Third Music Festival in Caracas, 1966: “The most convincing work was the piece New York by the Chilean Leon Schidlowsky, with eruptions à la Varèse, and whirring sounds undefined in their pitch, glissandos, and a powerful swelling sound on the timpani”.

Literature
Compositores de América/Composers of the Americas, editor the Pan American Union, Vol. 10, Washington 1965; M. E. Grebe, León Schidlowsky Gaete. Síntesis de su trayectoria creativa (1952-1968), in: Revista Musical Chilena 22, 1968, H. 104/105, 7-52; E. Karkoschka, Leon Schidlowsky's Dadayamasong, eine mus. Graphik und ihre Interpretation, in: Kgr.Ber. GfM München 1977, Tutzing 1980, 137-147; Y. W. Cohen, Neimej smiroth Israel Tel Aviv 1990, 236-243; Z. Lutzky, Leon Schidlowsky: Portrait of a Composer as a Rebel, in: Israel Music Institute News 3, 1991.

- D. Schidlowsky after I. Schulz -