1870–1926 · Switzerland · Romantic
Hermann Suter (1870–1926) was a Swiss composer, conductor and teacher. Born in Kaiserstuhl, he studied in Basel, Stuttgart, Zurich and Leipzig, and from 1902 he worked in Basel. A large part of his output is choral music, and the site offers his choral score Der gute Kamerad for performers.
Hermann Suter was born on 28 April 1870 in Kaiserstuhl, in Aargau. His father, also named Hermann Suter, was an organist and became the future composer's first teacher. The father worked as a senior schoolteacher, organist and choir conductor, and the family lived in Laufenburg, where the boy grew up.
The father supported his musically gifted son. In 1885 Hermann entered the humanist grammar school in Basel, where he took an interest in a wide range of subjects.
Suter graduated from the Basel Conservatory, where his teachers were Hans Huber and Friedrich Hegar. He then studied at the Stuttgart Conservatory with Immanuel Faisst and Karl Doppler.
He took up composition later, with Gustav Weber in Zurich and with Carl Reinecke and Joseph Maria Homeyer in Leipzig. At the Leipzig university of music he studied in 1890–1891. After finishing his training he sang at his father's concerts in Laufenburg.
From 1892 Suter lived in Zurich and stayed there until 1902, working as a choir conductor and a professor at the local conservatory.
He taught music, played the organ and led many choirs. They included male choirs in Winterthur (from 1897) and Schaffhausen, an oratorio choir in Uster and church choirs in Zurich. He also took over the Mixed Choir of Zurich, succeeding Friedrich Hegar.
In 1902 Suter was called to Basel as director of the General Music Society. He conducted the society's symphony concerts and also led the Basel Choral Society and the Basel Liedertafel.
In 1918–1921 he was the director of the Basel Conservatory. From 1916 until the end of his life Suter lived in Binningen.
Because of his health, Suter resigned from all his posts in 1925. He died in Basel on 22 June 1926.
In 1913 the University of Basel awarded him an honorary doctorate. Laufenburg, the town of his youth, made him an honorary citizen. Together with Friedrich Hegar and Hans Huber, he is regarded as an important representative of instrumental and choral music in German-speaking Switzerland at the turn of the twentieth century.
A large part of Suter's output is choral music, both with accompaniment and without. His pieces echo Brahms, Strauss and Mahler. In style he is closer to Brahms than to his teacher Hans Huber.
His best-known work is the oratorio Le Laudi di San Francesco d'Assisi, set to the Canticle of the Sun by Francis of Assisi. It was composed during the summer of 1923 at Plaun da Lej in the Engadine and first performed in Basel on 13 June 1924. Suter himself gave the premiere for the centenary of the Basel Choral Society. It was this oratorio that made his name internationally.
His other works include a symphony in D minor (1914), a violin concerto written for Adolf Busch (1921), three string quartets dated 1901, 1910 and 1921, a string sextet (1920) and numerous songs. In 1923 he wrote the music for Albert Oeri's festival play Wettstein und Riehen; from it comes the Wettstein March, still popular today. Suter also composed a new Swiss national anthem to words by Carl Albrecht Bernoulli, but it did not catch on.
For performers, the site has Suter's choral score Der gute Kamerad for mixed choir (SATB), at an intermediate level.