Clytus Gottwald was a German composer, conductor, and musicologist who focused on choral music.
10 Facts About Clytus Gottwald
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Clytus Gottwald was considered by music critics to be a key figure in contemporary choral music, and is known for his arrangements for vocal ensembles of up to 16 voices.
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Clytus Gottwald founded and conducted the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart for this music.
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Clytus Gottwald studied Protestant theology, sociology, and musicology in Tubingen and Frankfurt.
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In 1960 Clytus Gottwald founded the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, a vocal ensemble of 16 to 18 professional singers, with a repertoire focused on both classical vocal polyphony as well as contemporary music.
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Notably, Clytus Gottwald conducted the Schola Cantorum in a performance of Ligeti's Lux aeterna, which was later used in the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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Clytus Gottwald was editor for Neue Musik for the broadcaster Sudfunk Stuttgart from 1967 to 1988.
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Clytus Gottwald had the initial idea at a workshop of Pierre Boulez, "transcribing" Ravel's Soupir from his Trois poemes de Mallarme similarly to Ligeti's use of voices in Lux aeterna.
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Clytus Gottwald arranged works by Alban Berg, Hector Berlioz, Claude Debussy, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler, Giacomo Puccini, Maurice Ravel, Richard Wagner, Anton Webern, and Hugo Wolf, among others.
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Clytus Gottwald was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2014.