Günter Kochan (2 October 1930 – 22 February 2009) was a German composer. He studied with Boris Blacher and was a master student for composition with Hanns Eisler. From 1967 until his retirement in 1991, he worked as professor for musical composition at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler". He taught master classes in composition at the Academy of Music and the Academy of Arts, Berlin. He was also secretary of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts from 1972 to 1974 and vice-president of the from 1977 to 1982. Kochan is one of eleven laureates to have been awarded the National Prize of the GDR four times.Dietrich Herfurth: Der Nationalpreis der DDR. Berlin 2006, . In addition, he received composition prizes in the US and Eastern Europe. He became internationally known in particular for his Symphonies as well as the cantata Die Asche von Birkenau (1965) and his Music for Orchestra No. 2 (1987). His versatile oeuvre included orchestral works, chamber music, choral works, mass songs and film music and is situated between socialist realism and avant-garde.
Life Origin and studies Kochan was born in 1930 into a family of white-collar workers in Luckau, Lower Lusatia. He received his first piano lessons at the age of seven from the local piano teacher Elfriede Sommer. Due to his musical talent, he attended the in Leipzig from September 1944.Dietrich Brennecke: Günter Kochan. In Dietrich Brennecke, Hannelore Gerlach, Mathias Hansen (ed.): Musicians in our time. Members of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts of the GDR. Leipzig 1979, . His fellow students included his later fellow musicians Saschko Gawriloff, Eberhard Grünenthal, Siegfried Kurz and Siegfried Stöckigt. After the closure of the Musisches Gymnasium in 1945, he moved to the Oberschule Luckau in his hometown.
In 1946, his piano teacher arranged for him to take the entrance examination to the Berlin University of the Arts via the composer and music teacher Siegfried Borris. After passing the examination, he waived the Abitur and began studying music in the main subjects composition with (student of Paul Hindemith) and Hermann Wunsch (student of Franz Schreker) and piano with Maria Petersen. The most important compositional influence on him to date was his counterpoint teacher Boris Blacher.Dietrich Brennecke: Günter Kochan. In Dietrich Brennecke, Hannelore Gerlach, Mathias Hansen (ed.): Musiker in unserer Zeit. Mitglieder der Sektion Musik der Akademie der Künste der DDR. Leipzig 1979, .
Already during his studies he built up networks with left-wing cultural workers who later supported him.Heiner Timmermann (ed.): Die DDR - Analysen eines aufgegebenen Staates. Berlin 2001, . From 1948 to 1951 he worked as a freelancer in the editorial department Unser Lied - unser Leben of the Volksmusik department of the Berliner Rundfunk, headed by Jean Kurt Forest.Other collaborators were , Joachim Werzlau and Helmut Koch. He also directed a Free German Youth choir. During this time, his political views also developed. The composer Andre Asriel, who worked with him in radio, introduced him to Hanns Eisler in 1949. As a student, he set Bertolt Brecht's poem to music.Daniel Zur Weihen: Anleitung und Kontrolle - Arbeitsbedingungen für junge Komponisten in der DDR der 50er Jahre und deren Folgen. In Michael Berg, Albrecht von Massow, Nina Noeske (ed.): Between Power and Freedom. New Music in the GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Weimar 2004, , , on . After receiving his diploma in 1950, he moved to East Berlin and, as Eisler's second student, began in composition at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, which he completed in 1953. About Eisler, he later remarked: "He, unlike others, did not want to impose his conception of music on us, but to encourage us in our own development." From 1952 until his death he was married to the pianist Inge Kochan, née Schulze, with whom he had two children.Herrmann A. L. Degener, Walter Habel (eds.): the German Who's Who 2000/2001. 39th edition. Schmidt-Römhild, Lübeck 2000, , .
Professional beginnings At the instigation of Rector Georg Knepler, he became a lecturer in composition and musical composition at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in 1950 (since 1964 Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler"). This made him one of the younger teachers at the conservatoire, which was founded in 1950, along with Andre Asriel, Ruth Zechlin, Werner Scholz and Dieter Zechlin.
Like other up-and-coming composers, he was put under considerable pressure by the cultural policy of the GDR in the course of the in 1951, to distance himself from the Western decadent art establishmentHeiner Timmermann (ed.): Die DDR - Analysen eines aufgegebenen Staates. Berlin 2001, . This circumstance delayed his own development as a composer.Daniel Zur Weihen: Anleitung und Kontrolle - Arbeitsbedingungen für junge Komponisten in der DDR der 50er Jahre und deren Folgen. In Michael Berg, Albrecht von Massow, Nina Noeske (ed.): Between Power and Freedom. New Music in the GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Weimar 2004, , , . He began his career as a composer with the Violin Concerto op. 1 (1952), which received extraordinary praise from musicologists such as Georg Knepler and Eberhard Rebling as well as the Soviet composer Anatoly Novikov.Daniel Zur Weihen: Anleitung und Kontrolle - Arbeitsbedingungen für junge Komponisten in der DDR der 50er Jahre und deren Folgen. In Michael Berg, Albrecht von Massow, Nina Noeske (ed.): Between Power and Freedom. New Music in the GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Weimar 2004, , , on . In 1952, together with the music editor Karl Laux Representative of the Society for German-Soviet Friendship at the Polish Music Festival in Warsaw.Karl Laux: Nachklang. Autobiography. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1977, . In 1953 he was part of an official friendship delegation of GDR artists to the Soviet Union.Musik und Gesellschaft 35 (1985), .Other delegates were: Franz Konwitschny, Amadeus Webersinke, Dieter Zechlin and Georg Knepler. In the same year, the convinced communist joined the Socialist Unity Party of Germany.Bernd-Rainer Barth (ed.): Wer war wer in der DDR? Berlin 2010. From 1955 to 1963 he was a candidate for the Central Council of the FDJ. During the 1950s he wrote quite a few youth and mass songs dedicated to, among other things, the World Festival of Youth and Students. His Signale der Jugend (1951) became an important part of the FDJ's song repertoire.Horst Kunze: Studien zur Geschichte der deutschen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Volumes 6-10. Kinderbuchverlag, Berlin 1975, .
After the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the lessons learned from the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he briefly thought of leaving the GDR for the West, but was then changed his mind by cultural officials Georg Knepler and Nathan Notowicz.Heiner Timmermann (ed.): Die DDR - Analysen eines aufgegebenen Staates. Berlin 2001, . He initially adapted himself to the adopted in 1959. In 1971, for example, he still saw the music of the composer Paul-Heinz Dittrich of the same age as the "class enemy".Nina Noeske: Musikalische Dekonstruktion. New Instrumental Music in the GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Cologne 2007, , . In 1961, he was proposed by the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the SED for admission to the Music Section of the German Academy of the Arts, but this was prevented by the composer Paul Dessau.Daniel zur Weihen: Komponieren in der DDR. Institutionen, Organisationen und die erste Komponistengeneration bis 1961. Böhlau, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 1999, , (also dissertation, University of Hamburg, 1999).Nothing is known about Dessau's motives; other rejected candidates were: Helmut Koch, Hans Pischner and Wilhelm Weismann; elected were Kurt Schwaen and Kurt Sanderling. In the same year Kochan undertook a study trip to Cuba and in 1962 became a member of the Friendship Committee GDR-Japan of the World Festival of Youth and Students.Music and Society, 22 (1972), . At the invitation of the Soviet Composers' Union, he travelled to Moscow in 1964 with the composer Ernst Hermann Meyer.Institute for the History of the Peoples of the USSR at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (ED.): Cultural Cooperation GDR, USSR. Staatsverlag der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, Berlin 1967, .The occasion was a concert in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, where only works by GDR composers were played. On his cultural-political ambitions Kochan later said:Peter Uehling: de/archiv/der-komponist-guenter-kochan-is-after-long-illness-deceased-career-in-accordance,10810590,10622414.html The composer Günter Kochan has died after a long illness. In the Berliner Zeitung, 24 February 2009. "Despite all the difficulties, I always went my way, not out of egotistical intentions to succeed, but to make my specific contribution as a composer, comrade and citizen."
In retrospect, he criticised his work as a film composer for DEFA in the 1950s and 1960s in an interview: "I had written film scores for DEFA - horrible. I still regret today that I let myself be talked into it. But they were well-paid offers. As a young composer, you want to try your hand in many areas."
Professor in Berlin From the mid-1960s onwards, he tried to mediate between the old and new generation of composers.Frank Schneider: "Westward schweift der Blick, ostwärts dribt das Schiff" - Die Neue Musik in der DDR im Kontext der internationalen Musikgeschichte. In Michael Berg, Albrecht von Massow, Nina Noeske (ed.): Between Power and Freedom. New Music in the GDR. Böhlau Verlag, Weimar 2004, , , on .Cf. Rainer Kunad, Fritz Geißler and Paul Dessau. In 1967, he was appointed professor at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music.Dietrich Brennecke: Günter Kochan. In Dietrich Brennecke, Hannelore Gerlach, Mathias Hansen (ed.): Musicians in Our Time. Members of the Music Section of the Academy of Arts of the GDR. Leipzig 1979, . From 1968, he led a master class for composition at the Deutsche Akademie der Künste.Musik und Gesellschaft, 33 (1983), . In 1972, he also took over a master class at the Berlin Musikhochschule. In 1973, he received a full professorship in Berlin through the support of Ernst Hermann Meyer, who considered him "the most gifted composer of the middle and younger generations."Christiane Sporn: Musik unter politischen Vorzeichen. Party Rule and Instrumental Music in the GDR since the Building of the Wall. Werk- und Kontextanalysen. Saarbrücken 2006, . He was also a frequent lecturer at the Gera Summer Courses for Contemporary Music, founded in 1974Hanns-Werner Heister: In a GDR Niche - 10 Years of Summer Courses for Contemporary Music in Gera. In Ulrich Dibelius (ED.): New Music in Divided Germany. Volume 4: Documents from the Eighties. Henschel, Berlin 1999, , p. 21. Among his best-known students today were the composers Udo Zimmermann, Lothar Voigtländer and Friedrich Schenker. As a composition teacher, he wanted, according to his own statements, "never to impose my conception of music, but to encourage developments".Bernd Klempnow: Notenbild als Ausdruck eines Weltbilds. In: Sächsische Zeitung, 24 February 2009, . Kochan worked as a lecturer from 1985 and became emeritus after the fall of communism in 1991.Mittler zwischen Sozialistischem Realismus und Avantgarde. Komponist Günter Kochan 78-jährig gestorben. In Leipziger Volkszeitung, 24 February 2009, .