Fritz Brun: a Swiss Symphonist

Extract

Ferruccio Busoni, who saw out the First World War from the neutral haven of Switzerland, maintained that the best Swiss symphony was Rossini's William Tell overture. Not that the country was completely lacking in resident composers of symphonic music during the Classical and Romantic eras. There was, for example, Gaspard Fritz (d.1783), whom Dr Bumey met in Geneva. There was Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee (d.1868), whose works include an amiable ‘Military’ Symphony. But the dominant force in the 19th century was the composer, publisher and pedagogue Hans Georg Nägeli, whose primary achievement was to develop a choral tradition. Instrumental music in Switzerland depended largely on imports. Joachim Raff, who came from the Lake Zurich region, did not begin to find his feet as a symphonist until he settled in Germany. The vocal bias persisted into the 20th century: thus Othmar Schoeck could say that writing a violin sonata was something of a ‘crime’ for him.