Oskar Gottlieb Blarr

* 6 May 1934 in Sandlack (East Prussia); studied church music in Hanover and composition in Cologne and Düsseldorf with Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Milko Kelemen and Krzysztof Penderecki; cantor at the Neanderkirche in Düsseldorf from 1961 to 1999; lecturer in instrumental analysis at the Robert Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf; wrote numerous organ works, passions and symphonies; a pioneer in bringing oriental and Jewish musical elements into sacred music. In January 1945 he fled to Lower Saxony and received organ lessons in Stade on the historic organ of St. Wilhadi; his studies in Hanover from 1952 included percussion alongside church music, and composition studies followed from 1962 to 1964 with Bernd Alois Zimmermann and from 1967 for two years each with Penderecki, Kelemen and Günther Becker, with whom he took his diploma. At Easter 1961 he took up his post at the Neanderkirche and founded the Chor der Neanderkirche there; in 1965 he was jointly responsible for the building of its Rieger organ. From 1968 he mounted three Messiaen festivals and one Strawinsky festival with Almut Rößler, and in 1972 he founded the concert cycle “3 mal neu”. In 1976 he received the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik for “Bartok auf der Orgel”, in 1980 he conducted the premiere of Günther Becker’s Easter oratorio “Magnum Mysterium”, and in 1983 he was made an honorary professor. In 1981/82 he spent nine months in Israel, in 1994 he received a Rome scholarship from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and in 2005 a Jerusalem scholarship from the city of Düsseldorf. His works, published mostly by Edition Gravis, include four oratorios, four symphonies and the opera “Jud Süß”. Seven albums connect him with Cybele, and they show him in three roles. He is represented as a composer on Rolf Hildebrand’s marimba album (1995) and on The Untempered Piano – New Music for Toy Piano (2003), as a conductor in Johannes Fritsch’s Early Chamber Music from the Feedback Studio Köln series (2011), and as a performer in Günther Becker’s Collected Works with Magnum Mysterium (2004). Two volumes of the Edition Künstler im Gespräch present him at greater length: Günther Becker and the Piano (2017) and Oskar Gottlieb Blarr and the Jesus-Passion (2018), a portrait in conversation and works with soloists, choir and orchestra. His organ works of the years 2007 to 2017 appeared in 2017 on the Rieger organ of his Neanderkirche, played by Martin Schmeding.