![]() The concerts did not go so far as to include any works by Othmar Schoeck. I think I can still see the logic in that.Ĭhrisemer figured that the core of Schoeck’s celebration would be two or three concerts a year at Amherst sponsored by the Othmar Schoeck Memorial Society for the Preservation of Unusual and Disgusting Music. ![]() When I was in college, I could have seen the logic in that myself. “It had no redeeming merit.” Chrisemer was also struck by the fact that Othmar Schoeck, whose picture was on the front of the album, could have been picked out of a large crowd as a Swiss composer of music that made you long for intermission: “He was in the standard pose of the composer leaning on his hand, but he had a rather fleshy face, and some of the flesh was hanging over the tops of his fingers.” Thus doubly inspired, Chrisemer decided that it would be appropriate to try to build Othmar Schoeck a cult following. ![]() Listening to the album back then, Chrisemer had a strong suspicion why the music of Othmar Schoeck, a Swiss composer who died in 1957, was not familiar to him. This was in 1970, when Chrisemer, then an Amherst College music major, was browsing in the record collection of the college radio station and came across an album of Schoeck’s music called “Lebendig Begraben,” or “Buried Alive.” Of such seemingly chance encounters, I reminded Chrisemer, is history made. It was Chrisemer, after all, who brought Schoeck’s name to the attention of the general public, at least the general public of a portion of western Massachusetts. Chrisemer is the man to talk to about Othmar Schoeck. ![]() I was in a Chinese restaurant in Philadelphia asking Wier Chrisemer about the origins of the Othmar Schoeck Memorial Society for the Preservation of Unusual and Disgusting Music. ![]()
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