Hermann Scherchen

Hermann Scherchen was born in Berlin in 1891 and received violin lessons as a child, later moving into professional work as a violist in café orchestras, the Blüthner Orchestra, and at times with the Berlin Philharmonic. He had no formal training as a conductor and advanced through independent score study, gaining recognition in 1912 when he prepared and led performances of Schönberg’s Pierrot lunaire. In 1914 he was appointed conductor of the Riga Symphony Orchestra, but the First World War halted his career and he spent several years interned in Russia, where he composed chamber works, learned the language, and studied socialist literature. After returning to Berlin in 1918 he founded the journal Melos and the New Music Society, placing himself at the center of debates on modern music. He later directed the Frankfurt Museum Concerts, served as music director in Königsberg, and from 1923 to 1950 built a long collaboration with the City Orchestra of Winterthur in Switzerland, where he introduced many new works to European audiences.

In 1937 Scherchen left Germany and moved to Switzerland. After the war he was appointed chief conductor of the Radio Orchestra Beromünster, where he worked until 1950. That year, after a guest performance in Czechoslovakia, he was accused of communist sympathies and forced to resign from his positions in Switzerland. In the years that followed he remained active as a conductor and publisher, directing premieres at the Darmstadt Summer Courses and leading the 1951 premiere of Paul Dessau’s Die Verurteilung des Lukullus at the Berlin Staatsoper. He also revived his publishing house Ars Viva in Zurich. In 1954 he established the Experimentalstudio in Gravesano, a private research center built next to his home with support from UNESCO and the architect Henrico Hoeschle. The facility included a recording studio, an anechoic chamber, and a technical workspace, equipped with echo chambers and custom loudspeaker systems designed by Scherchen. It became a meeting place for composers, scientists, and engineers, hosting international symposia and producing the journal Gravesaner Blätter, which published research on electroacoustics, acoustics, and musical aesthetics. Among those who worked with him were Iannis Xenakis, Luc Ferrari, François-Bernard Mâche, and researchers from Bell Telephone Laboratories, making Gravesano a central site for experiments in sound and technology during the 1950s and 1960s.

Scherchen published widely alongside his work as conductor and researcher. His Lehrbuch des Dirigierens of 1929 and Vom Wesen der Musik of 1946 were followed by Musik für Jedermann in 1950 and later collections of letters and memoirs. From 1955 to 1966 he edited the Gravesaner Blätter, a journal that reported on the work of the Gravesano studio and presented research by composers, acousticians, and engineers. As a conductor he introduced more than two hundred new works, including major premieres by Schönberg, Berg, Webern, Varèse, Nono, Hartmann, Henze, and Xenakis. His achievements were recognized with an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg in 1930, the Deutscher Kritikerpreis in 1957, and in 1961 the Silver Medal of the City of Paris and honorary membership in the International Society for Contemporary Music. His archive at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin preserves letters, scores, recordings, and experimental materials from Gravesano, a record of his central role in shaping the music and technology of the twentieth century.