VOLKART-SCHLAGER, Kathe

Käthe Volkart-Schlager was born in Vienna in 1897. She studied at the Stuttgart University of Music with Max von Pauer and Wilhelm Kempff. She completed her studies in 1917 and gave concerts and lectures to teachers. As a musician, she traveled to Sweden, Turkey and Finland.

In addition to chamber and piano music, the focus of Käthe Volkart-Schlager's compositional work was on the creation of art songs. The Hermann Hesse settings Wie sind die Tage schwer and Vor dem Schlafengehen on poems from the volume Musik des Einsamen from 1914 belong to her early phase as a song composer. These songs were performed in 2011 in a concert by the Lied class of the Stuttgart University of Music in cooperation with the International Hugo Wolf Academy and recorded with other songs by the composer by SWR. Volkart-Schlager's music, a large part of it for piano four hands, was published by the Süddeutscher Musikverlag (now Bärenreiter). These publications were considered daring and dangerous, especially by the then publishing director Willy Müller, as the Volkart-Schlager family openly spoke out against National Socialism.

Käthe Volkart-Schlager wrote instrument instruction literature for children, such as the Bunte Bilderbuch für junge Klavierspieler (1941). From 1947 to 1969 she worked as a lecturer for piano improvisation at the Stuttgart University of Music. In September 1967 she received the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class.