Clytus Gottwald

Clytus Gottwald (born 20 November 1925) is a German composer, conductor and musicologist, focused on chorale music. He is known for his arrangements for a vocal ensemble of up to 16 voices.

Gottwald was born in Bad Salzbrunn. He studied voice with Gerhard Hüsch and choral conducting with Kurt Thomas. He studied musicology in Tübingen and Frankfurt. In 1961 he completed his dissertation on the Renaissance composer Johannes Ghiselin in Frankfurt. As a musicologist, he edited numerous scholarly catalogues of music manuscripts.

As a choir director, he was initially an assistant of Marcel Couraud from 1954 to 1958. From 1958 to 1970 he was cantor at the Paulus-Kirche, Stuttgart, conducting the Paulus-Chor Stuttgart (). In 1960 he founded the Schola Cantorum Stuttgart, a vocal ensemble of 16 to 18 professional singers, with a repertoire focused on both classical vocal polyphony as contemporary music, performing more than 80 premieres and first performances of choral works. Among the composers who wrote music for the ensemble are Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough, Vinko Globokar, Gérard Grisey, Heinz Holliger, Mauricio Kagel, Helmut Lachenmann, György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki, Steve Reich, Dieter Schnebel, and Hans Zender. Gottwald directed the ensemble until the dissolution in 1990.

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