Jürg Baur

Jürg Baur (11 November 1918 – 31 January 2010) was a German composer of classical music.

Baur was born in Düsseldorf, where he achieved early recognition as a composer at the age of 18, when his First String Quartet was premiered at the Düsseldorf Hindenburg Secondary School by the then-famous Prisca Quartet. He studied from 1937 to 1948 (interrupted by army service from 1939–45, including several months as a Russian prisoner of war) at the Hochschule für Musik Köln: composition with Philipp Jarnach, piano with Karl Hermann Pillney, and organ and sacred music with Michael Schneider (Goslich 1982, 19 & 42; Levi 2001; Wallerang 2010). Even before completing his conservatory studies, he was appointed lecturer in music theory at the Düsseldorf Conservatory in 1946 (Levi 2001). He did postgraduate studies in musicology with Karl Gustav Fellerer and Willi Kahl from 1948 to 1951 at the University of Cologne (Goslich 1982, 19 & 42). In 1952 he was appointed choirmaster and organist at the St Paulus-Kirche in Düsseldorf, a post he left in 1960 when he was awarded a scholarship from the German Academy to study for six months at the Villa Massimo in Rome. He twice returned to Rome for extended visits, in 1968 and 1980 (Levi 2001).The vivid impression made by the Italian city is reflected in the Italian-titled works he composed there, including the Concerto romano for oboe and orchestra (Goslich 1982, 19 & 42).

Baur was one of the last composers of the old school. After the war, he remained faithful to his teacher Jarnach’s conservative stance, and never became an extreme avant-gardist (Wallerang 2010). Widespread recognition as a composer came comparatively late. Béla Bartók was his strongest stylistic influence at first, but in the 1950s he began to use twelve-tone technique. Anton Webern’s music became his model in works such as the Third String Quartet (1952), the Quintetto sereno for wind quintet (1958)—which also uses aleatory techniques—the Sonata for two pianos (1957), and the Ballata romana (1960) (Levi 2001). Later, he developed a marked propensity for quotations from earlier music. Particularly striking examples include Heinrich Isaac's "Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen" in the Concerto da camera, a theme from Bach’s Musical Offering in the Ricercari for organ, as well as in the Kontrapunkte 77 for three woodwinds, and Schumann themes in Sentimento del tempo and, especially, in Musik mit Robert Schumann (Goslich 1982, 19 & 42). Other composers whose works Baur has quoted include Dvořák, Strauss, Gesualdo, Mozart and Schubert (Levi 2001).

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