Alfred Kuppelmayer

Alfred Kuppelmayer was born on 20 January 1918 in Augsburg (Germany). During his childhood and schooldays he learned to play the piano, violin and organ. According to his own words singing was his favourite subject in school. He finished school with the Abitur in 1936. Alfred Kuppelmayer then moved to Munich and studied at the State Academy of Music. He completed his studies in 1940 with a qualification to teach at the Gymnasium. Alfred Kuppelmayer was then drafted for military service. In 1945 he married the singer Felicitas and worked as a choir master in Augsburg. He also took private composition lessons with Otto Jochum, the brother of the conductor Eugen Jochum. In 1948 Alfred Kuppelmayer moved to Lindau where he worked as a music teacher at the local Gymnasium for the next 29 years. One of his most notable students is the composer Rudi Spring. In his first Lindau years he also acted as the choir master of the local Inselchor. In 1955 Alfred Kuppelmayer received the Valentin-Becker-Award for one of his choir compositions. Alfred Kuppelmayer died on 2 July 1977 as the result of a motorcycle accident.

As a composer Alfred Kuppelmayer wrote a total of 31 works with opus numbers. Most of his compositions are for choir, but his first compositions (from around 1945) are piano works and songs and later works include the Miniatures musicales for flute and viola op.29 and his opus summum the String trio op.31. A complete work list could be compiled through the help of composer Rudi Spring:

• songs for voice and piano: opera 1, 3 and 4 (composed in the late 1940s)
• works for piano solo: opera 2 and 5 (composed in the late 1940s)
• works for choir: opera 6 to 28, including two larger cantatas (op.7 and op.30) (composed between 1946 and 1962)
• Miniatures musicales for flute and viola op.29
• String trio op.31

In my possession are the autograph manuscripts of two compositions by Alfred Kuppelmayer. These compositions are the Miniatures musicales op.29 as well as the String trio op.31. 

1) Miniatures musicales op.29

The Miniatures musicales are scored for treble recorder (or flute) and viola and consist of three small movements. The work is dedicated to violinist Erich Seidl and was premiered in 1963 by Mechthild Hannappel (recorder) and Mathes Seidl (viola, the son of the dedicatee) in the context of a Jugend musiziert concert. The manuscript is not dated but it seems likely that the work was composed in temporal proximity to the world premiere.

The dedicatee Erich Seidl (1904-1966) was first concertmaster in Rostock under conductor and composer Heinz Schubert who dedicated several compositions to him. After World War II Erich Seidl moved to Lindau where he worked as kapellmeister and pedagogue. There he got in touch with Erich Kuppelmayer.

With this composition Alfred Kuppelmayer was obviously interested in a revival of the Gregorian modes. The second movement is perfect Dorian mode on d, the framing parts of the first movement is Dorian mode on c, the framing parts of the third movement is Mixolydian mode on c. 

2) String trio op.31

The Trio for violin, viola and cello op.31 consists of 5 movements and was composed in 1967. There exist several manuscripts of this composition: A full score from the time before the premiere (which is in my possession), parts with annotations by the performers of the premiere (which are in my possession) and a full score of a revised version, obviously done after the premiere. This latter manuscript exists only for the first two movements and is preserved by the composer Rudi Spring. Due to this variety of different versions the help of Rudi Spring was necessary who made a reasonable, final version of the String trio from all three sources. This final version also contains two possible endings of the last movement "Final-Rondo": a version from the original full score and one written down by Alfred Kuppelmayer in the parts. Both endings are available in the typeset score below.

The String trio was premiered on 8 November 1967 by Peter Brem (violin), Mathes Seidl (viola) and Annemarie Dengler (cello). The Brem-Trio performed the work several times within the next few years and finally won the first prize in the Chamber Music Competition in Colmar in 1970 with a performance (amongst others) of the Kuppelmayer trio. The composer Rudi Spring states this composition as the opus summum of Alfred Kuppelmayer.

The violist Mathe Seidl - who previously owned the autograph manuscripts in my possession - informed me that the technical annotations for a performance in the parts where mainly done by Ludwig Ackermann, violin teacher at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich and at that time teacher of Mathes Seidl and Peter Brem. Mathes Seidl states that Alfred Kuppelmayer adopted most of these annotations for his final version.