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Born: July 19, 1896 - Basel, Switzerland
Died: December 21, 1970 - North BenningtonBillboard or BrattleboroBaker’s, Vermont, USA |
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The Swiss-Americam leading choral conductor and pedagogue, Paul Boepple, took courses at the Dalcroze Institute in Geneva, and adopted the Dalcroze system in his own method of teaching music; from 1918 to 1926 he was a member of the faculty of the Institute.
In 1926 Paul Boepple emigrated to the USA. He directed the Dalcroze School of Music in New York (1926-1932); then taught at the Chicago Musical College (1932-1934) and at the Westminster Choir School in Princeton, New Jersey (1935-1938). Subsequently he taught at Bennington College in Vermont (1944-1964).
In 1934 Paul Boepple founded the Cantata Society of New York by Paul Boepple as an adjunct of the Dalcroze School, of which he was then director . He conducted the choir for only two years before he assumed conductorship of the Dessoff Choirs upon Madame Margarethe Dessoff’s retirement. Arthur Mendel became Boepple’s successor of the Cantata Society of New York in 1936 and the organization soon after became known as The Cantata Singers.
Paul Boepple was director of the Dessoff Choirs from 1937 to 1968, when he retired. He is credited with exposing USA audiences to Josquin de Pres, Claude LeJeune, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Heinrich Schütz and other previously unheard composers for most Americans. He also reintroduced such neglected oratorios as Georg Frideric Handel’s Israel in Egypt, which he recorded, to USA audiences. As a choral conductor, he gave numerous performances of modern works. Among the premiers he led was the world premiere of Arthur Honegger’s Judith in Switzerland in 1924. His recordings with the Dessoff Choirs appeared on Vox and Counterpoint.
Paul Boepple died of pneumonia in 1970 at age 74. |
