A symphony of letters

Published 5:00 am Friday, September 20, 2002

If Juris Zommers hadn’t had has his radio tuned to KING-FM eight years ago, his life would be less cluttered today.

His office wouldn’t be piled high with the original manuscripts and recordings he has inherited – the life’s work of composer Margaret Buechner.

Although the two never met face-to-face, their abiding friendship began when Zommers responded to the radio broadcast of a love duet from her ballet “Elizabeth” played on the classical station.

“The emotional impact was intense,” Zommers said. “I loved the piece so much, I stayed in the office for two hours, listening to it over and over. I wrote to the publisher. They wrote back, saying, ‘the composer would like to hear these comments from you directly.’”

Zommers, who records every KING-FM broadcast he listens to, sent the tapes containing announcers’ remarks on her work to the composer, eliciting a note of thanks from Buechner.

So began the pair’s five-year correspondence, during which Zommers routinely requested that Buechner’s music be played on the station, and sent the recorded comments to her.

Over the years, the two formed a friendship. Buechner even composed music in honor of Zommers’ grand-daughter Katriana Zommers’ first birthday.

“We finally became ‘Dear Juris’ and ‘Dear Margaret,’” Zommers said, “but it took a long time, because she was very German.”

Born in 1922, Buechner immigrated from Germany to the United States in 1951.

She had studied composition and composed chamber music before the war; after she came to America, her teacher, Otto Luening, encouraged Buechner to write symphonic music.

During the 1950s, her compositions emphasized ballet music scored for large orchestra. Her later compositions were dramatic symphonic and choral works, often with historical or patriotic themes.

“I’d call it ‘American grand style,’” Zommers said. “She loves a huge orchestra, as huge as Mahler’s works demand.

“And she especially loves brass,” added Zommers, himself a trumpet player.

However, “The American Civil War Symphonic Trilogy,” one of Zommers’ favorite works, features simple arrangements of the popular music of the era.

Although Buechner’s work was documented with precision by one-time husband Werner Buechner, Zommers says he is still left with questions about her life.

Buechner was disinclined to dwell on her German youth, Zommers says. Of the difficulty of being a woman composer, she wrote a single veiled comment: “It is difficult to fight against the norm.”

In 1959 she stopped composing, a hiatus that would last 30 years, during which she led high school choruses and gave private lessons.

She did not return to writing music until 1989, when she was 68. Zommers says he has often wondered about the long silence.

The composer’s life contains other mysteries, as well. In the early 1970s, Buechner and her husband divorced.

Afterward, Werner Buechner styled himself her “manager” and moved into the den of their home, in order to preserve what the pair viewed as proprieties.

He remained Buechner’s companion, quitting his electrical engineering job in 1989 to promote her. When the composer died in 1998 at the age of 76, he continued that work.

He planned to turn the home they shared in Michigan into the Margaret Buechner Memorial Fund Museum, but died in a house fire there – which, remarkably, spared her manuscripts.

The pair share a grave-site and marker.

The epitaph reads:

“Here rests in Peace the philanthropic German Composer Margaret Buechner, Unforgettable for the Innovation and Perfection of Her innumerable beloved Dramatic Symphonic Music Works. Joined by her Manager, Werner Buechner.”

Last May, Zommers was notified by the executor of the estate that he was to inherit Margaret Buechner’s music – and Werner Buechner’s cause.

Since the boxes began to arrive a few months ago, Zommers has acquired 4,000 more CDs, original studio tapes and papers. He has also inherited her music-publishing company, Nord-Disc.

“The copyrights are mine and the original handwritten manuscripts are mine,” Zommers said. “I also have studio tapes recorded in the Beatles’ studio, Abbey Road.”

He has also inherited the responsibility of keeping Buechner’s music alive, Zommers believes.

Like Werner Buechner, he will mail recordings to radio stations. He will also carry out Werner Buechner’s plan to preserve a time capsule with her recordings, together with photos of Katriana, who will open the capsule in 30 years.

“I mainly ‘report in’ to Werner,” Zommers said. “When the business has closed, and it’s very late at night, I sit at my desk and say, ‘I will not fail you.’”

* * * * *

For information about Margaret Buechner’s music, visit www.nord-disc.com or call 842-2525.