page_title: Oskar Gottlieb Blarr
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Oskar Gottlieb Blarr / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: The Lutheran Ascension Church at Augusta Victoria Foundation, Jerusalem; German composer &amp; organist Oskar Gottlieb Blarr practices the piano Deutsch: Der Komponist und Kirchenmusiker Oskar Gottlieb Blarr beim Klavierspiel in der Himmelfahrtskirche in Jerusalem
context_page_description: Oskar Gottlieb Blarr is a German composer, organist, church musician and academic teacher.
context_section_description: Blarr was born in Sandlack near Bartenstein (East Prussia). The Gothic church with its Baroque organ fascinated him early on; he began to form a lifelong love for organs. Blarr and his family fled to West Germany in 1945. He wrote his first compositions age 12. He studied church music from 1952 at the Kirchenmusikschule in Hannover, percussion at the Musikhochschule Hannover, and composition with Heinrich Spitta. He continued his studies, conducting with Dean Dixon and Herbert von Karajan in Salzburg, composition with Bernd Alois Zimmermann in Cologne, Krzysztof Penderecki at the Folkwang-Hochschule in Essen, and Milko Kelemen and Günther Becker at the Robert Schumann Hochschule. He was the church musician of the Neanderkirche in Düsseldorf from 1961 to 1999. He also lectured there at both the Katechetisches Seminar and the Robert Schumann Hochschule from 1984.
  Blarr composed four oratorios about the life of Jesus, four symphonies, chamber music and works for organ. He also set many songs of the genre Neues Geistliches Lied to music, some of under the pseudonym Choral Brother Ogo. His organ works were recorded with organists Wolfgang Abendroth and Martin Schmeding. He was a member of the ecumenical Textautoren- und Komponistengruppe der Werkgemeinschaft Musik e.V. and the association Musik in der Ev. Jugend (now: Textautoren- und Komponistengruppe TAKT.
  Blarr visited Israel to experience where Jesus lived as a Jew. In 1983, the Israeli composer Josef Tal dedicated his organ work Salva Venia to Blarr, who premiered it the following year in Düsseldorf. In 2016 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn.
caption: Blarr at the piano in the Ascension Church [de] in Jerusalem in 2009
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