Frankfurt Does the Foxtrot: Seiber, Hindemith, Schulhoff and Tansman
by Georg Predota , Interlude Foxtrot The composer, conductor and educator Bernhard Sekles (1872-1934) caused a minor scandal in 1928. Sekles was director of the Hoch Conservatory of Music in Frankfurt am Main, and he decided to put Jazz on the curriculum. The courses in the theory and practice of jazz would be taught by Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960), and concerts held in the “Volksbildungsheim.” Seiber started his musical career at the Budapest Academy of Music. When he entered a wind sextet for a competition and was not awarded a prize, Bartók resigned from the jury in protest. Mátyás Seiber In 1927 he joined a dance orchestra on a transatlantic liner, and visited both North and South America. A cellist by trade, he perfected his skills as a jazz musician in various jam sessions in New York and elsewhere. Seiber immigrated to England in 1935 and he collaborated with Adorno on a jazz research project in 1936. In a lecture on jazz to the “Music of Our Time Congress,” h...