Gottfried Wolters

Gottfried Wolters (8 April 1910 – 25 June 1989) was a German choral conductor and composer. Life Wolters was born in Emmerich am Rhein. He began studying music at the University of Cologne, but did not complete his dissertation on Johann Baptist Wanhal as a symphonist. After the seizure of control by the National Socialists he worked as an editor at P. J. Tonger Verlag in Cologne and also as a freelance composer and choir director. As Gaumusikreferent of the German Labour Front (1935) was listed on the in the Soviet occupation zone. In the post-war years he founded the Norddeutscher Singkreis, a mixed choir, in Hamburg. With this choir he led Bach’s St John Passion and St Matthew Passion, Hugo Distler’s Choralpassion and Mörike’s Chorliederbuch, Günter Bialas’s Im Anfang and many more serious modern and Baroque works. His special love was the German and later the European folk song, which he sang together with his choir and the audience with his own instrumental movements at the monthly Open Singstunden in Hamburg. Worldly music from madrigal to vocal music by Paul Hindemith was another focus. In the early 1960s he founded the movement Europa Cantat with other European choral condu