Georg Karg was a church musician in the Inkofen parish for four decades.
Now he's retired - and in retrospect he has a lot to tell.
Inkofen / Bergen
- Prof. Dr.
Georg Karg, who has given music to the festive church services in the parish of St. Martin Inkofen for over four decades.
Auxiliary Bishop Bernhard Haßlberger, Stephan Zippe, Father Ignatius and parish council chairman Lydia Lochinger and church curator Konrad Halbinger thanked him for his many years of successful work in church music.
For a long time you organized the services as organist and choirmaster in the parish church of Bergen and were also organist and choirmaster in the pilgrimage church of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary in Feldkirchen. You are now retiring. Will they miss making music?
Not making music.
Because right from the start, making music was more of a private than a public thing for me.
My private music making, for example on the piano, runs like a red thread through my life.
My public music-making took place mainly in churches, most recently in Feldkirchen and in Bergen.
With my retirement, this music-making is officially quiet.
Of course I miss it a bit.
But young talents finally have the chance to move up.
Let us come to the beginning of her career as a church musician. Where did you get led to music?
Definitely in my family on a farm in Westallgäu.
The driving force was my mother, who was very musical and sang very well.
For this reason, in my childhood there was a singing lesson in the parlor on our farm almost every Sunday evening.
My older sister played the zither and I played the guitar.
Everyone else sat around the table and sang along.
To be honest, as a boy I wasn't always enthusiastic about these prescribed singing lessons.
In the long run they had a positive influence on me.
Didn't you sometimes have the desire to turn music into your profession?
Sometimes it does.
There were also experiences of achievement, but compared to my great role models, they looked modest.
In addition, outside of music, I also had interests and abilities in which, in my opinion, I could advance with the principle of “learning and practicing” than in music.
The following quickly became clear.
I wanted to study a subject of my interest, in which I can earn my living and cultivate music as my hobby in my own way and without excessive demands.
Why did you prefer to do research and teaching at the Chair of Marketing and Consumer Research at the TU Munich Weihenstephan and only play music in your free time?
Through my many years of graduate studies in economics and statistics in the USA, it was clearly clear that my core competence lies in the field of science, such as economic theories (especially consumption) and statistical-econometric methods.
In contrast, music has withdrawn into a niche, albeit a well-protected one.
Was making music a good balance to your research?
In any case.
Research today is not just patient puzzling in an ivory tower.
Research is carried out through research projects for which one applies in a competition with others (national and international) for so-called third-party funding.
There are winners and losers in this competition.
In my work I have experienced both, with pleasure and frustration at work.
In my musical niche I was able to draw new strength.
The preludes and fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier by JS Bach were particularly helpful here.
The joy of success became even greater and the pain of failure less with this music.
Could the music open further doors for you and expand your circle of acquaintances?
I experienced this aspect above all in the USA, thanks to the piano and organ. USA is the promised land of the pianos. You can see that in public spaces, for example at universities. At Iowa State University, for example, pianos and grand pianos abounded in the larger rooms of the dormitories and the university. In the large lounge of our student residence in Ames there was a grand piano that anyone who wanted could sit at, especially in the late evening around 9 p.m. when most of the students were back from work at the university and let the day fade away, with piano music in the background. I liked to sit at the piano and had my fans. In this way I got further "assignments", also on the organ, for example at a Christmas concert in a small town in the Midwest (where I stood in for a sick organist) and at weddings,on which I played the organ and accompanied the mostly family soloists (vocal and instrumental). But that was not the end, but the beginning of friendships that continue to this day.
Is music still an integral part of your life?
Naturally.
I sit at the piano for a while every day.
The pieces I play and practice come from my memory and from the radio.
Igor Levit recently presented classical variations on the piano at Bayern4, especially the Goldberg variations by JS Bach.
That was an occasion for me to look at this work again and, at least in part, to play it again according to my possibilities.
Did you also experience fun and joy with music?
(laughs)
I had a lot of fun with my singers during the intensive rehearsals. We worked on the pronunciation together so that the music went well with the text, and we were especially happy after the successful performances in church. I had particular fun when I was allowed to accompany a solo heavyweight, for example an excellent talent in singing, on the violin, trumpet, saxophone or flute. I enjoyed church services on major holidays like Thanksgiving, when “Great God we praise you” was sung by the entire congregation. I have accompanied this song many times and in many places. Practically everywhere it is sung correctly in tone and safely in rhythm. The folk song therefore flows independently and independently. In such cases the organ no longer has to play meticulously,what should be sung. In such cases the organ can play around with the singing. That has often succeeded and has always given me the greatest pleasure.
What training did you do to become a part-time organist and choir director?
During my high school days I was an organ student with the organist of the parish church of St. Lorenz in Kempten for about five years. Basically I learned how to play polyphonic sentences on manuals and on the pedal. Unfortunately, my teacher at the time had few ambitions as a soloist. So I only got to know the great organ works by JS Bach (preludes, toccatas and fugues) very selectively. As a part-time choir director, I had no official training. In principle, I repeated what I experienced as a singer in the choir of the seminar and high school in the 1950s. The choirs mentioned were conducted by academically trained musicians, at that time often in a rigorous and strict manner. In terms of content, my choir work contained much of the thorough work in the school choirsin which I sang. Of course, I gave myself the usual outbursts of anger from our conductors at the time.
How did you get into choral music and who taught you to conduct and read scores?
I got into choral music at an early age.
I don't mean the seminar choir and the school choir, in which I sang from the start.
I mean my own choir, which is around 6/7.
Class was founded around.
We were a really singing class.
Now one could say: There were already two mixed choirs, one in the boys' seminar, one at the grammar school.
That could have been enough.
In our case it wasn't enough.
In the official choirs we lacked songs that we would have liked to sang, namely as a male choir.
Wolfram Riedel
