Today is the birthday of Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957). Schoeck is best known for his many art songs. I’m not sure, but I believe I first learned of him not from any of his music, but from a mention in one of Hermann Hesse’s novels. Schoeck and Hesse were friends and sometime collaborators, who exchanged letters for decades.

Here’s a lovely pastoral intermezzo for strings from 1945, called “Summer Night.” The work takes its inspiration from a poem by Gottfried Keller. During a bright summer night, young peasants reap grain for a widow who has no one else to help her. The work proceeds cheerfully through the dawn, when the secret helpers slip away, to begin their own day’s labors.

Hard to believe Schoeck was just recovering from a heart attack when he wrote this, but it was probably therapeutic in more ways than one. The choice of subject matter, a recollection of simpler times, and its romantic treatment, might be interpreted as a reaction against the hardships and horrors of World War II.