Composer, arranger and pedagogue, born in Gresten (Lower Austria), died in Vienna. He has raised several generations of young musicians around the world with his numerous volumes of instrumental lessons. Teachers and students are equally impressed by his Latin American-influenced, easily playable and appealing pieces. He was inspired not only by the music of Central and South America but also by his experiences in the field of jazz and classical modernism. For the mostly young interpreters, he gently opens his eyes to the versatility of the music, which they can realize on their instruments.
In addition to learning the two instruments double bass and piano, he found in early childhood for improvisation and composition. From 1960, the music talent played in jazz bands double bass and worked as an arranger. His most popular composition is probably the four-movement work “Cuatro piezas para dos”, which was composed for the difficult and mostly bypassed instrumentation piano and guitar. With the mixture of Spanish folklore and popular music he enthused not only students, but also professional musicians who have included the work in their repertoire. The demand for other duos for this lineup came to Schwertberger in “Zwei Fragen und eine Antwort” and “Happy Hour Sandwich”. The latter was originally composed for violoncello and piano and is a wild blend of flamenco, jazz and pop with four melodious parts: Tartare Sauce, Sentimental Romance, Potato Rag and Salsa Brasileira.
After studying history and German studies at the University of Vienna, Schwertberger completed his studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Following his training as a music educator, he taught guitar and music at an Austrian school in Guatemala between 1977 and 1985 and has therefore mainly arranged Latin-American tangos, sambas and the like for teaching. But also with its own music tradition, the home-bound Europeans took apart. In doing so, he always strived to cope with the different degrees of difficulty that a teacher must take into account when choosing literature in the music school system. For example, in the “European Folk Melodies” he bothered to write a homo and a polyphonic version for a flute trio. In other cases, such as „One and One”, he made existing classroom material more interesting and musically appealing by adding a second guitar voice to compositions by Carcassi, Tárrega, Carulli, and Schumann. “Taktlosigkeiten - well-known piano pieces in a new guise” consists of a score text from intermediate texts by the classical musician, who humorously presents some curiosities. Did you know, for example, that Haydn was influenced by the Austrian anthem while composing the German national anthem?
In addition to chamber music Schwertberger has written several musicals for children. One of them, “Kalimus”, is a “framework musical” that is not a strictly defined template, but allows individual performances of any kind. In the story, the magician Kalimus is supposed to help the teens organize a charity concert for children suffering from war or hunger. But they have to solve a puzzle first. The rapping of Goethe's “Zauberlehrling” finally brings the decisive help. In the two versions you can either play it with your own ensemble or use the playbacks created by the composer. In the musical “Der Bär is(s)t los” nature and animals are in the foreground. With arrangements of “Go down Moses” or “Ode an die Freude” topics such as genetic engineering, environmental destruction and nutrition are playfully framed by a love story between Burli Bear and goat McBaby.
The eight-year activity in Guatemala has left many traces in Schwertberger's musical oeuvre and at the same time has shaped his self-image as a composer. The teacher and textbook author did not self-actualize himself in his plays, but composed with the target audience in mind for a hopeful future. In his works, he discusses topics of general social significance and encourages children and adolescents to deal with current global problems. Always in the balancing act between the interest to satisfy a broad and young audience with the most demanding music possible, he has used bitonal harmonies, free-tonal to dodecaphone twists, jazzy and folkloristic behind seemingly funny and light-sounding works. The young and optimistic educator was never too old to keep up with future generations in terms of virtual media, common Anglicisms and humor and last year wrote a piece for flute and piano with the winking title “Sixpack”.
In addition to his actual activity of composing, after retiring he discovered a completely different passion: walking, or rather committing, Austrian villages and towns. On his Youtube Channel you can find many small films with photos, which he recorded in his up to ten hours long walks in barefoot shoes. His motivation for the strenuous journeys, which he denied alone, he described in a radio report: “I want to root myself with my home, with the earth, with the cosmos. When I die, there is nothing left of me. But a few flankers, who are still buzzing around the area where I left for a while. “In fact, there are many flankers all over the world who have distributed Schwertberger in his music among the youngsters. May you wander around for a long time. (Margarete Buch)