Alfred Švarc

Alfred Švarc or Schwarz, composer and lawyer, was born on April 24, 1907, in Križevci, Croatia, Austria-Hungary where he died on November 21, 1986.

Biography

While still a child he "discovered his musicality" and started to learn the piano at the age of seven. While attending high school in Zagreb, he went on with his piano studies in the class of Ernest Krauth in the Music Academy's Secondary School. He attained a degree at the Law Faculty at which he got a bachelor's in 1933 and acquired a doctorate. In parallel with his studies in the law, Švarc continued to be absorbed in music, and enrolled a class of conducting at the Music Academy's College. Alfred Švarc (then spelled Schwarz) is also recorded as having been a student of composition in the class of Blagoje Bersa at the Music Academy in Zagreb, as confirmed by Bersa's diary entry for October 14, 1929. The first presentation and reception of Alfred Švarc as a composer occurred at the 18th Public Performance of the State Music Academy in which compositions of graduates of the school of Blagoje Bersa were played. In the company of Miroslav Magdalenić and Emil Cipra, Švarc introduced himself with his First String Quartet, written in 1930. In a review of the young composers' evening, Pavao Markovac wrote that European models were to be seen in Švarc, while Božidar Širola observed: “A. Schwarz is endeavouring to become free and to create from himself, without models, or rather, according to Romantic and modern models.”