Olga Schwind

Olga Schwind (8 May 1887 – 12 May 1979) was a German musician. An instrumentalist and singer, she was a pioneer of the authentic instruments movement, which insisted that as far as practical music from earlier periods should be performed using instruments of the period when the music was written or, failing that, replicas.

Life Olga Schwind was born in Saarbrücken where her father worked as a jurist at the district court. However, the family came from nearby Tholey where her paternal grandfather Johann Theodor Schwind, a lawyer, had been posted from Berlin and worked as the court clerk. Theodor Franz Schwind, her father, had grown up in the family home which had been converted from the refractory of a former Benedictine monastery, and married Bertha Heise, the daughter of the local postmaster. Olga and her younger brother spent much of their early childhood with their grandparents, growing up in the magical ambience of the abbey church, the monastery gardens and monastic ruins that adjoined the family home.

Later she attended school in Saarbrücken and then in 1903 went on to take a "finishing year" with the Ursulines at a convent across the border, in Belgium, at which stage she was already involving herself with organising student musical presentations. She returned to Saarbrücken by 1905, learning to play the guitar using an instrument which she shared with her brother. She also taught herself to play the lute, reaching the point at which she became a teacher of the instrument at Saarbrücken's newly established music conservatory. During this time she also took several trips to Basel in order to seek out medieval texts and chants in the university archives. Her music was no longer in favour with the authorities, and there was a concern that her Dutch partner might face arrest in Germany. During the war years she lived on in Switzerland in relative poverty. Friends provided accommodation and also, sometimes, food. The concerts became infrequent.

A 1952 newspaper report on a concert appearance in the drafty confines of Schloss Elmau (near Garmisch) provides an engaging glimpse of Olga Schwind as "the master of Musica Antiqua with her unique collection of instruments, dating back as far as the ninth century, and her extensive repertoire of Medieval and Baroque songs in all the languages". There can be little doubt that by the time Olga Schwind died in the Casa Pineta on 12 May 1979, that unique collection of ancient instruments had become significantly larger.

Olga Schwind never married and she had no children. She had nephews and nieces because of her younger brother, but after they grew up the siblings grew apart. Her nephew gained the impression from his relatively straight-laced father that his aged aunt had followed an alternative somewhat "Bohemian" path, tainted by a certain "artistic craziness". Other items from her collection have found their way, apparently on a permanent basis, into the collection of the Basel Historical Museum.