Paul Huber

1918 (KIRCHBERG) – 2001 (ST. GALLEN)

Paul Huber was born in February 1918 in Kirchberg in the Toggenburg region of north-eastern Switzerland. His parents died when he was just ten, after which he was raised by a foster family. After going to the local schools, he attended the Collège in Saint-Maurice and high school in Appenzell and Stans. He embarked on studies at the Zurich Conservatory in 1940, obtaining teaching diplomas in piano, organ, school music and counterpoint. He was able to further his studies with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the late 1940s.

Huber had already begun working as an organist at the Church of St.Nikolaus in Wil (Canton St. Gallen) in 1943. He was appointed the town’s musicdirector in late 1949 and accordingly took charge of the church choir, the Concordia male voice choir and the local orchestra. Two years later, Huber was appointed a lecturer in choral singing and piano at the St. Gallen Cantonal High School – a position that he held until his retirement in 1983. In 1979, the University of Fribourg awarded him an honorary doctorate in theology in recognition of his many works of sacred music.

Huber was a highly prolific composer whose oeuvre encompasses over 400 works in all the usual genres. His deep religious faith is reflected in his assorted settings of the mass and in his psalms, cantatas, motets and hymns. Wind music was another focus of his, and he also loved folk music – a fact that comes especially to the fore in his Concerto for Dulcimer and String Orchestra.

In 1982, Huber was awarded the Cultural Prize of the City of St. Gallen for his oeuvre, and this was followed in 1998 by the Cultural Prize of the Canton of St. Gallen. Huber’s hometown of Kirchberg made him an honorary citizen.