Musical roots:
Eberhard Bonitz, CMD and composer
Improvisieren, a main feature of the Baroque period, to freely fantasize about a fugue. The main form of an improvisation-based composition was the toccata, which has its roots in the technical testing of the possibilities of an organ - especially the timbres of an organ.
My musical origins, my dream world of composing, are laid out here, because my father, Eberhard Bonitz, was a master of organ improvisation and of the art of sound.
His compositional work as a church musician was of course laid out in church music, masses, moths, organ works, but also chamber music.
For the newly designed hymn book after the Second Vatican Council he was largely responsible - Boniface Publishing House in Paderborn or Herder Verlag in Freiburg. There he also has his own song settings or organ preludes in the organ book for praise, as it is correct. released.
With him I received my first piano lessons and the first instruction in the step theory - Tonsatz.
At the beginning of 2018, I was with my eldest sister in my birthplace, Ellwangen / Jagst on "my father's former piano and choir student" from the period 1948 to 1954. There were in the local press, Ipf and Jagst newspaper to the following article (excerpt):
In search of a lost manuscript
Eberhard Bonitz was from 1948 to 1954 church music director, organist and choirmaster at the basilica.
In search of clues in Ellwangen, the children of Eberhard Bonitz have gone. Bonitz was from 1948 to 1954 church music director, organist and choirmaster at the basilica.
The reason for the visit was a request from the Comboni missionaries from Ell-wangen. Father Uhl still vividly remembers his school days in Ellwan-gen and especially a song that Eberhard Bonitz had once performed with the students. And so Matthias Bonitz and his older sister went to Ellwangen in search of the manuscript. They have not found it, but many memories and the realization that even after more than 60 years, some remember their father ....
Regional cantor Thomas Petersen showed the Bonitz siblings then the old workplace of their father and led them to the organ of the basilica with a small concert. A final visit to the ar-chiv of the choir in search of the lost song impressed the siblings: a vaulted room with treasures until the 17th century, including traces of the work of Eberhard Bonitz, the Mass for 4 voices choir Missa in honorem Dulcissimi Cordis Beatae Mariae Virginis Opus 7, written in a very clean manuscript from the year 1949 in Ellwangen. I then digitized this score and put it online at the beginning of my activities at musicaneo.