Jeanneret, Albert
Jeanneret, Albert
Jeanneret, Albert, Swiss violinist, educator, and composer; b. La Chaux-de-Fonds, Feb. 7, 1886; d. Montreux, April 25, 1973. He studied violin with Andreas Moser at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik and with Henri Marteau at the Geneva Cons., graduating with the Premier Prix de Virtuosité (1909). He then joined the staff of the Jaques-Dalcroze Inst. of Eurhythmics in Hellerau. He went to Paris in 1919, where he founded a school of rhythmic gymnastics and a children’s orch. In 1939 he returned to Switzerland and settled in Vevey, where he also led a children’s orch. About the same time, he became a follower of the Moral Rearmament Movement. On July 21, 1968, he purportedly received (and subsequently publ.) a telepathic message from his brother, the architect Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret), who had died three years before, urging him to continue his pursuits of functional art. In accordance with these ideas, which he shared with his brother, Jeanneret wrote some 25 “symphonies enfantines” for children’s orch., employing “bruits humanisés” produced by graduated bottles partially filled with water at different levels, metal pipes, wooden boxes, etc. He also composed a Suite pittoresque for three Violins and a number of choruses for Moral Rearmament meetings.
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire