Max Butting

There, he received instruction in composition from Friedrich Klose, conducting from Felix Mottl and Paul Prill, as well as singing from Karl Erler.

In January 1933, Butting was even named a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts, however it became clear soon after Adolf Hitler took power that he was not wanted by the National Socialists.

To ensure the survival of the business and thus be able to support himself, the composer finally found himself obliged to join the Nazi Party in 1940.

After the Second World War, Butting gave up his business activities and lived as a freelance composer in East Berlin.

In 1950, he was a founding member of the DDR Academy of Arts, Berlin of which he was vice-president from 1956 until 1959, and a board member of the Verband Deutscher Komponisten und Tonsetzer (Association of German Composers, the VdK of the GDR) as of 1951, as well as the leader of the advisory council of the Anstalt zur Wahrung der Aufführungsrechte (AWA, Institute for the Protection of Performance Rights).

He gradually managed to develop a distinctive personal style, which is pre-eminently characterized by counterpoint and is equally close to both musical neoclassicism and expressionism.

A rather moderately productive composer before 1945 and almost completely silenced during the Nazi regime, Butting experienced a new creative impetus after the end of the war.

The fact that the largest number of his works by far were created in the GDR is explainable above all in that he now made it one of his responsibilities to also write "everyday music", which was supposed to fulfill the state demand for a popular, easy-to-understand art.