Prof Frederick Husler

Professor Frederick Husler was born in Utah, USA in 1889 and died in 1969 in Switzerland. His father was Swiss by birth, his mother German, and on her husband's death when Frederick was eight she brought him and his brothers and sisters back to Munich to be educated. His family was particularly distinguished in the field of medicine and all were gifted amateur musicians. His first instrument was the cello. At the age of 16 he won an important scholarship with which to study sculpture. 

Although gifted in many fields (philosophy, anthropology, archaeology, art, natural science and sport), in his late teens (18) he turned to singing for which he had little natural aptitude. (“According to Lilli Dressler, a once famous Wagnerian soprano, his voice was rather less melodious than a crow’s ‘though perhaps you could manage bass parts in Wagner operas which should anyway be declaimed rather than sung.’” ) (From the private, unpublished papers of Yvonne Rodd-Marling). 

It was his determination to overcome this lack of talent which caused him to dedicate his life to singing. Since there was nowhere he could learn about singing, in the way he wanted to learn it, he taught himself.  He was convinced that great natural singers are not a freak of nature and that therefore every normal human being should be able to sing beautifully. “How he developed his own voice into a dramatic tenor of great beauty, range and power is another story. Suffice it to say that he tried everything possible and impossible out on himself until, as his wife said, it is a wonder he survived to tell the tale. He was offered contracts from leading German opera houses (amongst them Siegfried Wagner at Bayreuth, Fritz Bush in Dresden) When he was twenty-five (1914), Bruno Walter, already at the height of his conducting career, wanted to make a world tour with him singing the title role in Verdi's ‘Othello’”. (From the private, unpublished papers of Yvonne Rodd-Marling). 

By the time he was twenty-seven he was well known as a teacher in Munich with more pupils than he could take.

“He was just married when America joined the Allies in the First World War. The young couple were living in Munich and most of his income came from the United States. Because of his American passport he found himself confined to the City limits and practically penniless. At a quarter to five every morning he would slip unobtrusively into a laboratory adjoining a dentist’s consulting room and make dental plates (which he was never taught to do.) These were made meticulously by hand and so perfect that years later letters continued to arrive offering him almost anything he would like to ask if he would ‘give up this foolish idea of singing and return to the making of dental plates.’ This work occupied his mornings. Afternoons he gave singing lessons and worked on his own voice while the nights were spent in tremendous discussion with the intellectual elite of Munich: Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Wedekind, Werfel, Rilke, and so on.

It was just after the war that he took up another hobby: entomology, specializing in the biology and geo-biology of the coleoptera. When he and his wife moved to Berlin and then to Steinhude am Meer the rare plants (grown by his wife) contended with rare insects hatching out under observation which were later presented to the Natural History Museum in Munich.” (from the unpublished private papers of Yvonne Rodd-Marling).

In 1922 he and his wife Marion moved to Berlin, where he became Head of vocal studies at the famous Stern'sche Conservatoire. In addition he had a large private practice.

The Ensemble of the Kroll Opera (Berlin) under Otto Klemperer was placed as a whole in his care. Those who heard its performances considered its standard of excellence unrivalled. 

He was the expert consulted by eminent conductors (Furtwängler, von Karajan and Sargent among them) for advice on their singers' problems.

From 1936 to 1939 Professor Husler was Head of the department for vocal studies and of the Master Class for Singers at the Konservatorium der Reichshaupstadt Berlin (founded by Julius Stern). He was co-founder and Head of the voice department of the Nordwestdeutsche Musikademie in Detmold (together with the professors Wilhelm Maler, Conrad Hansen, Munch Holland and Max Strubwhich) from 1946 to 1961. At least sixty singers from Husler's class emerged as soloists, many achieving international recognition. 

In 1961 he and Yvonne Rodd-Marling opened their school in Switzerland under the patronage of Otto Klemperer, Herbert von Karajan, Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir William Glock.

​

____________________________________________________