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Postcards From The Edge . . . OF CONNECTICUT!
- Coming to us from the Scandinavian peninsula of Sister’s Bay, Wisconsin!
An interview with Eberhard Schoener, conducted on April 2, 2025 – conducted and translated by Norman Weichselbaum
Norman Weichselbaum: Yes, hello, Norman Weichselbaum is speaking. Greetings, Mr. Schöner.
Eberhard Schoener: Yes, greetings. I heard from my wife that you are from Vienna or something.
NW: Yes, exactly, from Austria, from Vienna. So it is not very far away. Exactly. Everything good with you?
ES: Everything is fine, yes.
NW: That’s great. Mr. Schöner, why I wanted to chat with you for a moment. I think I already said it. There is this Deep Purple Podcast in America. There are two friends of mine. They have already covered everything from Sarabande and Gemini Suite and Windows and all these projects. And one point that should be covered in one of the coming episodes is this story of the coronation mass in 1974, of which the video still exists. I have also seen it on YouTube. But there is hardly any background to it. Now I wanted to ask you in advance when and how did you come into contact with Jon Lord?
ES: Actually through my wife, who is a classical musician. She said there is an English rock musician who does so with classical music and that would be interesting for me. First i was not interested in that at all. But then I said to myself, well, if he comes to Munich, I’ll meet him. And I talked to my wife again. She said, yes, he is a member of the very famous band Deep Purple.
And then I met Jon between two concerts at the Circus Krone. This must have been 1972. They had these concerts and in between I met him. He was a very polite and very likeable young man.
NW: I read somewhere that the first time you two worked together was already, I think, 1972. I think you conducted a performance of the Gemini Suite. Is that right?
ES: No. That was the work that Jon Lord had written before. Yes, I know, but that is obviously a misinformation. But I have done so much at that time, i don´t know.
NW: The idea of making the coronation mass as a „rock meets classic“-project: I read you wanted to do that first with Procol Harum, already in 1972 when you worked with the. But this never saw the light of day.
ES: I don’t know anymore. I was just interested in pressing things up, to bring classical music into a new form. And on this occasion, I just did it with Jon Lord. We called it „make Mozart“. Jon was very good and very modest. He was a very likeable guy.
NW: This adaptation of the coronation mass was not recorded in front of an audience, but in a film studio near Munich.
ES: That’s right. And that was separate. Orchestra and band.
NW: Did it take place at the same time?
ES: I have to think about it. It’s ages ago. Yes, there was the filming with the orchestra and the filming with the band. These shots were combined then for the TV broadcasting on Bavarian TV.
NW: What was the musical idea behind that adaption of the coronation mass? If I look at it, I can´t see clearly where the band takes motifs from the crowning ceremony. Watching it i have the impression that newly written parts by Jon and the band have nothing to do with Mozart.
ES: I played my ideas to him. And he sat, if I remember correctly, on the keyboard. And then we improvised it more and more. Back then it was all very wild time. And it wasn’t as structured as it was later. We weren’t wild. So it all happened relatively quickly. I think within two or three days.
NW: That was, I think, just after the Windows concert.
ES: A few days later. That may be.
NW: Is it true that the musicians of Deep Purple – Coverdale, Hughes and Lord – lived in the house of german actor Gila von Weithaushausen at that time? About your mediation?
ES: Yes, that’s right. Yes, they stood at Gila´s place. It was a very big theater afterwards, because the house was desolate. But I think Jon was not responsible for that. He was very modest and very calm. A very introverted boy.
We also had troubles during the rehearsals for „Windows“ at the Herkules-Saal. When the rock musicians and their crew came tot he place, they found a door locked and rammed it. And the whole door, an old big four-meter-high door, collapsed. That was terrible. It had to be repaired and in the end i had to pay some thousand German marks for that.
I found this all very exciting. But rock music itself didn’t interest me that much. I was more interested in the time and the figures. I was interested in what kind of musicians were doing something like that at the time. Because I did a lot of avant-garde music and a lot of experimental things.
NW: Any more memories on Jon?
ES: He knew a lot. Very impressing. He was a church musician, right? But when i saw him first with Deep Purple, beating into the keys of his Hammond, i thought „Oh God! What is that? Why should i talk to that guy? But then we meet and it was amazing. A very calm and friendly man.
And he was just shooting his Hammond organ. And I thought, oh my God, what is that? Of course, I can’t even talk to him now. And then he was in the concert afterwards.
NW: Later you did „Sarabande“ with Jon. Did you stay in contact after that?
ES: We were in touch and also had projects in mind. We met in Munich and then again in Wiesbaden. This must have been two years before he passed away. The last time we had a call was four month before Jon died. And to be honest – i did not know that he was so sick. He said, let’s do something like that „Sarabande“ or „Windows“ again. But nothing happened. That’s a shame. There would have been a collaboration after many years.
NW: Do you have any memories of the other Purple musicians you met in the 70ies?
ES: This guitar player, Richmore, was a devil. He didn’t like Jon´s interest in classic. And he didn’t want John to do anything like that. Because he was just very unpleasant. To me, too. I didn’t care. I didn’t have anything against him. He didn’t want John to do such things outside of Purple.
And then i remember David Coverdale. He was very nice. He had a girlfriend that he married later. Julia, i think. And he was in Munich a lot. But I didn’t know anyone else. I knew Pete York. He played with us at the time. He’s still in Munich. You can talk to him. He’s very talkative.
NW: I would like to ask one last question about Windows. What I never understood was that the german actor Klaus Loebitsch was part of the show with some weird text phrases, that made no sense to me at all. How did that come across?
ES: They were rengas. Chain poems are better known as rengas. I found them very exciting. I also invented texts with rengas. The idea was to connect them. Klaus Loebitsch was there and recited the texts. Michael Krüger published them. A poet and writer. He is a literary man from Munich. He said the text is great, so we made them part of the performance.
NW: Mr. Schöner, thanks for sharing some memories. I wish you all the best and many, many more beautiful years. Thank you very much.
ES: I thank you. Goodbye.
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Jorg Planer’s Upload of the Mozard Kroenungsmesse
From Jorg’s video description:
This is a project Eberhard Schoener was asked to do as part of “Rock Meets Classic” series for German TV and it was planned to broadcast it around Christmas 1974. The band performance of this project was filmed on June 5 1974 in a TV studio in Munich Unterföhring (Germany), two days after the second “Windows” concert. I don’t know when orchestra and choir were recorded.
As in “Windows” David Coverdale’s part in it is rather small.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Mass_(Mozart)
- Jon Lord (keyb)
- Tony Ashton (keyb)
- David Coverdale (voc)
- Glenn Hughes (bg)
- Ray Fenwick (g)
- Pete York (dr)
- The Munich Chamber Opera Orchestra (Eberhard Schoener)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Chamber_Orchestra
- The Toelz Boys’ Choir
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%B6lzer_Knabenchor
- 00:00 Kyrie
- 08:27 Gloria
- 13:21 Ritornell I
- 15:21 Credo
- 23:33 Sanctus
- 25:42 Benedictus
- 31:00 Ritornell II
- 32:50 Agnus Dei
Example of a traditional performance of this piece:
Jorg’s tweets on the history of this performance:
Ovais Naqvi on the Moog IIIp used in this video:
By the time of the April US gigs, Lord’s set up featured not one, but two ARP Odysseys stacked one behind the other. The use of the ARP Odyssey is also evident in the “Windows” album opening section, the 18-minute “Continuo on B.A.C.H”, alongside the three-movement “Window” suite, commissioned by German broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, as part of the Prix Jeunesse International at the Herkulessaal in Munich, recorded live on 1 June 1974 for broadcast across 16 European countries, featuring the Orchestra of the Munich Chamber Opera conducted by Eberhard Schoener. Schoener features as a figure in the stories of a number of rock bands in the late-1960s and into the1970s, including those of Tangerine Dream, Procol Harem and the nascent version of The Police.
Born in Stuttgart, Eberhard Schoener studied first at the Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademiein in Detmold and in 1959, was awarded a scholarship to study at the prestigious Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, a centre for advanced musical studies whose alumni include Claudio Abbado, Carlo Maria Guilini, Guiseppe Sinopoli and Zubin Mehta. His classical credentials as a violinist and conductor were impeccable and he became First Violinist at the Bavarian State Opera, as well as Music supervisor at the Bavarian Opera. He was encouraged by grandmaster Sergiu Celibidache from his time in Siena to experiment musically and on his return to Germany, founded a youth symphony orchestra in 1962 and then in 1965, became a foundational figure at the new Munich Chamber Opera, serving as its conductor and artistic supervisor.
He developed a parallel fascination for electronic music, perhaps influenced by the work of Stockhausen and certainly by Carlos. He was tasked with setting up an experimental lab at the Bavarian Film Studio and decided to travel to Trumansburg in 1969 with 60,000 Deutsche Marks to acquire a Moog Modular System. Bob Moog himself met Schoener and was not able to sell a ready-built unit since he was busy with pre-orders and no doubt with the landmark Minimoog project.
In parallel, The Beatles began to experiment further with electronic sounds and a Moog modular IIIp was shipped to them, according to Moog’s own corporate records, on 15 January 1969. George Harrison in particular, took keen interested and used it on his “Electronic Sounds” solo album of May 1969. He ensured that the Moog was available for the upcoming “Abbey Road” sessions and it was installed by Mike Vickers of Manfred Mann, who in the same period lent his own Moog to Keith Emerson for his first forays with the Modular System. The IIIp features prominently on “Here Comes the Sun”, doubling the guitar line in the second verse and as a counter melody later in the song. The instrument also features on the McCartney composition, “Mr Maxwell’s Hammer”. It appears that with the Beatles heading towards dissolution, John Lennon founded the instrument too complicated for his liking and requested that the IIIp be sent back to Moog. Having receipt of only this complete unit, Moog’s sales records confirm that Bob Moog sold that very Beatles Moog IIIp (Moog Serial Number 1095) to Eberhard Schoener. The unit now sits at the Deutsche Museum in Munich, having been gifted to the institution by Schoener in May 2019.
Schoener became an early architect of the bridge between classical music and rock through his “Rock Meets Classical” vision (including conducting the Munich Chamber Opera Orchestra and choir with Procol Harem on their German tour of October 1972) and in parallel, made a 1971 classical electronic album, “Destruction of Harmony – The Living Sound of the Synthesizer based on Bach & Vivaldi”. Later Schoener albums were the innovative and experimental “Bali-Agúng” (1976), created after an extensive Asian trip in 1970, work that began a fascination with native Javanese Gamelan percussion music and the two-part “Music for Meditation” album, recorded in 1973 and released in 1976 is now regarded as a pioneering work in the world music and meditative music space. Unlike Lord’s arduous musical experiences with the “Concerto…” concert Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, the Germans were not the musical snobs in the vein of traditional British orchestras and Lord found an authoritative and accomplished public ally in Eberhard Schoener.
As Schoener recalled in 2025, “[I met Jon] through my wife, who is a classical musician. She said there is an English rock musician who works with classical music and that would be interesting for me. At first, I was not interested in that at all. But then I said to myself, ‘well, if he comes to Munich, I’ll meet him’. And I talked to my wife again. She said, ‘Yes, he is a member of a very famous band – Deep Purple’. Then I met Jon between two concerts at the Circus Krone. But when I saw him first with Deep Purple, beating into the keys of his Hammond, I thought ‘Oh God! What is that? Why should I talk to that guy?’ But then we met and it was amazing. He knew a lot and was very impressive. He had been a church musician. He was very calm and friendly – a very polite and very likeable young man”.
Deep Purple played at the Circus Krone-Bau in Munich on 5 December 1970 and this is likely the date Schoener was introduced to Lord. Lord clearly earmarked Schoener for future collaboration (these classical forays by Lord being to Blackmore’s continuing distaste) and then requested him to conduct the “Gemini Suite” live concert, also in Munich, on 4 January 1972. Schoener subsequently broke his arm in a skiing accident over the Christmas period and the concert was cancelled.
Lord’s collaboration with Schoener finally materialised with “Windows” and he recounted in an interview with broadcaster Eli Lapid in 2010, “I’d been asked to do it by Eberhard Schoener, who had been asked by this German television company. They wanted a piece of music for a gala concert; they wanted to mix rock musicians and an orchestra and they had heard of my experiments in that area, so they asked me and Eberhard to produce something and it had to be done so quickly and it’s very strange music, some of it is a little weird. It was intended to be visual as much as anything else and I never knew that it was going to be recorded and released. I was told that afterwards. Twenty-six million people watched it, live, so it was kind of a very, very high pressure project but, ultimately an incredibly successful evening, I mean, the reviews in the German press the next day were astonishing”.
Two days after the televised “Windows” concert and while still in Munich, Lord and the band featuring David Coverdale, Glenn Hughes, Ray Fenwick, Pete York and Tony Ashton were asked by Schoener to participate in another experiment: a modern reinterpretation of the Krönungsmesse (Coronation Mass) in C Major, composed in 1779 by Mozart. It was originally written in six parts and footage shows the Munich Chamber Opera Orchestra performing the piece within the same structure with The Toelz Boys’ Choir, but interpolated with various light rock sections and improvisional classical (as well as jazz) piano, organ and ARP Odyssey passages played by Lord. Lord is also seen tentatively trying out the Beatles/Schoener Moog IIIp in one scene in the televised film. Footage shows various scenes of somewhat dated post-produced visual montages and even footage of the choirboys travelling on a local train and playing soccer. It is a somewhat dated experiment today and overall, a period Lord later considered exciting, but perhaps relatively inaccessible to his core audience, hence his more mainstream efforts with the “Sarabande” album with Schoener the following year.
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Reviews
Translated by Norman Weichselbaum
From „Musik Express“ (1974)
This is mainly about WINDOWS, but the ending is interesting:
The band stayed in Munich for a few days after the concert to record another television production with Eberhard Schoener, which is to be broadcast at Christmas.
In the television studio in Munich-Unterföhring, the hustle and bustle is in full swing and after a few hours of waiting, Eberhard Schoener clears himself between stage directions and conducting for an answer as to what is actually being played in these bizarre backdrops between crystal chandeliers, Mozart pictures, antique furniture, porcelain vases, a mock-up bar, the video cameras and spotlights.
“It should be a 45-minute film, based on Mozart’s Coronation Mass, showing a portrait of Jon Lord as a contemporary musician, then going back to the rock band and back to Jon, the main character, to make it clear how close he actually is to the matter and at the same time create a beautiful visual model.”
Pop Magazine (1974), page 3
Roll Over Classic
2 days after the successful performance at Circus Krone, we meet in a television studio in Munich Unterföhring. Between colored spotlights, antique furniture and crystal chandeliers, a team of 2 dozen people waves at state-of-the-art video cameras. Mozart’s Coronation Mass booms out of the loudspeakers while Jon Lord is busy with his synthesizer. Ray Fenwick, Pete York and Tony Ashton pass the time with a jam session and the Deep Purple people Glenn Hughes and David Coverdale, the latter plagued by toothache, hang out listlessly in the studio. Everyone is waiting for their turn. There will be enough time to learn something about his collaboration with Jon Lord from author – composer – director and conductor Eberhard Schoener.
“We exchanged our ideas by mail”
How long have the two known each other? “A few years ago,” says Eberhard, “I met Jon at a Deep Purple concert in Munich. We didn’t see each other again until last year when I got the offer to conduct the orchestra in the performance of Jon Lord’s “Gemini Suite”. The success was great and we still regret today that the concert could not be recorded on television. Now I have been commissioned to repeat the performance for the Prix jeunesse international 74. We were offered to have the concert recorded live. For this festive occasion, Jon and I wrote the collaborative composition “Windows”. For months we exchanged our ideas by mail. A month ago I went to Jon in Reading near London to finalize the work.”
Eberhard continues talking about „Windows“…
Now Jon Lord joins us, he is exhausted, pale and has deep circles under his eyes (…) How do Jon Lord and Eberhard Schröder assess this combination of classical music and rock? “We don’t want to create an immortal work,” explains Eberhard, and Jon adds: “The most important thing is that we enjoy what we do. All participating musicians have the opportunity to play new, different music than they usually do. The whole thing is not supposed to be a synthesis of rock and classical music. It is simply the interplay of two orchestras. People always try to see something specific, something new from it. Some want to see it as rock accompanied by classical music and others think it is classical music peppered with rock. But no one thinks that both are true. The English critics did not understand this either. In contrast to the German audience, which is very open-minded and has noticed the immense work behind it, the English press has not even stated that this is an independent event and that it therefore deserves the same attention as a normal concert.”
Eberhard Schoener “I’m making a film about Jon Lord”
During our conversation, the hustle and bustle in the studio has increased. A technician comes to Eberhard Schoener to remind him of his work. The camera crew needs new stage directions. When asked about his new project, Eberhard Schoener explains: “We are shooting a 45-minute television film with Jon Lord in the leading role. I want to show how close he is as a contemporary musician to the great classical composers. We create a pictorial model here. The film is to be broadcast at Christmas.” The scene is illuminated and the band can now really get started.
Extra Thanks To:
- Norman Weichselbaum
- Jorg Planer
- Ovais Naqvi
Deep Dive Podcast Network:
Check out our website to find other like-minded shows taking deep dives into individual songs, bands, and albums.
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For More Information:
- https://imslp.org/wiki/Mass_in_C_major,_K.317_(Mozart,_Wolfgang_Amadeus)
- Thank you to Norman Weischlebaum for his interview and translations of German articles.
- Thanks to the archive of Jorg Planer.
- Thank you to Ovais Naqvi for his research on the Moog IIIp and associated text.
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