Max Butting, German composer, 1888-1976

Next to Butting's studies at the Academy of Composition in Munich, he also learned composition by private instruction from Courvoisier. After being admitted into the left-wing "Novembergruppe", Butting worked as a musical journalist for the "Sozialistischen Monatsheften" (Socialist Monthly Magazine). His works became better known through performances at the music festivals of the Society for New Music. To ensure his survival through the father's ironmonger business that he had inherited, he found himself obliged to join the Nazi Party in 1940. After 1945 Butting lived as a freelance composer in East Berlin. He was one of the first composers to confront his art with the medium of radio.