Trivia

Brother of composer Herbert Jarczyk.

In 1931 he received the award of the Beethoven Prize from the city of Berlin, which was a great honour for the young man.

Michael Jary refused to write titles that had to fit in with the playing times of the jukeboxes.

In 1948 he set up his own publishing company, Michael Jary Productions, which in the fifties even had an office in New York.

The possibilities of multiple track recording caught his interest. Swing-arrangements and Jazz were part of his repertoire in spite of governmental diktats. Among other projects he composed a cyclus of musical zodiac interpretations. He became an expert in jazz and swing during the thirties.

His friendship with the songwriter Bruno Balz brought the outcast a job as an assistant to the film composers Franz Doelle and Leo Leux. His first cooperation for a film was the box-office hit "Amphitryon" (1935).

His dream of a great career as a so-called serious composer, however, came to an abrupt end on 8 February, 1933, the day of his concert. As a Polish Jew he was booed off the stage by members of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur. Paul Graener, the new director of the Stern'sches Konservatorium denigrated his concert as "the cultural bolshevistic musical stammering of a Polish Jew".

Symphonic music was his strength. But after he composed his first musical score for a movie,Die große und die kleine Welt, he quickly became a cult favourite among professional musicians.

Till the end of war he composed the music to many well-known productions.

At the age of 18 Michael Jary left the monastery of the Steyler missionaries near Neisse to set out on a path that would lead him into the realms of music. At first this meant the visit of the conservatory in Beuthen, choirmaster of a church and workers' choir, first pieces of chamber music, broadcast by Gleiwitz radio station, and finally appointments as second director of music at the municipal theatres of Neisse and Plauen.

He did demonstrate his talent once more to the music world with the song "Wir wollen niemals auseinadergehen" for the German preliminary rounds leading up to the 1960 European Song Contest. The festival jury relegated it to second place. But, to this very day, it has been one of the greatest successes in the history of German Pop Music.

Shortly before the end of the war he founded a band, the Radio-Dance-Orchestra Berlin (RBT).

One of his greatest evergreens was for Zarah Leander "Ich weiss, es wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen.".

As the director of the Szymanowski-Gedächtniskonzertes in Berlin he was invited by Ernest Ansermet to Geneva. However, the Nazi authorities denied him an exit visa.

The film composer Michael Jary was born as Max Jarczyk in Upper Silesia's Laurahütte near Katovice. The father was a foreman at the Königshütte ironworks, the mother a tailor.

In order to make a career in Germany he changed his name from Max Jarczyk into Michael Jary. The managed his breakthrough as a composer of pop songs in 1938 with the song "Roter Mohn.".

He wrote the musical "Nicole", which broke all records for the longest running show in the Eastern bloc.

He settled in his final domicile in Switzerland above the Lake of Lugano. He suffered there from three heart attacks in 1973.

Michael Jary's intended career was not at all a musical one. He wanted to become a missionary.

His aim was to join the élite musical composition class at the Staatliche Akademische Musikhochsule Berlin, where Paul Hindemith, Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky and Franz Schrecker were teaching.

After he was booed off he had to wrote arrangements under the pseudonym of Jackie Leeds and chansons as Max Jantzen.