Vienna, 1893 – 1944, Auschwitz
Tyberg was born into a musical family in Vienna. His father Marcell Tyberg was a violinist and his mother, Wanda Paltinger Tybergova a pianist. Little is known of Tyberg’s formal musical education. The family was close to the Prague based Kubelik family including the violinist Jan and the conductor Rafael. Following the death of Tyberg’s father in 1927, he and his mother moved to the Italian city of Abbazia, which today is Opatija in Croatia, where he made a living as church organist, pianist, jobbing musician and under the name of Till Bergmar, composed popular dance numbers for local resorts.
In 1931, his Second Symphony was premiered by the Czech Philharmonic conducted by Rafael Kubelik. Following the arrival of German troops into Northern Italy in 1943, it was revealed that Tyberg’s deceased mother was one-eighth Jewish. This revelation incredibly led to the 1/16th Jewish Marcel Tyberg being arrested and deported to Auschwitz where he was murdered on December 31, 1944. Tyberg’s compositions are Late Romantic with influences of Bruckner and Mahler, though his orchestral writing and symphonic structures are more compact. His output is significant, covering chamber, Lied and solo piano, symphonic and liturgical. Popularity has grown following release of a number of recordings of orchestral and liturgical music by the Buffalo Symphony under JoAnn Falletta.
