Gerhard "Gert" Victor Trede, AKA Victor Cavini, is a composer all of you are probably familiar with. His music is incredible, but I was dissatisfied with how little info about his work and himself there was, so I've been doing a lot of digging and sending emails. Here's a list of what I've already posted here before, before the forum wipe:
- Finding the original newsreels for a number of his songs that ended up being used in Fallout: New Vegas. This also includes some songs that ended up being used in Spongebob, such as "Hercule Poirot".
- 1959 footage from the UFA newsreel talking about Trede, which includes Trede himself writing sheet music and playing some drums.
- Military medical card from 1940-1944, with details about what his rank was and medical issues.
- 1 hour recording of Trede talking about his life in German, with a mix of Hamburg dialect. It's very fascinating.
- 1959 "The Ceylon Times (now Sri Lanka) newspaper with a photo of Trede and his wife, Elsa. It details Trede was visiting to learn the style of music and to obtain some Ceylonese instruments.
- 1955 article about Trede, with a photo of him. Talks about his newsreel work and how he's rarely had a vacation.
- Article with an unknown date, but presumably from 1955, since it talks about the same thing.
- 1937 composition by Trede, titled "Die lustige geige" or "The Funny Violin". It includes a very young picture of Trede, from his 20s and is his first published composition.
- A 1950 Volkwagen documentary, produced by Werner Grunbauer. It includes organ compositions by Trede, played by organist Gerhard Gregor. This is likely Trede's very first recorded work. Werner Grunbauer later became Trede's South African representative.
- Photos from 1993. 2 pictures of Trede smiling, 2 pictures of Trede with his wife, 1 picture of Trede with a Professor named "G. Schatz". 1 picture of Trede's gravestone following his death in 1996.
- 25-page letter from 1993 from an American relative of Trede, Grant Collar. In it is an extensive list of Trede's family tree, including Trede's full name, that being Gerhard Victor Trede with "Gert" being his nickname. (Yes, it seems like the Victor in Victor Cavini was taken from his middle name. It seems Trede had a sister named Edith or "Edie". She died in 1920, when Trede was only 7.
And here's my more recent findings.
- I contacted the NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) a few months ago and they had some amazing stuff to send. First, they sent me 5 audio files, 4 from 1952 and 1 from 1962. It has session info, surprisingly. The 1952 ones date back to when the NDR was still the NWDR (Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk). The 1952 songs are: "Bagdana. Serbische Skizze", "Bogdana. Serbische Skizze", "Slawische Nächte. Fantasie" and "Spanische Nächte". The 1962 song is: Au revoir - auf Wiedersehen.This song is usually a vocal one, but this version is purely an instrumental. They could only send mp3 files, but the actual songs in the database are 48kHz WAV files.
- The NDR ran a piece about Trede in 2008 on their television magazine, Hamburg Journal. The piece is 3 minutes and talks about Trede's work. The previous handler of the Trede archive and website, Horst Willi Brunhover (died in 2014), is featured in the video, talking about how sweet Trede was and how he would always try to gift you something when you left his house. The video has some physical photos of Trede, seemingly from the same collection of photos I was sent from 1993.
- 85 pages of letters and documents from the Lothar Wolff collection from the Eastman Museum in New York. Lothar Wolff was a German film producer who later moved to New York. These letters are between Trede, Lothar and some people from the "Wild, Wild World of Animals" staff at Time-Life Films. Lothar was an executive producer on the films, and wanted to use Trede's music. Most of the letters are in German, but so far, we've learned a lot. for instance, Lothat became Trede's representative in the United States, much like Werner Grunbauer in South Africa. As things are translated, i'll keep you up to date about this.
Impressive, right? Well, I'm not even done yet. According to Trede's 1 hour audio autobiography and the Lothar Wolff collection, Trede had his music pressed onto records in South Africa, from the South African Broadcasting corporation. I've sent an email to them, and they have responded to assist, but I'm still waiting. If anyone is in South Africa and has records from the South African Broadcast Corp from the 60s to the 80s, I recommend uploading them and finding out what Trede music there could be.
Prof. Reinhard Flender, from the Hamburg Institute of Film and Music, is the current handler of Trede's archive. He was the one who sent me the photos, the family tree, the newspaper stuff and the audio autobiography. He's been very busy since July and hasn't been able to scan more things. I reached out to him the other day and sent him the Lothar Wolff letters. He replied back, saying he was busy working on an article and that in the coming weeks, he said he would:
"in the next few weeks [continue] the digitalisation of the Trede archive and let you have as much material as possible."This is fantastic news. We still have more content! I will keep everyone updated and let you know as soon as we get new materials.
As always, I'm still looking for the lost Trede CDs, that being GT-24, 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29. So if anyone has finally come across those, lmk.
Cheers, library music lovers! :>
