Wesley V. Blomster papers

Daily Camera music critic, Wes Blomster, was a locally and internationally-known writer and professor of German at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Blomster was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota in 1929 and grew up in a rural area near Ipswich, South Dakota. He earned his BA in German from the University of Iowa and his MA and Ph.D in German from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Blomster’s interest in classical music began during his time at the University of Iowa where he attended orchestra concerts given by the university's orchestra conductor and composer, Stephan Clapp. After graduating from the University of Iowa, he served in the U.S. Army as a German and Russian interpreter overseas from 1951 to 1955. Blomster finished his dissertation in 1960 Thomas Mann’s Commentary On His Own Work and thereafter taught German at the University of Colorado in Boulder for the next thirty-two years.

In the early 1970s while teaching at CU, Blomster began writing for the Boulder Daily Camera as a local music critic. Throughout his career, Blomster also wrote music articles for local, national, and international newspapers, magazines, and newsletters. After retiring from CU in 1992, he devoted himself wholly to music criticism, writing for many publications in addition to his work with the Camera. He traveled all across the globe to attend concerts, always returning to Boulder where he continued to attend local classical music concerts up to a week before his death, on October 1, 2011, at the age of 82.