August Bungert
Encyclopedia
August Bungert was a German opera
composer
and poet.
. His unusual musical talent was noticed and nurtured at high school by his teacher, Heinrich Kufferath, the brother of the composer Ferdinand Kufferath. Bungert's father, a wealthy merchant and an eminent member of the community, was unenthusiastic about his son's ambitions and considered his son's musical ability to be an "ill-fated inclination". He would have preferred his son to undertake a career as a merchant or a doctor. Only his mother supported him, but she died when August Bungert was ten. In the aftermath of her death, the conflict between father and son became more intense.
Upon finishing high school at 16, Bungert fled to Cologne
. He attended the Conservatorium there and was taught by Ferdinand Kufferath, his high school teacher's brother. In Cologne, he was discovered by the composer Max Bruch
's sister, who had been charged by the Paris Conservatorium with finding a talented musician to be educated in Paris.
, Auber
and Rossini, who occasionally noticed talented students, Bungert did not receive the encouragement he expected. Due in part to this disappointment, and in part to an unhappy love affair, he returned to Germany. In 1869 he took a position as a chorus-master, and in 1870 as the director of an orchestra in Bad Kreuznach
. Although he composed more in Kreuznach - the production of his piece Hutten und Sickingen during the unveiling of a monument was a big success - he was obviously not satisfied.
In 1874 he moved to Berlin, where he continued his studies under Friedrich Kiel
. Here he produced more significant works, among others the Piano Quartet in E flat major, opus 18, which was awarded the Florentine Quartet Prize of 1877 by Johannes Brahms
and Robert Volkmann
who were the judges of the competition. According to Bungert, he composed the piece as he lay in bed feverish with appendicitis. The piano quartet was performed very successfully in Constantinople
(now Istanbul
) in 1913.
Bungert travelled to Italy with the prize money, ostensibly for health reasons, but probably from a deep yearning for Italian life, moving to Pegli
, near Genoa
. Here he met Giuseppe Verdi
, and his neighbour was the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
, with whom he would form a strong friendship. In Pegli he wrote the opera Aurora, which premiered in Leipzig
in 1884.
In 1890, Sylva gave him an expensive Bechstein
grand piano, and in 1894 she transferred the ownership of a house to him. The house was situated on the Rhine in Leutesdorf
, had a large garden and was renovated by the Cologne architect Carl Schauppmeyer in the Ionic
style. The villa is still considered an adornment in the plane-tree-lined Rheinallee (today August-Bungert-Allee). Bungert furnished the house with expensive furniture, works of art and memorabilia. He celebrated his greatest artistic triumphs during this time, especially with the setting of Sylva's poetry to music and his Rhine-songs, which he often composed sitting at his regular table in the Rhine garden of the Leyscher Hof Hotel in Leutesdorf, for which he mostly wrote the texts himself.
Sylva founded an organization called the Bungert-Bund to promote his music. Apart from a comic opera called Die Studenten von Salmanca (The Students of Salamanca), he concentrated on two epic tetralogies
based on the Iliad
and the Odyssey
entitled Homerische Welt (The Homeric World). The first part, The Iliad (unfinished
), was divided into Achilles and Clytemnestra (with three further sections planned). The second part, which was completed and performed in Dresden between 1898 and 1903, was The Odyssey, which was divided into Circe, Nausicaa, Odysseus' Return and Odysseus' Death, and was performed more than 100 times in the rest of Europe.
During this time, Bungert was considered to be the antithesis of Wagner
- Wagner's works drew themes from Norse mythology, while Bungert's libretti were influenced by the Greek classics. Bungert was strongly influenced by Wagner, and planned to built a Bayreuth
-style theatre in Bad Godesberg
.
started a Bungert-Festival which engendered much interest.
August Bungert died, following a long illness, on 26 October 1915 in his house in Leutesdorf. As an evangelical Christian he was not permitted (according to his own wishes) to be buried in the cemetery in staunchly Catholic Leutesdorf. His grave is in the cemetery of the Feldkirche in Neuwied. (The Bungert house in Leutesdorf is currently a private residence and not open to the public.)
His list of works includes 362 songs, many of which were based on texts by Carmen Sylva, while he wrote most of the words to his Rhine-songs himself. His greatest work was the operatic tetralogy "Die Homerische Welt" (The Homeric World), inspired by Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen
. After two world wars, his music was almost forgotten, especially during the Nazi era, in which it was overshadowed by Wagner's works. Today his music is very seldom played.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and poet.
Early life
Bungert was born in MülheimMülheim
Mülheim an der Ruhr, also called "City on the River", is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. It is located in the Ruhr Area between Duisburg, Essen, Oberhausen and Ratingen...
. His unusual musical talent was noticed and nurtured at high school by his teacher, Heinrich Kufferath, the brother of the composer Ferdinand Kufferath. Bungert's father, a wealthy merchant and an eminent member of the community, was unenthusiastic about his son's ambitions and considered his son's musical ability to be an "ill-fated inclination". He would have preferred his son to undertake a career as a merchant or a doctor. Only his mother supported him, but she died when August Bungert was ten. In the aftermath of her death, the conflict between father and son became more intense.
Upon finishing high school at 16, Bungert fled to Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. He attended the Conservatorium there and was taught by Ferdinand Kufferath, his high school teacher's brother. In Cologne, he was discovered by the composer Max Bruch
Max Bruch
Max Christian Friedrich Bruch , also known as Max Karl August Bruch, was a German Romantic composer and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertoire.-Life:Bruch was born in Cologne, Rhine Province, where he...
's sister, who had been charged by the Paris Conservatorium with finding a talented musician to be educated in Paris.
Musical career
Bungert was destitute in Paris, just managing to make ends meet by giving piano lessons, until his father grudgingly gave him a little emergency support. Although the Paris Conservatorium was home to some celebrated musicians, such as BerliozHector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
, Auber
Daniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber was a French composer.-Biography:The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he also allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments...
and Rossini, who occasionally noticed talented students, Bungert did not receive the encouragement he expected. Due in part to this disappointment, and in part to an unhappy love affair, he returned to Germany. In 1869 he took a position as a chorus-master, and in 1870 as the director of an orchestra in Bad Kreuznach
Bad Kreuznach
Bad Kreuznach is the capital of the district of Bad Kreuznach, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is located on the Nahe river, a tributary of the Rhine...
. Although he composed more in Kreuznach - the production of his piece Hutten und Sickingen during the unveiling of a monument was a big success - he was obviously not satisfied.
In 1874 he moved to Berlin, where he continued his studies under Friedrich Kiel
Friedrich Kiel
Friedrich Kiel was a German composer and music teacher.Writing of the chamber music of Friedrich Kiel, the famous scholar and critic Wilhelm Altmann notes that it was Kiel’s extreme modesty which kept him and his exceptional works from receiving the consideration they deserved...
. Here he produced more significant works, among others the Piano Quartet in E flat major, opus 18, which was awarded the Florentine Quartet Prize of 1877 by Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
and Robert Volkmann
Robert Volkmann
Friedrich Robert Volkmann was a German composer.-Life:He was born in Lommatzsch, Saxony, Germany. His father was a music director for a church, so he trained his son in music to prepare him as a successor...
who were the judges of the competition. According to Bungert, he composed the piece as he lay in bed feverish with appendicitis. The piano quartet was performed very successfully in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
(now Istanbul
Istanbul
Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...
) in 1913.
Bungert travelled to Italy with the prize money, ostensibly for health reasons, but probably from a deep yearning for Italian life, moving to Pegli
Pegli
Pegli is a neighbourhood in the west of Genoa, Italy.With a mild climate and a sea promenade, Pegli is mainly a residential area with four public parks and several villas and mansions. It is also known as a tourist resort with some hotels, camping and bathing establishments...
, near Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
. Here he met Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
, and his neighbour was the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
, with whom he would form a strong friendship. In Pegli he wrote the opera Aurora, which premiered in Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
in 1884.
Carmen Sylva and Leutesdorf
In Italy, Bungert made the acquaintance of the Queen of Romania, Elizabeth of Wied, known artistically as Carmen Sylva, who would become of great importance in his later life and for his music. Through Sylva he finally gained the yearned-for access to the highest nobility. Bungert was a regular guest in the royal Wied castles and in the Swedish and Rumanian royal courts.Bechstein
Bechstein is a surname and may refer to:*Johann Matthäus Bechstein , a German naturalist and forester.*Ludwig Bechstein , a German writer....
grand piano, and in 1894 she transferred the ownership of a house to him. The house was situated on the Rhine in Leutesdorf
Leutesdorf
Leutesdorf is a municipality in the district of Neuwied, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany....
, had a large garden and was renovated by the Cologne architect Carl Schauppmeyer in the Ionic
Ionian mode
Ionian mode is the name assigned by Heinrich Glarean in 1547 to his new authentic mode on C , which uses the diatonic octave species from C to the C an octave higher, divided at G into a fourth species of perfect fifth plus a third species of perfect fourth : C D...
style. The villa is still considered an adornment in the plane-tree-lined Rheinallee (today August-Bungert-Allee). Bungert furnished the house with expensive furniture, works of art and memorabilia. He celebrated his greatest artistic triumphs during this time, especially with the setting of Sylva's poetry to music and his Rhine-songs, which he often composed sitting at his regular table in the Rhine garden of the Leyscher Hof Hotel in Leutesdorf, for which he mostly wrote the texts himself.
Sylva founded an organization called the Bungert-Bund to promote his music. Apart from a comic opera called Die Studenten von Salmanca (The Students of Salamanca), he concentrated on two epic tetralogies
Tetralogy
A tetralogy is a compound work that is made up of four distinct works, just as a trilogy is made up of three works....
based on the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
and the Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
entitled Homerische Welt (The Homeric World). The first part, The Iliad (unfinished
Unfinished work
An unfinished work is creative work that has not been finished. Its creator may have chosen never to finish it or may have been prevented from doing so by circumstances outside of their control such as death. Such pieces are often the subject of speculation as to what the finished piece would have...
), was divided into Achilles and Clytemnestra (with three further sections planned). The second part, which was completed and performed in Dresden between 1898 and 1903, was The Odyssey, which was divided into Circe, Nausicaa, Odysseus' Return and Odysseus' Death, and was performed more than 100 times in the rest of Europe.
During this time, Bungert was considered to be the antithesis of Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
- Wagner's works drew themes from Norse mythology, while Bungert's libretti were influenced by the Greek classics. Bungert was strongly influenced by Wagner, and planned to built a Bayreuth
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
-style theatre in Bad Godesberg
Bad Godesberg
Bad Godesberg is a municipal district of Bonn, southern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. From 1949 till 1990 , the majority of foreign embassies to Germany were located in Bad Godesberg...
.
Final years
Bungert was awarded a professorship at the Leipzig University in 1911 and gave several lectures about his work there. In 1912, the then sophiscated spa town WiesbadenWiesbaden
Wiesbaden is a city in southwest Germany and the capital of the federal state of Hesse. It has about 275,400 inhabitants, plus approximately 10,000 United States citizens...
started a Bungert-Festival which engendered much interest.
August Bungert died, following a long illness, on 26 October 1915 in his house in Leutesdorf. As an evangelical Christian he was not permitted (according to his own wishes) to be buried in the cemetery in staunchly Catholic Leutesdorf. His grave is in the cemetery of the Feldkirche in Neuwied. (The Bungert house in Leutesdorf is currently a private residence and not open to the public.)
His list of works includes 362 songs, many of which were based on texts by Carmen Sylva, while he wrote most of the words to his Rhine-songs himself. His greatest work was the operatic tetralogy "Die Homerische Welt" (The Homeric World), inspired by Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
. After two world wars, his music was almost forgotten, especially during the Nazi era, in which it was overshadowed by Wagner's works. Today his music is very seldom played.
Works
- Aurora (other titles: Liebe Siegerin / Die Studenten von Salamanka – Dear Victrix / The Students of Salamanca), Musik-Lustspiel (Musical Game), op. 23, premiered in Leipzig 1884, librettoLibrettoA libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
by Hermann Graeff - Hutten und Sickingen (dramatisches Festspiel für das deutsche Volk – dramatic pageant for the German people), musical drama in pageant form in five acts, op. 40, premiered in Bad Kreuznach 1889, libretto by August Bungert
- Homerische Welt (Homeric World - other title: Die Odyssee - The Odyssey) opera-tetrology, op. 30, libretto by August Bungert
- Part I: Circe, musical tragedy in three acts, op. 30/1, premiered 1898 in the Dresden Court Opera (Hofoper)
- Part II: Nausicaa, musical tragedy in three acts, op. 30/2, premiered 1901 in the Dresden Court Opera
- Part III: Odysseus' Return, musical tragedy in three acts, op. 30/3, premiered 1896 in the Dresden Court Opera
- Part IV: Odysseus' Death, musical tragedy in three acts, op. 30/4, premiered 1903 in the Dresden Court Opera
- Sinfonia Vietrix, symphony in four movements for orchestra, chorus and solo voices, op. 70
- Torquato Tasso, symphonic overture for large orchestra, op.14, based on the drama of the same nameTorquato Tasso (play)Torquato Tasso is a play by the German dramatist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe about the sixteenth-century Italian poet, Torquato Tasso. The play was first conceived in Weimar in 1780 but most of it was written during his two years in Italy, between 1786 and 1788. He completed the play in...
by Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long... - Auf der Wartburg (At the WartburgWartburgThe Wartburg is a castle overlooking the town of Eisenach, Germany.Wartburg may also refer to:* Wartburgkreis, a district in Germany named after the Wartburg* Wartburg , former East German brand of automobiles, manufactured in Eisenach...
Castle), symphonic poem for large orchestra, op.29 - Neue Volks- und Handwerkerlieder in drei Bänden mit Klavierbegleitung (New Folk- and Craftsmanssongs in three volumes with piano accompaniment), op. 49, three-volume song collection for accompaniment by piano, based on texts by Carmen Sylva, Joseph von Eichendorff, Theodor StormTheodor StormHans Theodor Woldsen Storm , commonly known as Theodor Storm, was a German writer.-Life:Storm was born in Husum, at the west coast of Schleswig than an independent duchy and ruled by the king of Denmark...
and others, created between 1890 and 1894 - Faust 1 und 2, stage music for the production of Faust for the Goethe-Festival (Goethefestspiele) in 1903 in Düsseldorf, op.58
- Mysterium, oratorioOratorioAn oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
based on texts from the BibleBibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, op. 60, premiered 1909 in Neuwied - Genius Triumphans (Zeppelins große Fahrt) (Triumphant Genius (The Zeppelin's Great Voyage)), symphony, op. 71, performed in honour of the first flight of a ZeppelinZeppelinA Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship pioneered by the German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin in the early 20th century. It was based on designs he had outlined in 1874 and detailed in 1893. His plans were reviewed by committee in 1894 and patented in the United States on 14 March 1899...
.