Hans Pfitzner
Encyclopedia
Hans Erich Pfitzner was a German
composer
and self-described anti-modernist
. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera
Palestrina
, loosely based on the life of the great sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
.
, Russia
, where his father played violin in a theater orchestra. The family returned to his father's native Frankfurt in 1872 when Pfitzner was two years old, and he always considered Frankfurt his home town. He received early instruction in violin from his father, and his earliest compositions were composed at age 11. In 1884 he wrote his first songs. From 1886 to 1890 he studied composition with Iwan Knorr
and piano with James Kwast
at the Hoch Conservatory
in Frankfurt. (He later married Kwast's daughter Mimi Kwast, a grand-daughter of Ferdinand Hiller
, after she had rejected the advances of Percy Grainger
.) He taught piano and theory at the Koblenz
Conservatory from 1892 to 1893. In 1894 he was appointed conductor at the Stadttheater in Mainz
where he worked for a few months. These were all low-paying jobs, and Pfitzner was working as Erster (First) Kapellmeister
with the Berlin
Theater des Westens when he was appointed to a modestly prestigious post of opera director and head of the conservatory in Straßburg (Strasbourg
) in 1908, when Pfitzner was almost forty.
In Strasbourg, Pfitzner finally had some professional stability, and it was there he gained significant power to direct his own operas. He viewed control over the stage direction to be his particular domain, and this view was to cause him particular difficulty for the rest of his career. The central event of Pfitzner's life was the annexation of Imperial Alsace
- and with it Strasbourg - by France in the aftermath of World War I. Pfitzner lost his livelihood and was left destitute at age 50. This hardened several difficult traits in Pfitzner's personality: an elitism believing he was entitled to sinecures for his contributions to German art and for the hard work of his youth, notorious social awkwardness and a lack of tact, a sincere belief that his music was under-recognized and under-appreciated with a tendency for his sympathizers to form cults around him, a patronizing style with his publishers, and a feeling that he had been personally slighted by Germany's enemies (Kater, 146). His bitterness and cultural pessimism deepened in the 1920s with the death of his wife in 1926 and meningitis
of his older son Paul, who was committed to institutionalized medical care.
In 1895, Richard Bruno Heydrich
sang the title role in the premiere of Hans Pfitzner's first opera, Der arme Heinrich, based on the poem of the same name
by Hartmann von Aue
. More to the point, Heydrich "saved" the opera. Pfitzner's magnum opus was Palestrina
, which had its premiere in Munich
on 12 June 1917 under the baton of Jewish conductor Bruno Walter
. On the day before he died in February 1962, Walter dictated his last letter, which ended "Despite all the dark experiences of today I am still confident that Palestrina will remain. The work has all the elements of immortality".
Easily the most celebrated of Pfitzner's prose utterances is his pamphlet Futuristengefahr ("Danger of Futurists"), written in response to Ferruccio Busoni
's Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Music. "Busoni," Pfitzner complained, "places all his hopes for Western music in the future and understands the present and past as a faltering beginning, as the preparation. But what if it were otherwise? What if we find ourselves presently at a high point, or even that we have already passed beyond it?" Also related is the debate between Pfitzner and Jewish critic Paul Bekker
.
Pfitzner dedicated his Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 34 (1923) to the Australia
n violinist Alma Moodie
. She premiered it in Nuremberg
on 4 June 1924, with the composer conducting. Moodie became its leading exponent, and performed it over 50 times in Germany with conductors such as Pfitzner, Wilhelm Furtwängler
, Hans Knappertsbusch
, Hermann Scherchen
, Karl Muck
, Carl Schuricht
, and Fritz Busch
. At that time, the Pfitzner concerto was considered the most important addition to the violin concerto repertoire since the first concerto of Max Bruch
, although it is not played by most violinists these days. On one occasion in 1927, conductor Peter Raabe
programmed the concerto for public broadcast and performance in Aachen
but did not budget for copying of the sheet music; as a result, the work was "withdrawn" at the last minute and replaced with the familiar Brahms concerto.
Increasingly nationalistic in his middle and old age, Pfitzner was at first regarded sympathetically by important figures in the Third Reich, in particular by Hans Frank
, with whom he remained on good terms. But he soon fell out with chief Nazis, who were unimpressed by his long musical association with the conductor Bruno Walter, who was Jewish. He incurred extra wrath from the Nazis by refusing to obey the regime's request to provide incidental music
to Shakespeare
's A Midsummer Night's Dream
that could be used in place of the famous score by Felix Mendelssohn
, which was unacceptable to the Nazis because of his Jewish background. Pfitzner maintained that Mendelssohn's original was far better than anything he himself could offer as a substitute.
Central to the Nazi treatment was a meeting between Pfitzner and Hitler during a hospital as early as 1923, not quite at Pfitzner's own doing. Pfitzner was recovering from a gall bladder operation, when a mutual friend, Anton Drexler, arranged a visit. Hitler, unsurprisingly, did most of the talking, and Pfitzner dared to contradict him regarding homosexual and anti-Semitic thinker Otto Weininger
, causing Hitler to leave in a huff. Unbeknownst to Pfitzner, Hitler communicated to Nazi cultural-architect Paul Rosenberg
that he wanted "nothing further to do with this Jewish rabbi." Pfitzner still believed, however, that Hitler was sympathetic to him. When the Nazis rose in power, Rosenberg recruited Pfitzner (a notoriously bad speaker) to lecture for the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur in 1933, and Pfitzner accepted, hoping it would lead him to find a position. Due to Hitler's edict, however, the composer was passed over in favor of party hacks for positions as opera Director in Dusseldorf
and the generalintendant of the municipal opera in Berlin in spite of deceiving hints from authorities that both positions were being held for him.
Moreover, in the early years of Hitler's rule, Pfitzner received an injunction from Bavarian Justice Minister Hans Frank and Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick
against traveling to the Salzburg Festival in 1933, where he was to conduct his violin concerto. Pfitzner had managed to gain a stable conducting contract from the Munich opera in 1928, but he ran into demeaning treatment from Hans Knappertsbusch and the intendant Franckenstein. In 1934, he was forced into retirement and lost his positions as opera conductor, stage director, and academy professor. He was also given an absurdly low pension of only a few hundred marks a month, which the composer fought until 1937 when the matter was resolved to Goebbels
himself. Moreover, Pfitzner was rejected as conductor at a Nazi party rally in 1934, with Pfitzner learning for the first time that Hitler thought the composer to be half Jewish – insinuated by Bayreuth Festival
director and Hitler confidante Winifred Wagner
. Pfitzner was forced to prove his racial purity, something intensely offensive to the legendarily tactless man. By 1939, Pfitzner was thoroughly disenchanted with the regime.
Pfitzner's views on "the Jewish Question
" were both contradictory and illogical (Kater 160), and it is perhaps best understood that Pfitzner viewed Jewishness as a cultural trait rather than a racial one. A 1930 statement that caused difficulty for him in the pension affair was that although Jewry might pose "dangers to German spiritual life and German Kultur," many Jews had done a lot for Germany and that anti-Semitism per se was to be condemned. He was willing to make exceptions to blanket anti-Semitism: recommending the performance of Marschner's opera, Der Templer und die Jüdin
based on Scott's Ivanhoe
, protecting his Jewish pupil Felix Wolfes of Cologne, with conductor Furtwängler aiding young conductor Hans Schwieger (who had a Jewish wife), and maintaining friendships with Bruno Walter and especially his childhood journalist friend, Paul Cossman, a "self-loathing" non-practicing Jew who was incarcerated in 1933. His petitions to help Cossman may have caused the composer to be summoned and investigated by Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich
(son of the heldentenor who had premiered Pfitzner's first opera). It is likely his petitions contributed to Cossman's release in 1934 (he was eventually re-arrested in 1942 and died of dysentery in Theresienstadt). In 1938 Pfitzner quipped in jest that he was afraid to see a celebrated eye doctor in Munich because "his great-grandmother had once observed a quarter Jew crossing the street." He worked with Jewish musicians throughout his career. In the early thirties he often accompanied famed contralto
Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann
(murdered at Auschwitz) in recitals and had dedicated his four songs, Op. 19 to her as early as 1905. He had dedicated his songs, Op. 24 to Jewish critic and founder of a Jewish cultural society Arthur Eloesser in 1909. Still, Pfitzner maintained close contact with virulent anti-Semites as music critics Walter Abendroth
and Victor Junk and was not afraid to use anti-Semitic invective when pursuing his aims.
His home having been destroyed in the war and his membership in the Munich Academy of Music having been revoked for his speaking out against Nazism, Pfitzner was left mentally ill and homeless, but after the war he was denazified, a pension was established, performance bans were lifted, and a residence was procured at an old people's home in Salzburg
, Austria
, where he died. Wilhelm Furtwängler
conducted a performance of Pfitzner's Symphony in C major, at the Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
in the summer of 1949, just after the composer's death. Following long neglect, Pfitzner's music began to reappear in opera houses and concert halls, as well as recording studios, during the 1990s including a controversial performance of the Covent Garden
production of Palestrina at Lincoln Center in 1997.
and Richard Strauss
, although neither man cared much for Pfitzner's innately acerbic manner (and Alma Mahler reciprocated his adoration with contempt despite her agreement with his intuitive musical idealism, a fact evident in her letters to the wife of Alban Berg
). Although Pfitzner's music betrays Wagnerian influences, the composer was not attracted to Bayreuth, and was personally despised by Cosima Wagner
, in part because Pfitzner sought notice and recognition from such "anti-Wagnerian" composers as Max Bruch and Johannes Brahms.
Pfitzner's works combine Romantic and Late Romantic elements with extended thematic development, atmospheric music drama, and the intimacy of chamber music. Columbia University
musicologist Walter Frisch has described Pfitzner as a "regressive modernist." His is a highly personal offshoot of the Classical/Romantic tradition as well as the conservative musical aesthetic and Pfitzner defended his style in his own writings. Particularly notable are Pfitzner's numerous and delicate lied
er, influenced by Hugo Wolf
, yet with their own rather melancholy charm. Several of them were recorded during the 1930s by the distinguished baritone Gerhard Hüsch
, with the composer at the piano. His first symphony - the Symphony in C minor - underwent a strange genesis: it was not conceived in orchestral terms at all, but was a reworking of a string quartet. The works betray a late pious inspiration and although they take on a late Romantic qualities, they show others associated with the brooding unwieldiness of a modern idiom. For example, composer Arthur Honegger
writes in 1955, after criticizing too much polyphony and overly long orchestral writing in a long essay devoted to Palestrina,
Pfitzner's work was appreciated by contemporaries including Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, who explicitly described Pfitzner's second string quartet of 1902/03 as a masterpiece. Thomas Mann
praised Palestrina in a short essay published in October 1917. He co-founded the Hans Pfitzner Association for German Music in 1918. Tensions with Mann, however, developed and the two severed relations by 1926.
From the mid 1920's, Pfitzner's music increasingly fell in the shadow of Richard Strauss. His opera, Das Herz of 1932 was unsuccessful. Pfitzner remained a peripheral figure in the musical life of the Third Reich, and his music was performed less frequently than in the late days of the Weimar Republic
.
German critic Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt
, writing in 1969, viewed Pfitzner's music with extreme ambivalence: initiated with sharp dissonances and hard linear counterpoint determined to be taken as (and criticized for being) modernist. This became a conservative rebellion against all modernist conformity. Composer Wolfgang Rihm
commented on the increasing popularity of Pfitzner's work in 1981:
. His complete songs have been recorded on the CPO label.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
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 self-described anti-modernist
Modernism (music)
Modernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice.- Defining musical modernism :...
. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera
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...
Palestrina
Palestrina (opera)
Palestrina is an opera by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, first performed in 1917. The composer referred to it as a Musikalische Legende , and wrote the libretto himself, based on a legend about the Renaissance musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who saves the art of contrapuntal music ...
, loosely based on the life of the great sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was an Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music and the best-known 16th-century representative of the Roman School of musical composition...
.
Biography
Pfitzner was born in MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, where his father played violin in a theater orchestra. The family returned to his father's native Frankfurt in 1872 when Pfitzner was two years old, and he always considered Frankfurt his home town. He received early instruction in violin from his father, and his earliest compositions were composed at age 11. In 1884 he wrote his first songs. From 1886 to 1890 he studied composition with Iwan Knorr
Iwan Knorr
Iwan Knorr was a German composer and teacher of music. A native of Mewe, he attended the Leipzig Conservatory where he studied with Ignaz Moscheles, Ernst Friedrich Richter and Carl Reinecke. In 1874 he became a teacher and in 1878 director of music theory instruction at the Imperial...
and piano with James Kwast
James Kwast
James Kwast was a Dutch-German pianist and renowned teacher of many other notable pianists. He was also a minor composer and editor.-Biography:Jacob James Kwast was born in Nijkerk, Netherlands, in 1852...
at the Hoch Conservatory
Hoch Conservatory
Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium - Musikakademie was founded in Frankfurt am Main on September 22, 1878. Through the generosity of Frankfurter Joseph Hoch, who bequeathed the Conservatory one million German gold marks in his testament, a school for music and the arts was established for all age groups. ...
in Frankfurt. (He later married Kwast's daughter Mimi Kwast, a grand-daughter of Ferdinand Hiller
Ferdinand Hiller
Ferdinand Hiller was a German composer, conductor, writer and music-director.-Biography:Ferdinand Hiller was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, where his father Justus was a merchant in English textiles – a business eventually continued by Ferdinand’s brother Joseph...
, after she had rejected the advances of Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
.) He taught piano and theory at the Koblenz
Koblenz
Koblenz is a German city situated on both banks of the Rhine at its confluence with the Moselle, where the Deutsches Eck and its monument are situated.As Koblenz was one of the military posts established by Drusus about 8 BC, the...
Conservatory from 1892 to 1893. In 1894 he was appointed conductor at the Stadttheater in Mainz
Mainz
Mainz under the Holy Roman Empire, and previously was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire...
where he worked for a few months. These were all low-paying jobs, and Pfitzner was working as Erster (First) Kapellmeister
Kapellmeister
Kapellmeister is a German word designating a person in charge of music-making. The word is a compound, consisting of the roots Kapelle and Meister . The words Kapelle and Meister derive from the Latin: capella and magister...
with the Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
Theater des Westens when he was appointed to a modestly prestigious post of opera director and head of the conservatory in Straßburg (Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
) in 1908, when Pfitzner was almost forty.
In Strasbourg, Pfitzner finally had some professional stability, and it was there he gained significant power to direct his own operas. He viewed control over the stage direction to be his particular domain, and this view was to cause him particular difficulty for the rest of his career. The central event of Pfitzner's life was the annexation of Imperial Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
- and with it Strasbourg - by France in the aftermath of World War I. Pfitzner lost his livelihood and was left destitute at age 50. This hardened several difficult traits in Pfitzner's personality: an elitism believing he was entitled to sinecures for his contributions to German art and for the hard work of his youth, notorious social awkwardness and a lack of tact, a sincere belief that his music was under-recognized and under-appreciated with a tendency for his sympathizers to form cults around him, a patronizing style with his publishers, and a feeling that he had been personally slighted by Germany's enemies (Kater, 146). His bitterness and cultural pessimism deepened in the 1920s with the death of his wife in 1926 and meningitis
Meningitis
Meningitis is inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, known collectively as the meninges. The inflammation may be caused by infection with viruses, bacteria, or other microorganisms, and less commonly by certain drugs...
of his older son Paul, who was committed to institutionalized medical care.
In 1895, Richard Bruno Heydrich
Richard Bruno Heydrich
Richard Bruno Heydrich was a German opera singer , and composer.-Early career:...
sang the title role in the premiere of Hans Pfitzner's first opera, Der arme Heinrich, based on the poem of the same name
Der arme Heinrich
Der Arme Heinrich is a Middle High German narrative poem by Hartmann von Aue. It was probably written in the 1190s and was the second to last of Hartmann's four epic works...
by Hartmann von Aue
Hartmann von Aue
Hartmann von Aue was a Middle High German poet. He introduced the courtly romance into German literature and, with Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg, was one of the three great epic poets of Middle High German literature...
. More to the point, Heydrich "saved" the opera. Pfitzner's magnum opus was Palestrina
Palestrina (opera)
Palestrina is an opera by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, first performed in 1917. The composer referred to it as a Musikalische Legende , and wrote the libretto himself, based on a legend about the Renaissance musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who saves the art of contrapuntal music ...
, which had its premiere in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
on 12 June 1917 under the baton of Jewish conductor Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter
Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...
. On the day before he died in February 1962, Walter dictated his last letter, which ended "Despite all the dark experiences of today I am still confident that Palestrina will remain. The work has all the elements of immortality".
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
's Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Music. "Busoni," Pfitzner complained, "places all his hopes for Western music in the future and understands the present and past as a faltering beginning, as the preparation. But what if it were otherwise? What if we find ourselves presently at a high point, or even that we have already passed beyond it?" Also related is the debate between Pfitzner and Jewish critic Paul Bekker
Paul Bekker
Paul Bekker was one of the most articulate and influential German music critics of the 20th century....
.
Pfitzner dedicated his Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 34 (1923) to the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n violinist Alma Moodie
Alma Moodie
Alma Templeton Moodie was an Australian violinist who established an excellent reputation in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. She was regarded as the foremost female violinist during the inter-war years, and she premiered violin concertos by Kurt Atterberg, Hans Pfitzner and Ernst Krenek...
. She premiered it in Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
on 4 June 1924, with the composer conducting. Moodie became its leading exponent, and performed it over 50 times in Germany with conductors such as Pfitzner, Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...
, Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch
Hans Knappertsbusch was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss....
, Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen was a German conductor.-Life:Scherchen was originally a violist and played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens...
, Karl Muck
Karl Muck
Karl Muck was a German-born conductor of classical music. He based his activities principally in Europe and mostly in opera. His American career comprised two stints at the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He endured a public outcry in 1917 that questioned whether his loyalties lay with Germany or the...
, Carl Schuricht
Carl Schuricht
Carl Adolph Schuricht was a German conductor.Schuricht was born in Danzig , German Empire; his father's family had been respected organ-builders. His mother, Amanda Wusinowska, a widow soon after her marriage , brought up her son alone...
, and Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch was a German conductor.Busch was born in Siegen, Province of Westphalia. He held posts conducting opera at Aachen, Stuttgart and Dresden. In 1933 he was dismissed from his post at Dresden because of his opposition to the new Nazi government of Germany...
. At that time, the Pfitzner concerto was considered the most important addition to the violin concerto repertoire since the first concerto of 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...
, although it is not played by most violinists these days. On one occasion in 1927, conductor Peter Raabe
Peter Raabe
Peter Raabe was a German composer and conductor. Graduated in the Higher Musical School in Berlin and in the universities of Munich and Jena. In 1894-98 Raabe worked in Königsberg and Zwickau. In 1899-1903 he worked in the Dutch Opera-House . In 1907-20 Raabe was the 1st Court Conductor in Weimar...
programmed the concerto for public broadcast and performance in Aachen
Aachen
Aachen has historically been a spa town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Aachen was a favoured residence of Charlemagne, and the place of coronation of the Kings of Germany. Geographically, Aachen is the westernmost town of Germany, located along its borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, ...
but did not budget for copying of the sheet music; as a result, the work was "withdrawn" at the last minute and replaced with the familiar Brahms concerto.
The Nazi era
Pfitzner's biographer Hans Peter Vogel writes that Pfitzner was the only composer of the Nazi era who attempted to come to grips with National Socialism both intellectually and spiritually after 1945. Sabine Busch, in a comprehensive study, "Hans Pfitzner and National Socialism" published in 2000, made a long-overdue examination of the ideological tug-of-war of the composer's involvement with the National Socialists, based in-part on previously unavailable material. She concludes that, although the composer was not exclusively pro-Nazi nor purely the anti-Semitic chauvinist as his image often projects, he engaged with Nazi powers whom he thought would promote his music only to be embittered when the Nazis found the "elitist old master's often morose music" to be "little propaganda worthy." The most comprehensive English account of Pfitzner's relations with the Nazis is by Michael Kater.Increasingly nationalistic in his middle and old age, Pfitzner was at first regarded sympathetically by important figures in the Third Reich, in particular by Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
, with whom he remained on good terms. But he soon fell out with chief Nazis, who were unimpressed by his long musical association with the conductor Bruno Walter, who was Jewish. He incurred extra wrath from the Nazis by refusing to obey the regime's request to provide incidental music
Incidental music
Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, film or some other form not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as the "film score" or "soundtrack"....
to Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
's A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...
that could be used in place of the famous score by Felix Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
, which was unacceptable to the Nazis because of his Jewish background. Pfitzner maintained that Mendelssohn's original was far better than anything he himself could offer as a substitute.
Central to the Nazi treatment was a meeting between Pfitzner and Hitler during a hospital as early as 1923, not quite at Pfitzner's own doing. Pfitzner was recovering from a gall bladder operation, when a mutual friend, Anton Drexler, arranged a visit. Hitler, unsurprisingly, did most of the talking, and Pfitzner dared to contradict him regarding homosexual and anti-Semitic thinker Otto Weininger
Otto Weininger
Otto Weininger was an Austrian philosopher. In 1903, he published the book Geschlecht und Charakter , which gained popularity after his suicide at the age of 23...
, causing Hitler to leave in a huff. Unbeknownst to Pfitzner, Hitler communicated to Nazi cultural-architect Paul Rosenberg
Paul Rosenberg
Paul Rosenberg was a French art dealer, renowned for representing Pablo Picasso, Braque, and Henri Matisse.He started his career in France in his father's antiques business. He opened an art gallery at 21 rue de la Boétie in Paris in 1911 and another in England in 1935. He moved in 1940 to the...
that he wanted "nothing further to do with this Jewish rabbi." Pfitzner still believed, however, that Hitler was sympathetic to him. When the Nazis rose in power, Rosenberg recruited Pfitzner (a notoriously bad speaker) to lecture for the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur in 1933, and Pfitzner accepted, hoping it would lead him to find a position. Due to Hitler's edict, however, the composer was passed over in favor of party hacks for positions as opera Director in Dusseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
and the generalintendant of the municipal opera in Berlin in spite of deceiving hints from authorities that both positions were being held for him.
Moreover, in the early years of Hitler's rule, Pfitzner received an injunction from Bavarian Justice Minister Hans Frank and Reich Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick
Wilhelm Frick was a prominent German Nazi official serving as Minister of the Interior of the Third Reich. After the end of World War II, he was tried for war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials and executed...
against traveling to the Salzburg Festival in 1933, where he was to conduct his violin concerto. Pfitzner had managed to gain a stable conducting contract from the Munich opera in 1928, but he ran into demeaning treatment from Hans Knappertsbusch and the intendant Franckenstein. In 1934, he was forced into retirement and lost his positions as opera conductor, stage director, and academy professor. He was also given an absurdly low pension of only a few hundred marks a month, which the composer fought until 1937 when the matter was resolved to Goebbels
Goebbels
Goebbels, alternatively Göbbels, is a common surname in the western areas of Germany. It is probably derived from the Old Low German word gibbler, meaning brewer...
himself. Moreover, Pfitzner was rejected as conductor at a Nazi party rally in 1934, with Pfitzner learning for the first time that Hitler thought the composer to be half Jewish – insinuated by Bayreuth Festival
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...
director and Hitler confidante Winifred Wagner
Winifred Wagner
Winifred Wagner was an English woman married to Siegfried Wagner, Richard Wagner's son. She was the effective head of the Wagner family from 1930 to 1945, and a close friend of German dictator Adolf Hitler....
. Pfitzner was forced to prove his racial purity, something intensely offensive to the legendarily tactless man. By 1939, Pfitzner was thoroughly disenchanted with the regime.
Pfitzner's views on "the Jewish Question
The Jewish Question
The Jewish Question is an 1843 book by German historian and theologian Bruno Bauer, written and published in German ....
" were both contradictory and illogical (Kater 160), and it is perhaps best understood that Pfitzner viewed Jewishness as a cultural trait rather than a racial one. A 1930 statement that caused difficulty for him in the pension affair was that although Jewry might pose "dangers to German spiritual life and German Kultur," many Jews had done a lot for Germany and that anti-Semitism per se was to be condemned. He was willing to make exceptions to blanket anti-Semitism: recommending the performance of Marschner's opera, Der Templer und die Jüdin
Der Templer und die Jüdin
Der Templer und die Jüdin is an opera in three acts by Heinrich Marschner...
based on Scott's Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe
Ivanhoe is a historical fiction novel by Sir Walter Scott in 1819, and set in 12th-century England. Ivanhoe is sometimes credited for increasing interest in Romanticism and Medievalism; John Henry Newman claimed Scott "had first turned men's minds in the direction of the middle ages," while...
, protecting his Jewish pupil Felix Wolfes of Cologne, with conductor Furtwängler aiding young conductor Hans Schwieger (who had a Jewish wife), and maintaining friendships with Bruno Walter and especially his childhood journalist friend, Paul Cossman, a "self-loathing" non-practicing Jew who was incarcerated in 1933. His petitions to help Cossman may have caused the composer to be summoned and investigated by Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
(son of the heldentenor who had premiered Pfitzner's first opera). It is likely his petitions contributed to Cossman's release in 1934 (he was eventually re-arrested in 1942 and died of dysentery in Theresienstadt). In 1938 Pfitzner quipped in jest that he was afraid to see a celebrated eye doctor in Munich because "his great-grandmother had once observed a quarter Jew crossing the street." He worked with Jewish musicians throughout his career. In the early thirties he often accompanied famed contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann
Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann
Ottilie Metzger-Lattermann also formerly Ottilie Metzger-Froitzheim was a German contralto who was a famous performer of Wagner during the 1910s, and who after her retirement was murdered in Auschwitz....
(murdered at Auschwitz) in recitals and had dedicated his four songs, Op. 19 to her as early as 1905. He had dedicated his songs, Op. 24 to Jewish critic and founder of a Jewish cultural society Arthur Eloesser in 1909. Still, Pfitzner maintained close contact with virulent anti-Semites as music critics Walter Abendroth
Walter Abendroth
Walter Abendroth was a German composer, editor, and writer on music.- Selected compositions :Orchestral*Sinfonietta in drei Sätzen for large orchestra...
and Victor Junk and was not afraid to use anti-Semitic invective when pursuing his aims.
His home having been destroyed in the war and his membership in the Munich Academy of Music having been revoked for his speaking out against Nazism, Pfitzner was left mentally ill and homeless, but after the war he was denazified, a pension was established, performance bans were lifted, and a residence was procured at an old people's home in Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, where he died. Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler
Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...
conducted a performance of Pfitzner's Symphony in C major, at the Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
The Vienna Philharmonic is an orchestra in Austria, regularly considered one of the finest in the world....
in the summer of 1949, just after the composer's death. Following long neglect, Pfitzner's music began to reappear in opera houses and concert halls, as well as recording studios, during the 1990s including a controversial performance of the Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
production of Palestrina at Lincoln Center in 1997.
Musical style and reception
His own music — including pieces in all the major genres except the symphonic poem — was respected by contemporaries such as Gustav MahlerGustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
, although neither man cared much for Pfitzner's innately acerbic manner (and Alma Mahler reciprocated his adoration with contempt despite her agreement with his intuitive musical idealism, a fact evident in her letters to the wife of Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
). Although Pfitzner's music betrays Wagnerian influences, the composer was not attracted to Bayreuth, and was personally despised by Cosima Wagner
Cosima Wagner
Cosima Francesca Gaetana Wagner, née de Flavigny, from 1844 known as Cosima Liszt; was the daughter of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt...
, in part because Pfitzner sought notice and recognition from such "anti-Wagnerian" composers as Max Bruch and Johannes Brahms.
Pfitzner's works combine Romantic and Late Romantic elements with extended thematic development, atmospheric music drama, and the intimacy of chamber music. Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
musicologist Walter Frisch has described Pfitzner as a "regressive modernist." His is a highly personal offshoot of the Classical/Romantic tradition as well as the conservative musical aesthetic and Pfitzner defended his style in his own writings. Particularly notable are Pfitzner's numerous and delicate lied
Lied
is a German word literally meaning "song", usually used to describe romantic songs setting German poems of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf...
er, influenced by Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf
Hugo Wolf was an Austrian composer of Slovene origin, particularly noted for his art songs, or lieder. He brought to this form a concentrated expressive intensity which was unique in late Romantic music, somewhat related to that of the Second Viennese School in concision but utterly unrelated in...
, yet with their own rather melancholy charm. Several of them were recorded during the 1930s by the distinguished baritone Gerhard Hüsch
Gerhard Hüsch
Gerhard Heinrich Wilhelm Fritz Hüsch was one of the most important German singers of modern times. A lyric baritone, he specialized in Lieder but also sang, to a lesser extent, German and Italian opera.-Career:...
, with the composer at the piano. His first symphony - the Symphony in C minor - underwent a strange genesis: it was not conceived in orchestral terms at all, but was a reworking of a string quartet. The works betray a late pious inspiration and although they take on a late Romantic qualities, they show others associated with the brooding unwieldiness of a modern idiom. For example, composer Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger
Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...
writes in 1955, after criticizing too much polyphony and overly long orchestral writing in a long essay devoted to Palestrina,
Musically, the work shows a superior design, which demands respect. The themes are clearly formed, which makes it easy to follow...
Pfitzner's work was appreciated by contemporaries including Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler, who explicitly described Pfitzner's second string quartet of 1902/03 as a masterpiece. Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
praised Palestrina in a short essay published in October 1917. He co-founded the Hans Pfitzner Association for German Music in 1918. Tensions with Mann, however, developed and the two severed relations by 1926.
From the mid 1920's, Pfitzner's music increasingly fell in the shadow of Richard Strauss. His opera, Das Herz of 1932 was unsuccessful. Pfitzner remained a peripheral figure in the musical life of the Third Reich, and his music was performed less frequently than in the late days of the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
.
German critic Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt
Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt
Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt was a German composer, musicologist, and historian and critic of music.- Life :...
, writing in 1969, viewed Pfitzner's music with extreme ambivalence: initiated with sharp dissonances and hard linear counterpoint determined to be taken as (and criticized for being) modernist. This became a conservative rebellion against all modernist conformity. Composer Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm
Wolfgang Rihm is a German composer.Rihm is Head of the Institute of Modern Music at the Karlsruhe Conservatory of Music and has been composer in residence at the Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival...
commented on the increasing popularity of Pfitzner's work in 1981:
Pfitzner is too progressive, not simply, the way KorngoldKorngoldKorngold is surname of:* Julius Korngold , Jewish Austro-Hungarian music critic* Erich Wolfgang Korngold , Jewish Austro-Hungarian film- and romantic music composer* Piano Concerto for the Left Hand...
can be taken to be; he is also too conservative, if that means to be influenced by someone like SchoenbergSchoenbergSchoenberg is the surname of several persons:* Arnold Schoenberg , Austrian-American composer* Claude-Michel Schoenberg , French record producer, actor, singer, popular songwriter, and musical theatre composer...
. All this has audible consequences. We cannot find the brokenness of today in his work at first glance, but neither the unbroken yesterday. We find both, that is, none, and all attempts at classification falter.
Students of Hans Pfitzner
- Sem DresdenSem DresdenSamuel Dresden was born in Amsterdam, April 20, 1881, and died at The Hague, July 30, 1957). He was a Dutch conductor, composer and teacher.-Life:...
(1881–1957) - Ture RangströmTure RangströmAnders Johan Ture Rangström belonged to a new generation of Swedish composers who in the first decade of the 20th century introduced modernism to their compositions. In addition to composing Rangström was also a musical critic and conductor.Rangström was born in Stockholm, where initially he...
(1884–1947) - Otto KlempererOtto KlempererOtto Klemperer was a German conductor and composer. He is widely regarded as one of the leading conductors of the 20th century.-Biography:Otto Klemperer was born in Breslau, Silesia Province, then in Germany...
(1885–1973) - W. H. HewlettW. H. HewlettWilliam Henry Hewlett was a Canadian organist, conductor, composer, and music educator of English birth.-Early life and education:...
(1873–1940) - Heinrich JacobyHeinrich JacobyHeinrich Jacoby , originally a musician, was a German educator whose teaching was based on developing sensitivity and awareness. A great role in his researches played the collaboration with the colleague Elsa Gindler, whom he met in 1924 in Berlin...
(1889–1964) - Czesław Marek (1891–1985)
- Charles MünchCharles MünchCharles Munch was an Alsatian symphonic conductor and violinist. Noted for his mastery of the French orchestral repertoire, he is best known as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.-Biography:...
(1891–1968) - Felix WolfesFelix WolfesFelix Wolfes was an American educator, conductor and composer.-Biography:...
(1892–1971) - Carl OrffCarl OrffCarl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
(1895–1982) - Heinrich SutermeisterHeinrich SutermeisterHeinrich Sutermeister was a Swiss opera composer.-Life and career:During the early 1930s he was a student at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich where Carl Orff was his teacher and Orff remained a powerful influence on his music. Returning to Switzerland in the mid 1930s, he devoted his life to...
(1910–1995)
Recordings
His complete orchestral works have been recorded by the German conductor Werner Andreas AlbertWerner Andreas Albert
Werner Andreas Albert is a German conductor.He began his studies in musicology and history, and later studying conducting with Herbert von Karajan and Hans Rosbaud. After his 1961 debut with the Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra, he became chief conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie...
. His complete songs have been recorded on the CPO label.
Operas
| Title | Subtitle | Opus | Librettist | Date | Premiere | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Der arme Heinrich | Music Drama in 3 acts | WoO 15 | James Grun (1868-1928) after Hartmann von Aue | 1891-1893 | 1895, Mainz | Richard Bruno Heydrich Richard Bruno Heydrich Richard Bruno Heydrich was a German opera singer , and composer.-Early career:... sang in the premiere |
| Die Rose vom Liebesgarten | Romantic Opera with a Prelude, two acts, and postlude | WoO 16 | James Grun | 1897-1900 | 1901, Elberfeld | |
| Das Christ-Elflein (1st version) | Christmas Tale | Op. 20 | Ilse von Stach Ilse von Stach Ilse von Stach was a German writer.-Life:... |
1906 | 1906, Munich | |
| Das Christ-Elflein (2nd version) | Spieloper in 2 acts | Op. 20 | Ilse von Stach and Pftizner | 1917 | 1917, Dresden | Further unpublished revision in 1944 |
| Palestrina | Musical Legend in 3 acts | WoO 17 | Pfitzner | 1909-1915 | 1917, Munich | The composer's most famous work |
| Das Herz | Drama for Music in 3 acts (4 scenes) | Op. 39 | Hans Mahner-Mons (1883-1956) | 1930-31 | 1930, Berlin and Munich |
Orchestral works
| Work | Opus | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scherzo in c-minor | – | 1887 | |
| Cello concerto in a-minor | Op. Post. | 1888 | for Esther Nyffenegger |
| Piano concerto in E-flat Major | Op. 31 | 1922 | for Walter Gieseking Walter Gieseking Walter Wilhelm Gieseking was a French-born German pianist and composer.-Biography:Born in Lyon, France, the son of a German doctor and lepidopterist, Gieseking first started playing the piano at the age of four, but without formal instruction... |
| Violin Concerto in b-minor | Op. 34 | 1923 | for Alma Moodie |
| Symphony in C-sharp Minor | Op. 36a | 1932 | Adapted from String Quartet, Op. 36 |
| Cello Concerto in G-Major | Op. 42 | 1935 | for Gaspar Cassadó |
| Duo for Violin, Cello, and small Orchestra | Op. 43 | 1937 | |
| Small Symphony in G-Major | Op. 44 | 1939 | |
| Elegy and Roundelay | Op. 45 | 1940 | |
| Symphony in C-Major | Op. 46 | 1940 | "An die Freunde" |
| Cello Concerto in a-minor | Op. 52 | 1944 | for Ludwig Hoelscher |
| Cracow Greetings | Op. 54 | 1944 | |
| Fantasie in a-minor | Op. 56 | 1947 |
Chamber works
| Title | Opus | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Piano Trio in B-Major | – | 1886 | |
| String Quartet [No 1.] in d-minor | – | 1886 | |
| Sonata in f-Sharp minor (Cello and piano) | Op. 1 | 1890 | „Das Lied soll schauern und beben…“ |
| Piano Trio in F-Major | Op. 8 | 1890-96 | |
| String Quartet [No. 2] in D-Major | Op. 13 | 1902-03 | |
| Piano Quintet in C-Major | Op. 23 | 1908 | |
| Sonata in e-minor for Violin and Piano | Op. 27 | 1918 | |
| String Quartet [Nr. 3] in C-Sharp minor | Op. 36 | 1925 | |
| String Quartet [Nr. 4] in C-minor | Op. 50 | 1942 | |
| Unorthographic Fugato | – | 1943 | for String Quartet |
| Sextet in g-minor | Op. 55 | 1945 | for Clarinet, violin, viola, cello, contrabass, and piano |
Songs with piano accompaniment
| Opus | Title | Year | Text | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| – | Six Early Songs | 1884-87 | Julius Sturm, Mary Graf-Bartholomew, Ludwig Uhland, Oskar von Redwitz, Eduard Mörike Eduard Mörike Eduard Friedrich Mörike was a German Romantic poet.-Biography:Mörike was born in Ludwigsburg. His father was Karl Friedrich Mörike , a district medical councilor; his mother was Charlotte Bayer... , Robert Reinick |
high voice |
| 2 | Seven Songs | 1888-89 | Richard von Volkmann, Hermann Lingg, Aldof Böttger, Alexander Kaufmann, anon. | No. 2, 5, 6, 7 orchestrated |
| 3 | Three Songs | 1888-89 | Friedrich Rückert Friedrich Rückert Friedrich Rückert was a German poet, translator, and professor of Oriental languages.-Biography:Rückert was born at Schweinfurt and was the eldest son of a lawyer. He was educated at the local Gymnasium and at the universities of Würzburg and Heidelberg. From 1816-1817, he worked on the editorial... , Friedrich von Sallet, Emanuel Geibel |
for medium voice. No. 2, 3 orchestrated. |
| 4 | Four Songs | 1888-89 | Heinrich Heine Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann... |
medium voice. Also orchestrated |
| 5 | Three Songs | 1888-89 | Joseph von Eichendorff Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff was a German poet and novelist of the later German romantic school.Eichendorff is regarded as one of the most important German Romantics and his works have sustained high popularity in Germany from production to the present day.-Life:Eichendorff was born at Schloß... |
for Soprano. No. 1 Orchestrated |
| 6 | Six Songs | 1888-89 | Heine, Grun, Paul Nikolaus Cossmann | for High Baritone |
| 7 | Five Songs | 1888-1900 | Wolfgang von Königswinter Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter Wolfgang Müller von Königswinter was a German novelist and poet. He settled in Cologne, and became a popular poet, novelist, and chronicler of the Rhine region.-Biography:... , Eichendorff, Paul Heyse, Grun |
No. 3 Orchestrated |
| 9 | Five Songs | 1894-95 | Eichendorff | |
| 10 | Three Songs | 1889-1901 | Detlev von Lilencron, Eichendorff | for Medium Voice |
| 11 | Five Songs | 1901 | Friedrich Hebbel, Ludwig Jacobowski, Eichendorff, Richard Dehmel Richard Dehmel Richard Fedor Leopold Dehmel was a German poet and writer.- Life :... , Carl Hermann Busse Carl Hermann Busse Carl Busse was a German lyric poet... |
No. 4, 5 Orchestrated |
| – | Untreu und Trost | 1903 | Anon | for Medium voice. Also orchestrated. |
| 15 | Four Songs | 1904 | Busse, Eichendorff, von Stach | No. 2, 3, 4 orchestrated |
| 18 | An den Mond | 1906 | Goethe | Longer song (ca. 8 min.). Also orchestrated |
| 19 | Two Songs | 1905 | Busse | |
| 21 | Two Songs | 1907 | Hebbel, Eichendorff | for High Voice |
| 22 | Five Songs | 1907 | Eichendorff, Adelbert von Chamisso Adelbert von Chamisso Adelbert von Chamisso was a German poet and botanist.- Life :He was born Louis Charles Adélaïde de Chamissot at the château of Boncourt at Ante, in Champagne, France, the ancestral seat of his family... , Gottfried August Bürger Gottfried August Bürger Gottfried August Bürger was a German poet. His ballads were very popular in Germany. His most noted ballad, Lenore, found an audience beyond readers of the German language in an English adaptation and a French translation.-Biography:He was born in Molmerswende , Principality of Halberstadt, where... |
|
| 24 | Four Songs | 1909 | Walther von der Vogelweide Walther von der Vogelweide Walther von der Vogelweide is the most celebrated of the Middle High German lyric poets.-Life history:For all his fame, Walther's name is not found in contemporary records, with the exception of a solitary mention in the travelling accounts of Bishop Wolfger of Erla of the Passau diocese:... , Petrarch Petrarch Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"... (trans. Karl August Förster), Friedrich Lienhard |
No. 1 orchestrated |
| 26 | Five Songs | 1916 | Friedrich Hebbel, Eichendorff, Gottfried August Bürger, Goethe | No 2, 4 orchestrated |
| 29 | Four Songs | 1921 | Hölderlin, Rückert, Goethe, Dehmel | dedicated to his family No. 3 orchestrated |
| 30 | Four Songs | 1922 | Nikolaus Lenau, Mörike, Dehmel | |
| 32 | Four Songs | 1923 | Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer Conrad Ferdinand Meyer was a Swiss poet and historical novelist, a master of realism chiefly remembered for stirring narrative ballads like "Die Füße im Feuer" .-Biography:... |
for Baritone or Bass |
| 33 | Alte Weisen | 1923 | Gottfried Keller Gottfried Keller Gottfried Keller , a Swiss writer of German-language literature, was best known for his novel Green Henry .- Life and work :... |
|
| 35 | Six Liebeslieder | 1924 | Ricarda Huch | For a female voice |
| 40 | Six Songs | 1931 | Ludwig Jacobwski, Adolf Bartels, Ricarda Huch, Martin Greif, Goethe, Eichendorff | No. 5, 6 orchestrated |
| 41 | Three Sonnets | 1931 | Petrarch (trans. Bürger), Eichendorff | For a male voice |
External links
- UbuWeb:A New Musical Reality": Futurism, Modernism, and "The Art of Noises" by Robert P. Morgan