Ludwig Thuille was a German composer and teacher, numbered for a while among the leading operatic composers of the 'Munich School

Munich School

The most important artistic movement of Greek Art in the 19th century was academic realism, often called in Greece "the Munich School" because of the strong influence from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Munich , where many Greek artists trained.- History :...

', whose most famous representative was 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...

.

Biography

Thuille was born at Bozen, then part of Tyrol

County of Tyrol

The County of Tyrol, Princely County from 1504, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1814 a province of the Austrian Empire and from 1867 a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary...

, now in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

.

He lost both his parents in childhood, and moved to stay with an uncle in Austria. He studied in Innsbruck

Innsbruck

- Main sights :- Buildings :*Golden Roof*Kaiserliche Hofburg *Hofkirche with the cenotaph of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor*Altes Landhaus...

 (where in 1877 he met the young Richard Strauss, who became a lifelong friend) and then with Josef Rheinberger

Josef Rheinberger

Josef Gabriel Rheinberger was a German organist and composer, born in Liechtenstein.-Short biography:...

, among others, in Munich. Subsequently he became professor of theory and composition at the Akademie der Tonkunst in that city. His many pupils included Hermann Abendroth

Hermann Abendroth

Hermann Paul Maximilian Abendroth was a German conductor.-Early life:Abendroth was born on 19 January 1883, at Frankfurt, Germany, belonging to a family which had already produced other artistic figures of divers disciplines...

, Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch

Ernest Bloch was a Swiss-born American composer.-Life:Bloch was born in Geneva and began playing the violin at age 9. He began composing soon afterwards. He studied music at the conservatory in Brussels, where his teachers included the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe...

, Ernst Boehe, Richard Wetz

Richard Wetz

Richard Wetz was a German late Romantic composer best known for his three symphonies. In these works, he "seems to have aimed to be an immediate continuation of Bruckner, as a result of which he actually ended up on the margin of music history".-1875-1906: Youth:Richard Wetz was born to a merchant...

, Rudi Stephan

Rudi Stephan

Rudi Stephan , was a German composer of great promise who shortly before the First World War was considered one of the leading talents among his generation....

, Walter Braunfels

Walter Braunfels

-Life:Walter Braunfels was born in Frankfurt am Main. His first music teacher was his mother, the great-niece of the composer Louis Spohr . He continued his piano studies in Frankfurt at the Hoch Conservatory with James Kwast....

 and Henry Kimball Hadley

Henry Kimball Hadley

Henry Kimball Hadley was an American composer and conductor.-Life:Hadley was born into a musical family in Somerville, Massachusetts...

.

A prolific composer, Thuille concentrated on chamber music - he is remembered principally for his Sextet for piano and wind instruments (1886–88), the only one of his works to have kept a toehold on the repertoire - and opera, though his early works include a Piano Concerto and a Symphony. In 1897 his opera Theuerdank gained the first prize and a prestigious staged premiere in an operatic competition sponsored by the Regent of Bavaria

Bavaria

Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...

, in which Alexander von Zemlinsky

Alexander von Zemlinsky

Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.-Early life:...

 was placed second. His second opera Lobetanz was premiered the following year in Karlsruhe

Karlsruhe

The City of Karlsruhe is a city in the southwest of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, located near the French-German border.Karlsruhe was founded in 1715 as Karlsruhe Palace, when Germany was a series of principalities and city states...

 and was a considerable, if short-lived, success.

Despite his friendship with Strauss (which extended to making a 2-piano arrangement of the latter's tone poem Don Juan

Don Juan (Strauss)

Don Juan, Op. 20 is a tone poem for large orchestra by the German composer Richard Strauss, written in 1888. The composer conducted its premiere on 11 November 1889 with the orchestra of the Weimar Opera, where he served as Court Kapellmeister....

), and despite his devotion to music-drama, Thuille remained a fairly conservative composer during his brief life. He died at 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...

 in 1907.

His posthumously-published Harmonielehre (written in collaboration with Rudolf Louis

Rudolf Louis

Rudolf Louis was an influential German music critic and conductor. He was born in Schwetzingen on 30 January 1870. He studied in Geneva, where he was a pupil of Friedrich Klose, and continued his studies in Vienna and then Karlsruhe under Felix Mottl before becoming conductor of the theatre...

) went through many editions and was highly influential.

While Thuille's Sextet has always retained a certain following, several of his other compositions have become commercially available on CD only in recent years—his two Piano Quintets, the Piano Concerto in D and his Symphony in F (1885) chief among them.

External links