Paul Wittgenstein
Encyclopedia
Paul Wittgenstein was an Austrian-born concert pianist
, who became known for his ability to play with just his left hand, after he lost his right arm during the First World War
. He devised novel techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him to play chords previously regarded as impossible for a five-fingered pianist. He commissioned several pieces for the left hand from prominent composers.
He was the older brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
.
, son of the industrialist Karl Wittgenstein
. His brother Ludwig was born two years later. The household was frequently visited by prominent cultural figures, among them the composers Johannes Brahms
, Gustav Mahler
, Josef Labor
, and Richard Strauss
, with whom the young Paul played duets. His grandmother, Fanny Wittgenstein, was a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachim
, whom she adopted and took to Leipzig to study with Felix Mendelssohn
.
He studied with Malvine Brée and later with a much better known figure, the Polish virtuoso Theodor Leschetizky
. He made his public debut in 1913 and favourable reviews were written about him. The following year, however, World War I
broke out, and he was called up for military service. He was shot in the elbow and captured by the Russians during an assault on Poland, and his right arm had to be amputated.
in Siberia, he resolved to continue his career using only his left hand. Through the Danish Ambassador, he wrote to his old teacher Josef Labor
, who was blind, asking for a concerto for the left hand. Labor responded quickly, saying he had already started work on a piece. Following the end of the war, Wittgenstein studied intensely, arranging pieces for the left hand alone and learning the new composition written for him by Labor. Once again he began to give concerts, and became well known and loved. He then approached more famous composers, asking them to write material for him to perform. Benjamin Britten
, Paul Hindemith
, Alexandre Tansman
, Erich Wolfgang Korngold
, Sergei Prokofiev
, Franz Schmidt
, Sergei Bortkiewicz
, and Richard Strauss
all produced pieces for him. Maurice Ravel
wrote his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
, which became more famous than any of the other compositions that Wittgenstein inspired.
However, he did not play every piece he had commissioned. He told Prokofiev that he could not yet understand the 4th Piano Concerto
but would play it when he did; however, he never reached that point. He rejected outright Hindemith's Piano Music with Orchestra Op. 29; he hid the score in his study, and it was not discovered until after his widow's death in 2002 (by which time Hindemith himself had been dead for 39 years). He was able to take this approach because he insisted on exclusive lifetime performing rights for all the pieces written for him. Wittgenstein wrote to Siegfried Rapp on June 5, 1950: You don't build a house just so that someone else can live in it. I commissioned and paid for the works, the whole idea was mine [...]. But those works to which I still have the exclusive performance rights are to remain mine as long as I still perform in public; that's only right and fair. Once I am dead or no longer give concerts, then the works will be available to everyone because I have no wish for them to gather dust in libraries to the detriment of the composer. (Siegfried Rapp was to premiere Prokofiev's 4th Piano Concerto in 1956, five years before Wittgenstein's death.)
Many of the pieces Wittgenstein commissioned are still frequently performed today by two-armed pianists; in particular, the Austrian pianist Friedrich Wührer
, claiming the composer's sanction but apparently over Wittgenstein's objections, created two-hand arrangements of Franz Schmidt's Wittgenstein-inspired left-hand works. Pianists born after Wittgenstein who for one reason or another have lost the use of their right hands, such as Leon Fleisher
(although he eventually recovered his right hand's abilities) and João Carlos Martins
, have also played works composed for him.
The Wittgenstein family had converted to Christianity three generations before his birth on the paternal side and two generations before on the maternal side; nonetheless they were of mainly Jewish descent, and under the Nuremberg laws they were classed as Jews. Following the rise of the Nazi Party and the annexation of Austria
, Paul tried to persuade his sisters Helene and Hermine to leave Vienna, but they demurred: they were attached to their homes there, and could not believe such a distinguished family as theirs was in real danger. Ludwig had already been living in England for some years, and Margaret (Gretl)
was married to an American. Paul himself, who was no longer permitted to perform in public concerts under the Nazis, departed for the United States
in 1938. From there he and Gretl, with some assistance from Ludwig (who acquired British nationality in 1939), managed to use family finances (mostly held abroad) and legal connections to attain non-Jewish status for their sisters.
The family finances supposedly consisted of the voluntary surrender of all properties and assets in Germany and occupied lands with a total value of about US$6 billion at the time, which may have been the largest private fortune in Europe. Essentially all family assets were surrendered to the Nazis in return for protection afforded the two sisters under exceptional interpretations of racial law, allowing them to continue to live in their family palace in Vienna.
Paul became an American citizen in 1946, and spent the rest of his life in the United States, where he did a good deal of teaching as well as playing. He died in New York City
in 1961.
An episode of the long-running television series M*A*S*H, "Morale Victory," featured James Stephens
as a drafted concert pianist who suffers debilitating nerve damage in his right hand after being wounded in combat. Charles Winchester (David Ogden Stiers
) provides him with the sheet music for Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand
, tells him Wittgenstein's story, and encourages him not to abandon his musical gift.
Paul Wittgenstein appears as a character in Derek Jarman
's 1993 film Wittgenstein
, about his brother Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
, who became known for his ability to play with just his left hand, after he lost his right arm during the First World War
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. He devised novel techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him to play chords previously regarded as impossible for a five-fingered pianist. He commissioned several pieces for the left hand from prominent composers.
He was the older brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He was professor in philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1939 until 1947...
.
Early life
Wittgenstein was born in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, son of the industrialist Karl Wittgenstein
Karl Wittgenstein
Karl Wittgenstein was a steel tycoon. A friend of Andrew Carnegie, with whom he was often compared, at the end of 19th century he controlled an effective monopoly on steel and iron resources within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and had by the 1890s acquired one of the largest fortunes in the world...
. His brother Ludwig was born two years later. The household was frequently visited by prominent cultural figures, among them the composers 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...
, Gustav Mahler
Gustav 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...
, Josef Labor
Josef Labor
Josef Labor was a Czech pianist, organist, and composer of late Romantic music. Labor was an influential music teacher. As a friend of some key figures in Vienna, his importance was enhanced....
, 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...
, with whom the young Paul played duets. His grandmother, Fanny Wittgenstein, was a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...
, whom she adopted and took to Leipzig to study with 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...
.
He studied with Malvine Brée and later with a much better known figure, the Polish virtuoso Theodor Leschetizky
Teodor Leszetycki
Theodor Leschetizky was a Polish pianist, professor and composer.-Life:Theodor Leschetizky was born on the estate of the family of Count Potocki in Łańcut. His father was a gifted pianist and music teacher of Viennese birth. His mother Therèse Ulmann was a gifted singer of German origin...
. He made his public debut in 1913 and favourable reviews were written about him. The following year, however, World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
broke out, and he was called up for military service. He was shot in the elbow and captured by the Russians during an assault on Poland, and his right arm had to be amputated.
New career as a left-handed pianist
During his recovery in a prisoner-of-war camp in OmskOmsk
-History:The wooden fort of Omsk was erected in 1716 to protect the expanding Russian frontier along the Ishim and the Irtysh rivers against the Kyrgyz nomads of the Steppes...
in Siberia, he resolved to continue his career using only his left hand. Through the Danish Ambassador, he wrote to his old teacher Josef Labor
Josef Labor
Josef Labor was a Czech pianist, organist, and composer of late Romantic music. Labor was an influential music teacher. As a friend of some key figures in Vienna, his importance was enhanced....
, who was blind, asking for a concerto for the left hand. Labor responded quickly, saying he had already started work on a piece. Following the end of the war, Wittgenstein studied intensely, arranging pieces for the left hand alone and learning the new composition written for him by Labor. Once again he began to give concerts, and became well known and loved. He then approached more famous composers, asking them to write material for him to perform. Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
, Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
, Alexandre Tansman
Alexandre Tansman
Alexandre Tansman was a Polish-born composer and virtuoso pianist. He spent his early years in his native Poland, but lived in France for most of his life...
, Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an Austro-Hungarian film and romantic music composer. While his compositional style was considered well out of vogue at the time he died, his music has more recently undergone a reevaluation and a gradual reawakening of interest...
, Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...
, Franz Schmidt
Franz Schmidt
Franz Schmidt was an Austrian composer, cellist and pianist of Hungarian descent and origin.- Life :Schmidt was born in Pozsony , in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire . His father was half Hungarian and his mother entirely Hungarian...
, Sergei Bortkiewicz
Sergei Bortkiewicz
Sergei Bortkiewicz was a Ukrainian-born Russian Romantic composer and pianist.-Early life:Sergei Eduardovich Bortkiewicz was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine on 28 February 1877 in Polish noble family and spent most of his childhood on the family estate of Artëmovka, near Kharkiv...
, 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...
all produced pieces for him. Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
wrote his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Ravel)
The Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major was composed by Maurice Ravel between 1929 and 1930, concurrently with his Piano Concerto in G. It was commissioned by the Austrian pianist, Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during World War I....
, which became more famous than any of the other compositions that Wittgenstein inspired.
However, he did not play every piece he had commissioned. He told Prokofiev that he could not yet understand the 4th Piano Concerto
Piano Concerto No. 4 (Prokofiev)
Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto No. 4 in B-flat major for the left hand, Op. 53, was commissioned by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein and completed in 1931....
but would play it when he did; however, he never reached that point. He rejected outright Hindemith's Piano Music with Orchestra Op. 29; he hid the score in his study, and it was not discovered until after his widow's death in 2002 (by which time Hindemith himself had been dead for 39 years). He was able to take this approach because he insisted on exclusive lifetime performing rights for all the pieces written for him. Wittgenstein wrote to Siegfried Rapp on June 5, 1950: You don't build a house just so that someone else can live in it. I commissioned and paid for the works, the whole idea was mine [...]. But those works to which I still have the exclusive performance rights are to remain mine as long as I still perform in public; that's only right and fair. Once I am dead or no longer give concerts, then the works will be available to everyone because I have no wish for them to gather dust in libraries to the detriment of the composer. (Siegfried Rapp was to premiere Prokofiev's 4th Piano Concerto in 1956, five years before Wittgenstein's death.)
Many of the pieces Wittgenstein commissioned are still frequently performed today by two-armed pianists; in particular, the Austrian pianist Friedrich Wührer
Friedrich Wührer
Friedrich Wührer was an Austrian-German pianist and piano pedagogue. He was a close associate and advocate of composer Franz Schmidt, whose music he edited and, in the case of the works for left hand alone, revised for performance with two hands; he was also a champion of the Second Viennese...
, claiming the composer's sanction but apparently over Wittgenstein's objections, created two-hand arrangements of Franz Schmidt's Wittgenstein-inspired left-hand works. Pianists born after Wittgenstein who for one reason or another have lost the use of their right hands, such as Leon Fleisher
Leon Fleisher
Leon Fleisher is an American pianist and conductor.-Early life and studies:Fleisher was born in San Francisco, where he started studying the piano at age four...
(although he eventually recovered his right hand's abilities) and João Carlos Martins
João Carlos Martins
João Carlos Martins, born June 25, 1940 in Sao Paulo, Brazil is an acclaimed Brazilian classical pianist and conductor, who has performed with leading orchestras in the United States, Europe and Brazil....
, have also played works composed for him.
The Wittgenstein family had converted to Christianity three generations before his birth on the paternal side and two generations before on the maternal side; nonetheless they were of mainly Jewish descent, and under the Nuremberg laws they were classed as Jews. Following the rise of the Nazi Party and the annexation of Austria
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
, Paul tried to persuade his sisters Helene and Hermine to leave Vienna, but they demurred: they were attached to their homes there, and could not believe such a distinguished family as theirs was in real danger. Ludwig had already been living in England for some years, and Margaret (Gretl)
Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein
Margarethe "Gretl" Stonborough-Wittgenstein , of the prominent and wealthy Viennese Wittgenstein family, was a sister of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the pianist Paul Wittgenstein...
was married to an American. Paul himself, who was no longer permitted to perform in public concerts under the Nazis, departed for the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in 1938. From there he and Gretl, with some assistance from Ludwig (who acquired British nationality in 1939), managed to use family finances (mostly held abroad) and legal connections to attain non-Jewish status for their sisters.
The family finances supposedly consisted of the voluntary surrender of all properties and assets in Germany and occupied lands with a total value of about US$6 billion at the time, which may have been the largest private fortune in Europe. Essentially all family assets were surrendered to the Nazis in return for protection afforded the two sisters under exceptional interpretations of racial law, allowing them to continue to live in their family palace in Vienna.
Paul became an American citizen in 1946, and spent the rest of his life in the United States, where he did a good deal of teaching as well as playing. He died in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1961.
In popular culture
John Barchilon wrote a novel based on Wittgenstein's life called The Crown Prince.An episode of the long-running television series M*A*S*H, "Morale Victory," featured James Stephens
James Stephens (actor)
James Stephens is an American television and film actor best known as James T. Hart in the television series The Paper Chase .-Biography:...
as a drafted concert pianist who suffers debilitating nerve damage in his right hand after being wounded in combat. Charles Winchester (David Ogden Stiers
David Ogden Stiers
David Ogden Stiers is an American actor, director, vocal actor, and musician, noted for his roles in Disney movies, as well as his performances in the television series M*A*S*H as Major Charles Emerson Winchester III and the science fiction drama The Dead Zone as Reverend Gene Purdy...
) provides him with the sheet music for Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand
Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Ravel)
The Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D major was composed by Maurice Ravel between 1929 and 1930, concurrently with his Piano Concerto in G. It was commissioned by the Austrian pianist, Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm during World War I....
, tells him Wittgenstein's story, and encourages him not to abandon his musical gift.
Paul Wittgenstein appears as a character in Derek Jarman
Derek Jarman
Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English film director, stage designer, diarist, artist, gardener and author.-Life:...
's 1993 film Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein (film)
Wittgenstein is a 1993 film by the English director Derek Jarman. It is loosely based on the life story as well as the philosophical thinking of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The adult Wittgenstein is played by the Welsh actor Karl Johnson....
, about his brother Ludwig Wittgenstein.