Richard Wetz - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Richard Wetz was a German

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...

late Romantic

Romantic music

Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....

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...

best known for his three symphonies

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

. In these works, he "seems to have aimed to be an immediate continuation of Bruckner

Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...

, 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 family in Gleiwitz

Gliwice

Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. Gliwice is the west district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – a metropolis with a population of 2 million...

, Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia. Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of Greater Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Piast Kingdom of Poland, again of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as of...

(now Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

). Although his family owned a piano, no family member was particularly interested in music. The young Richard, who felt drawn to music early on, did not receive regular piano lessons until the age of eight years, but quickly taught himself by composing smaller piano and song pieces. He later stated that he resolved to dedicate his life to music by the age of 13.

After passing his final examinations in 1897, he went to 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...

to study at the conservatoire under such tutors as Carl Reinecke

Carl Reinecke

Carl Heinrich Carsten Reinecke was a German composer, conductor, and pianist.-Biography:Reinecke was born in Altona, Hamburg, Germany; until 1864 the town was under Danish rule. He studied with his father, Johann Peter Rudolph Reinecke, a music teacher...

and Salomon Jadassohn

Salomon Jadassohn

Salomon Jadassohn was a German composer and a renowned teacher of piano and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory.-Life:...

. After only 6 weeks, however, he discontinued his studies after suffering from disillusionment regarding what he considered overly academic lessons. He instead took private lessons from Richard Hofmann

Richard Hofmann

Richard Hofmann was a German football player. He played in 25 internationals for Germany as a centre forward, scoring 24 goals, including the first ever international hat-trick against England by a player from outside the home nations.-Life and career:He was born in Meerane, Saxony, Germany, and...

, then leader of the Leipzig music academy, for half a year. At the same time, he took up studies at Leipzig University, including philosophy, psychology and literature. He studied poets such as Friedrich Hölderlin

Friedrich Hölderlin

Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...

, Heinrich von Kleist

Heinrich von Kleist

Bernd Heinrich Wilhelm von Kleist was a poet, dramatist, novelist and short story writer. The Kleist Prize, a prestigious prize for German literature, is named after him.- Life :...

and particularly Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann 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...

, who had great influence on his later work as a composer. Likewise, he became a follower of the philosophical ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...

. In the Autumn of 1899, Wetz left Leipzig and moved to Munich, where he began to study music with Ludwig Thuille

Ludwig Thuille

Ludwig Thuille was a German composer and teacher, numbered for a while among the leading operatic composers of the 'Munich School', whose most famous representative was Richard Strauss.-Biography:...

. Again in 1900, Wetz interrupted his study and moved to Stralsund

Stralsund

- Main sights :* The Brick Gothic historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.* The heart of the old town is the Old Market Square , with the Gothic Town Hall . Behind the town hall stands the imposing Nikolaikirche , built in 1270-1360...

where Felix Weingartner

Felix Weingartner

Paul Felix von Weingartner, Edler von Münzberg was an Austrian conductor, composer and pianist.-Biography:...

found him employment as a theatrical bandmaster. After some months he was in the same position in Barmen

Barmen

Barmen is a former industrial metropolis of the region of Bergisches Land, Germany, which in 1929 with four other towns was merged with the city of Wuppertal, North Rhine-Westphalia. Barmen was the birth-place of Friedrich Engels and together with the neighbouring town of Elberfeld founded the...

(now Wuppertal

Wuppertal

Wuppertal is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located in and around the Wupper river valley, and is situated east of the city of Düsseldorf and south of the Ruhr area. With a population of approximately 350,000, it is the largest city in the Bergisches Land...

), but only a short time later he found himself again unemployed in Leipzig. Here he educated himself further in music history, also studying scores of classical and modern composers. Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner

and Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

became his most important role models.

1906-1935: A master in the province

Wetz was appointed a manager of the Erfurt

Erfurt

Erfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...

music association in 1906. He fell in love with the town and remained there for the rest of his life. Until this point, Wetz's published compositional works had almost exclusively been piano songs, though he twice tried to write opera. He wrote the librettros for both works, Judith (op

Opus number

An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...

. 13) and The Eternal Fire (op. 19). His one act play, The Eternal Fire, was performed in 1907 in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

and Düsseldorf

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...

, but with little success. In 1909 he received a better reception with his Kleist-Ouvertüre (op. 16) which Arthur Nikisch

Arthur Nikisch

Arthur Nikisch ; 12 October 185523 January 1922) was a Hungarian conductor who performed internationally, holding posts in Boston, London and - most importantly - Berlin. He was considered an outstanding interpreter of the music of Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Liszt...

conducted in Leipzig. (Musical Times link)

During the following years, Wetz devoted himself to the music profession. He gave lessons in the Erfurt city conservatoire (in 1911-1921, composition and history of music), and honed his skills in conducting

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

various choirs (the Erfurt Song Academy in 1914/15, the "Riedelscher Gesangverein" in Leipzig, and after 1918, the "Engelbrechtscher Madrigalchor"). He also worked in composing choral music, a cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...

, and orchestral accompaniments. Some of the most notable works of the period were the Song of Life (op. 29), Hyperion (op. 32) (after Friedrich Hölderlin

Friedrich Hölderlin

) and a setting of the Third Psalm (op. 37). However, his mature style had not yet fully developed. In 1917, Wetz become a lecturer (assistant professor), and in 1920 professor, of the history of music and composition to the ducal college for music in Weimar

Weimar

Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...

. In 1917 he completed his First Symphony in C minor (op. 40). The symphonies No. 2 in A major (op. 47) and No. 3 in B flat minor (described as B flat major, op. 48) followed in 1919 and 1922.

In parallel, Wetz worked on his two string quartets in F minor (op. 43) and E minor (op. 49). Afterwards, he devoted himself to working on choral pieces. Thus originated the Requiem

Requiem

A Requiem or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead or Mass of the dead , is a Mass celebrated for the repose of the soul or souls of one or more deceased persons, using a particular form of the Roman Missal...

in B minor (op. 50) and the Christmas Oratorio on Old-German poems (op. 53), possibly his most significant compositions. Wetz also wrote monographs about models Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner

(1922) and Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

(1925) as well as Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

(1927).

In the mid-1920s the composer organized and led in Erfurt numerous music parties in which he performed his own works. He resigned the formal management of the Erfurt music association in 1925, but remained the central figure of the musical life of the city. In 1928 Wetz and Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

were appointed foreign members of the Prussian Academy of the Arts. A short time later Wetz was called to the Berlin College of Music where he rose to be one of the most successful composition teachers. He left, however, in favor of his posts in Erfurt and Weimar. During the last years of his life, the work at the Weimar college of music increasingly took up his time. Nevertheless he managed to produce further compositions. As his last great work, in 1933 he completed his violin concerto

Violin concerto

A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin and instrumental ensemble, customarily orchestra. Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up through the present day...

in B minor (op. 57). In 1934, the town appointed him the music representative of the city of Erfurt.

In October of that year, Wetz was diagnosed with lung cancer, brought about by excessive smoking. Although strongly impaired, the composer continued with unbroken creative urge, working on the outlines of an oratorio, Love, Life, Eternity after the texts of Goethe, which he wanted to be a monument to his favorite poet. The work, however, was left unfinished on his death. A fourth symphony was also left in a fragmentary state, and a third string quartet was also found incomplete amongst his papers. Richard Wetz died on 16 January 1935 in Erfurt, age 59. According to his will the fragments of the Goethe oratorio were to be completed by the composer Werner Trenkner, who Wetz considered his greatest pupil. Trenkner failed at completing the work due to civil disputes, and the sketches have since been lost.

Reception

~ Richard Wetz, 1932

During Wetz's lifetime, his works remained little known outside the circle of his devotees and music-lovers in his home region, to the point that he became nearly unknown after his death. Since that time, his compositions have continued to draw few fans despite the eagerness of his enthusiasts and his reputation as a great music pedagogue. Politically, Wetz made decisions towards the end of his life that may have had an effect on his standing after his death: after the end of 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 became a confessed nationalist who saw the position of his vanquished Germany as a humiliation and longed for resurgence of national greatness, which seemed possible to him in 1933 with the seizure of power by the National Socialists (the Nazis

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

). In May of that same year he enrolled into the Nazi Party and took over the leadership of the music department of the Erfurt branch of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, where he hoped he could thereby gain the goodwill and the support of the Nazi rulers. This, however, had little influence on his ability to spread his work, leaving him the role of composing primarily propaganda pieces.

His most significant interpreter was the 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...

, who performed for the first time all of the Wetz symphonies, and was appointed shortly after Wetz's death in 1935 to be the chairman of the imperial music hall. It was Raabe who founded a Richard Wetz society in 1943 in Gleiwitz

Gliwice

Gliwice is a city in Upper Silesia in southern Poland, near Katowice. Gliwice is the west district of the Upper Silesian Metropolitan Union – a metropolis with a population of 2 million...

. Raabe's work remained greatly hampered, however, by the Second World War

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. In the post-war period, Wetz's reputation suffered from his identification with National Socialist ideology, as well as the rapid developments of contemporary music at that time which had passed over the tradition-conscious late romantic.

The fact that Wetz had preferred the life in provincial Erfurt to that of the real music metropolises, and that he was never moved to create popular compositions which could have increased his reputation, did little to bring Wetz and his works to the broader general public. Indeed, some conductors questioned the quality of his compositions until the 1990s (especially during the arrangements for celebrations in his honour in Erfurt in 1955, 20th anniversary of his death and what would be his 80th birthday). Only recently have his creations been rediscovered. For example, the requiem of the composer was performed for the first time in sixty years in September 2003 at the Erfurt church's music festival, under the direction of George Alexander Albrecht.

Style

If one considers the life of Richard Wetz, it is not surprising that in the 1929 Riemann Music Encyclopedia he was stated to have "arranged to be a loner ". His stature was less than other composers of the time and the new achievements of contemporaries such as Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

, Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...

or Franz Schreker

Franz Schreker

Franz Schreker was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator. Primarily a composer of operas, his style is characterized by aesthetic plurality , timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and...

left him behind. Increasingly, the accepted cultural pessimism violently railed against the kind of music that Wetz was writing. Wetz was more related in attitude with such keepers of 19th century tradition such as Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

, Hans Pfitzner

Hans Pfitzner

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.-Biography:Pfitzner was born in Moscow, Russia, where his...

and 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...

, than his contemporaries.

According to his own statements, he depended on familiar surroundings for his composition: "I can compose only with myself at home. Neither on a summer holiday nor during longer vacations I have ever created anything". Statements like this explain why Wetz began to devote himself increasingly to the composition of symphonies and larger choral works only when he settled in Erfurt, but also why he later refused all offers for more lucrative positions and commissions. The seclusion - bordering on isolation - from the mainstream of the German music scene of the past allowed Wetz to concentrate completely upon the development of his own personal style.
Wetz wrote only vocal works in his early days. He often returned to this style until his dying days, which explains why this is the largest part of his output. Wetz counts as one of the most important song composers of his generation. The authorities in this field that Wetz looked to were Franz Schubert

Franz Schubert

Franz Peter Schubert was an Austrian composer.Although he died at an early age, Schubert was tremendously prolific. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies , liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music...

, Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

, Peter Cornelius

Peter Cornelius

Carl August Peter Cornelius was a German composer, writer about music, poet and translator. He was born and died in Mainz where his grave in the Hauptfriedhof survives....

and 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...

. Liszt, especially, strongly influenced the tonal patterns of Wetz's early work, although even then Wetz was already forging his own path. This creative period culminates in two operas and Kleist-Ouvertüre, an orchestral work inspired by the tragic destiny of the poet.

From the beginning of Wetz's Erfurt years, his choral works moved away from Liszt's influence bit by bit and Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner

began to influence the composer. His striving to imitate Bruckner's tonal language shows in the fact that no stylistic break arises between these compositions and earlier works. Wetz learned even more from Bruckner, his clear form structures and the sense of an organic growth of the music without it being overwhelming. Nevertheless, a large measure due to Bruckner, he typically composed powerful and ceremonious effects

Melodrama

The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

without stylistic peculiarities.

Wetz's three symphonies are powerful, introverted works in the style of late romantic

Romantic music

symphonic

Symphony

music being cultivated at the time, yet his works show their own distinct personalities separating them from the tradition. For Wetz, the subdued nature of the closing passages of his works confirm the integrity of these works. The first symphony's end, for instance, begins in the key of C minor (as Bruckner did also) and almost dissolves in a bright major key before, after a recall of earlier music, an austere and minor-mode conclusion not heard in any Bruckner finale (closer to the mood of the conclusions to some Bruckner opening movements) comes around. This was certainly influenced by the spirit of the times in which he lived, which were certainly not typical. His quartets follow the same techniques in form and gesture as his symphonies, but these were invested with substantially more intense feeling than the more public symphonies.

In his later works, Richard Wetz increasingly refined his style. He began to use chromatic harmonies in even stronger measure in his tonal language. A change to a more polyphonic style already apparent in the string quartets becomes apparent in other works, most notably in the organ piece Passacaglia and Fugue (op. 55 of 1930). After that point, the influence of Bruckner drops away. In his masterpieces, the requiem and the Christmas oratorio, Wetz discovers a synthesis of symphonic and vocal music in which he summarizes his accumulated musical experience. The violin concerto shows what is probably the most daring formal arrangement in the whole output of the composer and is comparable to the similar violin concerto by Pfitzner, written in the same key (B minor). Although illness and death took Wetz prematurely, he remains nevertheless "One of the great and unmistakable talents of German late romanticism".

Works

The list of works of Richard Wetz contains 58 Opuses, in addition there are a small number of compositions which were published without numbering. Op. 1-4 and Op. 6 are not considered discoverable any longer, and the composer declared some other early works provided with opus figures as invalid.

Opera

Judith op. 13 (3 Acts; Libretto: Richard Wetz)
Das ewige Feuer (The Eternal Fire) op. 19 (1 Act; Libretto: Richard Wetz. Published 1910)

Choir works

Traumsommernacht (Summer's-Night Dream) op. 14 for women's choir and orchestra (pub. Kistner, 1912)

(Recording: Augsburg college of music chamber choir, Rhineland-Palatinate

Rhineland-Palatinate

Rhineland-Palatinate is one of the 16 states of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has an area of and about four million inhabitants. The capital is Mainz. English speakers also commonly refer to the state by its German name, Rheinland-Pfalz ....

State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, 2004)

Gesang des Lebens (Song of Life) op. 29 for boy's choir and orchestra (pub. Kistner, 1910)

(Recording: Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic and State Youth Choir, Werner Andreas Albert

Werner 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...

, 2001)

Chorlied aus Oedipus auf Colonos "Nicht geboren ist das Beste" (Choir song from Oedipus on Colonos: "Born is not the best") op. 31 for mixed choir and orchestra (after Sophocles
Sophocles
Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...

) (pub. Kistner, 1912)
Hyperion op. 32 for baritone, mixed choir and orchestra (after Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin was a major German lyric poet, commonly associated with the artistic movement known as Romanticism. Hölderlin was also an important thinker in the development of German Idealism, particularly his early association with and philosophical influence on his...

), vocal score published by Kistner, 1912

(Recording: Markus Köhler, Augsburg college of music chamber choir, Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, 2004)

Der dritte Psalm (The third Psalm) op. 37 for baritone, mixed choir and orchestra
Four secular songs (Kyrie, Et incarnatus est, Crucifixus, Agnus Dei) for choir, A cappella
A cappella
A cappella music is specifically solo or group singing without instrumental sound, or a piece intended to be performed in this way. It is the opposite of cantata, which is accompanied singing. A cappella was originally intended to differentiate between Renaissance polyphony and Baroque concertato...

op. 44
Kreuzfahrerlied (Cross driver song) op. 46 for mixed choir (after 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...

) (published 1910)
Requiem in B minor op. 50 for soprano, baritone, mixed choir and orchestra (pub. 1925)

(Recording: Marietta Zumbült, Mario Hoff, Erfurt Cathedral Choir, Weimar Philharmonic Choir, Thuringian Weimar State Orchestra, George Alexander Albrecht

George Alexander Albrecht

George Alexander Albrecht is a German conductor. His brother Ernst Albrecht is a politician. His son is the conductor Marc Albrecht....

,CPO 2003.)

Ein Weihnachts-Oratorium auf alt-deutsche Gedichte (A Christmas Oratorio on old-German poems) op. 53 for Soprano, baritone, mixed choir and orchestra
Drei Weihnachtsmotetten für unbegleiteten gem. Chor op. 58
Liebe, Leben, Ewigkeit, (Love, life, eternity) Oratory fragment (after Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann 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...

, missing)

Orchestral works

Kleist-Ouvertüre in D Minor op. 16 (Kistner, 1908)

(Recording: Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, CPO 1999)

Symphony #1 in C Minor op. 40 (pub. Simrock, 1924)

(Recording: Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra, Roland Bader,CPO 1994)

Symphony #2 in A Major op. 47 (pub. 1925)

(Recording: Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, CPO 1999)

Symphony #3 in B flat Major (actually B flat Minor) op. 48

(Recording: Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert,CPO 2001)

(Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Erich Peter, 1981, Sterling)

Violin concerto in B Minor op. 57 (pub. 1933)

(Recording: Ulf Wallin (Violin), Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, CPO 2003)

Chamber music

Sonata
Sonata
Sonata , in music, literally means a piece played as opposed to a cantata , a piece sung. The term, being vague, naturally evolved through the history of music, designating a variety of forms prior to the Classical era...

for Solo Violin in G Major op. 33 (Kistner, 1913)
String Quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

#1 in F Minor op. 43 (Kistner, 1918)
String Quartet #2 in E Minor op. 49 (Simrock, 1924)

Organ music

Passacaglia and Fugue in D Minor op. 55 (pub. 1930)

(Recording: "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", Silvius von Kessel, 2000, Motette)

(Recording: "Orgelland Niederlausitz Vol.1", Lothar Knappe, 2003, H'ART)

Kleine Toccata in E Minor

Piano music

Romantische Variationen über ein Originalthema (Romantic variations on an original theme) op. 42 (published 1917)

Songs

Also known as lieder

over 100 songs for voice and piano, including:
- Op. 5, 6 Lieder für eine mittlere Singstimme mit Begleitung des Klaviers., a set published in 1901, including Wiegenlied (Cradle song) Op. 5 Nr. 3
- Die Muschel (The shell) Op. 9 Nr. 2 (poem by Richard Schaukal. Published 1904)
- Op. 10. Five songs for soprano with forte piano accompaniment
- Op. 15. Six songs for mezzo-soprano with piano accompaniment
- Op. 20. Five songs for baritone or mezzo-soprano with piano accompaniment
- Op. 21. Five songs for mezzo-soprano with piano accompaniment.
- Op. 22. Five songs for soprano or mezzo-soprano with piano accompaniment.

Writings

Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner was an Austrian composer known for his symphonies, masses, and motets. The first are considered emblematic of the final stage of Austro-German Romanticism because of their rich harmonic language, complex polyphony, and considerable length...

. Sein Leben und Schaffen (Anton Bruckner. His life and work), 1922
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

, pub. Leipzig: Reclam, 1925
Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...

. Die geistigen Grundlagen seines Schaffens (Beethoven. The mental foundation of his work), 1927

1875-1906: Youth

1906-1935: A master in the province

Reception

Style

Works

See also

English

German

Further reading

English

German