Alfred Schlee

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Alfred Schlee (born November 19, 1901 in Dresden ; † February 16, 1999 in Vienna ) was an Austro-German musicologist , theater scholar and music publisher .

Alfred Schlee

Live and act

Training and first engagements in modern dance

After graduating from Vitzthumschen Gymnasium in his native Dresden, Alfred Schlee attended the educational institute for music and rhythm founded by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze in the Dresden suburb of Hellerau for half a year . He taught several musical subjects privately during his youth (piano with Erwin Schulhoff , violoncello, music theory), and subsequently studied musicology, composition, philosophy and theater studies in Munich and Leipzig. Graduating from the University of Vienna with a planned dissertation on program development for traveling stages was prevented by a serious illness of his father and the resulting financial difficulties. Subsequently, he worked as a pianist on tours with the dancers Mary Wigman and Yvonne Georgi , for whom he also composed the music himself. In addition, he worked as a critic in the dance sector. In the autumn of 1925, she worked as assistant director at the Princely Reussian Theater in Gera, where Yvonne Georgi was hired as a dance master and where, under his advice, she set accents in the field of modern ballet with works by Egon Wellesz , Darius Milhaud and Vittorio Rieti . The engagement ended after one season due to financial problems in the theater. For the next season he became dramaturge and répétiteur at the Stadttheater Münster , where he worked in a team with the artistic director Hanns Niedecken-Gebhard , the artistic advisor Hein Heckroth , the choreographer Kurt Jooss and Jens Keith as the director of the dance stage. In 1927 Schlee and Niedecken-Gebhard organized the first German Dancer Congress in Magdeburg, and subsequently the second and third congresses in Essen and Munich together with Rudolf Laban .

Alfred Schlee with Olivier Messiaen

His interest in the latest trends in contemporary art and music brought Schlee into contact with the Dessau Bauhaus Circle , the conductor Erich Kleiber , whom he met at the premiere of Alban Berg's “Wozzeck” in Berlin in 1925, the dancer Harald Kreutzberg and the Painter and set designer Oskar Schlemmer , in whose Paris production of the "Triadic Ballet" he played the piano part in 1932.

Beginnings and war years in the Universal Edition

Schlee's first contact with the Viennese publishing house Universal Edition began in 1927, initially in the editorial team for a special issue of the magazine “ Musikblätter des Anbruch ”. In 1928–31, on his initiative, the Universal Edition published the quarterly publication “Schrifttanz”, which was edited by the Gesellschaft für Schrifttanz and he was the editor in charge of it. Schlee recorded the then newly developed "Kinetographie Laban" as a notation for current choreographies in modern dance. Parallel to Schlee's gradual retirement from dance, he had the opportunity to familiarize himself intensively with music publishing in Vienna. From the beginning of the 1930s he became a representative of Universal Edition in Berlin on the initiative of Hans Heinsheimer . After the National Socialists came to power in the German Reich, Schlee was able to mediate between the interests of the publishing house and the claims of Nazi cultural policy in many ways. In 1937 Schlee applied to the Austrian Embassy in Berlin for Austrian citizenship, initially unsuccessfully. This was awarded to him on October 22, 1946.

1938–45 Schlee initially worked alongside the officially appointed acting director Ernst Geutebrück, then under the new main shareholder Johannes Petschull in the Aryanized headquarters of Universal Edition in Vienna. During this time he was able to prevent the relocation of the publishing house to the so-called “Altreich” with the help of Robert Kraus, the head of the cultural office of the city of Vienna, and he was also decisively responsible for rescuing essential stocks of the company. Together with like-minded people, including in particular the composer Gottfried von Eine , he spent a large number of prints, engravings and manuscripts of works by Jewish composers or composers who were then designated as "degenerate" , including the autographs of Gustav Mahler in the publisher 's archive , in private houses and various other hiding places where they were saved from destruction by the National Socialists until the end of the war. Schlee was in close contact with Anton Webern during the war years after he had succeeded in obtaining his exemption from military service in favor of working for Universal Edition. As early as the early 1940s, Schlee was thinking about redesigning the publishing program, for example by making verbal agreements with the Swiss Frank Martin and Rolf Liebermann about their future publishing (which was still impossible during the fascist rule) and employees for restarting after completion who selected fights around and in Vienna.

Alfred Schlee with Pierre Boulez

Rebuilding the publishing house after the war

After the end of the war, Schlee took over the management of the publishing house as the public administrator until 1947. As a prominent figure in Viennese musical life, he had also been a member of the management of the Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft from February 1946 , a position in which he also vigorously advocated the promotion of contemporary creativity. In the same year he became a board member of the copyright society AKM . From 1951 he formed the publishing board of Universal Edition with Alfred Kalmus and Ernst Hartmann. Until he retired into private life in 1985, his primary area of ​​responsibility was the production program. For four decades, he largely determined which names were taken care of, and managed to strike a balance between Austrian and foreign composers. He also paid special attention to those up-and-coming personalities who, due to the change in the political situation in Europe, worked in the communist sphere of influence and who were partially cut off from contacts with “western” countries. Their ties to Universal Edition enabled many of them to become involved in the international music scene. Last but not least, this also markedly increased the international weight of the publishing house that has been strived for since the publishing house was founded in 1901.

Commitment to contemporary composers

Gilbert Amy , Hans Erich Apostel , Theodor Berger , Luciano Berio , Harrison Birtwistle , Pierre Boulez , Francis Burt , Friedrich Cerha , Luigi Dallapiccola , Edison Denissow , Gottfried von Eine , Beat are representative of the composers associated with the publishing house through Schlee's initiative Furrer , Cristóbal Halffter , Roman Haubenstock-Ramati , Anton Heiller , Mauricio Kagel , Ernst Krenek , Ladislav Kupkovič , György Kurtág , Rolf Liebermann , György Ligeti , Frank Martin , Bohuslav Martinů , Olivier Messiaen , Arvo Pärt , Mario Peragallo , Henri Pousseur , Wolfgang Rihm , Karl Schiske , Alfred Schnittke , Rodion Schtschedrin , Kurt Schwertsik , Karlheinz Stockhausen , Jenő Takács , Alfred Uhl and Hans Zender . Among the individual events during his work that were to be highlighted were his initiatives on overall scientific editions by Arnold Schönberg and Alban Berg , the completion of the third act by Friedrich Cerha, which was carried out in 1979 by Friedrich Cerha, and the publication of the complete version of Alban Berg's "Lulu", as well as efforts to achieve the rediscovery of the composers Franz Schreker and Alexander von Zemlinsky, who were banned under the influence of the German Reich from 1938 to 1945 and subsequently forgotten . Other focal points of the publishing house during Schlee's later years included the Wiener Urtext Edition, the pedagogically oriented “Rote Reihe”, the creation of a guitar catalog with Karl Scheit and representative pictorial biographies on Beethoven, Wagner and Mahler.

Alfred Schnittke visits Alfred Schlee

The works dedicated to Alfred Schlee include Sonata pian 'e forte by Gilbert Amy, Fünf Bagatellen op.20 by Hans Erich Apostel, Epifanie G , Concertino and Formazioni by Luciano Berio, Répons by Pierre Boulez, Exercises and Network by Friedrich Cerha, Areae sonantes by Paul-Heinz Dittrich , Cantiunculae amoris by Karl Heinz Füssl , Mizar by Cristóbal Halffter, Credentials by Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Bardo-Puls by Günter Kahowez , Ludwig Van by Mauricio Kagel, fragment by György Ligeti, And the pointers of his eyes ... by Bo Nilsson, Te Deum by Arvo Pärt, Madrigal II by Henri Pousseur, Im Innsten von and Dialogue by Wolfgang Rihm, Khouang by Tona Scherchen-Hsiao and Symphony No. 2 St. Florian by Alfred Schnittke. Schlee's 90th birthday was celebrated on November 18, 1991 with a gala evening with the Arditti Quartet in the Wiener Konzerthaus, at which congratulatory pieces by 37 composers were played. On December 8, 2001, on the initiative of the family, Pierre Boulez and Nuria Schönberg-Nono, a commemorative concert took place in the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Alfred Schlee. Under the direction of Boulez, members of the Ensemble intercontemporain performed works by Schönberg, Messiaen, Boulez, Rihm, Stockhausen, Kurtág, Cerha, Webern and Berio.

Private life

After earlier marriages with Anna Taussig and Maria Bertha Hegner, Schlee married Margarethe Molner in 1960. The sons Thomas Daniel Schlee and Alexander Schlee come from the connection .

literature

  • Gunhild Schüller-Oberzaucher: Schlee - A music publisher with a dance past . In: Tanzdrama , No. 18/1992, pp. 8-10.
  • Gunhild Schüller-Oberzaucher: On the death of Alfred Schlee . In: Tanzdrama , No. 44/45/1999, pp. 79–81.