Edgar Istel

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Edgar Istel (born February 23, 1880 in Mainz , † December 17, 1948 in Miami , Florida ) was a German composer and musicologist .

Life

Istel was the son of the wine wholesaler Ferdinand Istel and his wife Katharina Henschel. When the economic situation began to improve after the Franco-Prussian War , his father changed his name from "Isaak" to "Ferdinand".

Even as a high school student, Istel enjoyed extensive musical training, partly at his school and partly through intensive private lessons. He learned to play the violin through E. Barré and W. Seibert , Georges Adler was his piano teacher and he studied form and composition with Fritz Volbach .

At 18 Istel 1898 went to Munich at the Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Ludwig Thuille , while at the University at Adolf Sandberger , where he in 1900 with a thesis on "Rousseau as a composer" doctorate . In the more than ten years that Istel lived in Munich, he made a name for himself as a private lecturer and composer and was also in great demand as a private teacher. During this time he married the opera singer Janet Wylie. He composed and published several songs, a "Singspiel-Overture", which was performed in 1903 as the first major work by the Kaimorchester, and worked as a Munich correspondent for the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik". Two “comical-romantic” operas, “The Driving Schoolboy” and “Des Tribunals Gebot” premiered in 1908.

In 1913, Istel accepted a position at the Humboldt Academy and went to Berlin . Until 1919 he worked there as a lecturer in musical aesthetics and then moved to the Lessing University in the same position . At the same time he published regularly in the Berliner Morgenpost , the BZ and other newspapers and magazines of the Ullstein Verlag . In Berlin he became a member of the Victoria Masonic Lodge .

In 1920 Istel went to Madrid and acted there as the official representative of the Association of German Stage Writers and Stage Composers and the Austrian Author Society . In addition, Istel wrote and composed his own works. When the civil war broke out in 1936 , he emigrated to Great Britain . Since he could hardly publish there any longer, he soon found himself in a financial emergency. He wanted to escape this in 1938 by continuing to the USA . He settled in Miami, where he was no longer noticed in public. Edgar Istel died eight weeks before his 69th birthday on December 17, 1948 in Miami, where he found his final resting place.

Works (selection)

As an author

Essays
  • The “ Marseillaise ”, a German melody? . In: Die Musik , Vol. 17 (1924), Issue 2, pp. 801–813,
Monographs
  • The Freemasonry in Mozart's " Magic Flute " . Unger, Berlin 1928.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the composer of his lyric scene “Pygmalion” . Sendet, Walluf 1973, ISBN 3-500-28360-8 (reprint of the Leipzig 1901 edition).
  • The book of the opera. The German masters from Gluck to Wagner . Hesse, Berlin 1919. (Max Hesse's illustrated handbooks; 54).
  • Peter Cornelius . Reclam, Leipzig 1906 (Biographies of Musicians; 25).
  • The origin of the German melodrama . Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin 1906.
  • Richard Wagner in the light of contemporary correspondence. 1858-1872 . Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin 1902 (special dr. From Die Musik ).

As a composer

Film music
Plays
  • May magic. Comically romantic opera in one act . VDBB, Berlin 1919 (based on Miguel de Cervantes ).
  • The Tribunal's command. Comical-romantic stage play in a prelude and two acts . Self-published, Munich 1908.
  • When women dream. Musical comedy in two acts . VDBB, Berlin 1920 (based on a comedy by Lothar Schmidt).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pseudonym for Werner Altschüler
personal data
SURNAME Istel, Edgar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 23, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Mainz
DATE OF DEATH December 17, 1948
Place of death Miami , Florida