Edmund Meisel

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Edmund Meisel (born August 14, 1894 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † November 14, 1930 in Berlin ) was a German conductor, composer and violinist.

Life

The son of the confectioner Abraham Meisel and his wife, the pianist Eugenie (Jeni) Herzbrunn, attended the Realgymnasium in Berlin, where his parents had moved. He studied violin at the private music school John Petersen, piano with Birger Hammer and composition with Robert Kahn and Paul Ertel . In 1911 he worked as a teacher at the John Petersen Music Academy , and from 1912 to 1914 he was a violinist in the Blüthner Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra . From 1918 he worked as a concert and opera conductor, in the 1927/28 season he was conductor at the Theater am Nollendorfplatz , in 1928 he went on a tour through England. From 1926 he became a stage composer for the Reinhardt Theaters and the Berlin State Theaters , worked with Erwin Piscator , for whose theater productions he wrote the stage music several times, worked as a film composer and was the head of a film music studio.

In 1926 he became known to a wide circle of people with his original music for Sergei Eisenstein's armored cruiser Potemkin . More films followed. He also worked in a film music studio with sound montages and sound film experiments. In 1927 he composed the music for two radio plays for the radio. One of them was Bertolt Brecht's Mann ist Mann , which aired on March 18, 1927. Brecht, with whom Meisel was friends, played a vocal part in it himself. Meisel's music for the experimental short sound film Tönende Welle (1928) by Walther Ruttmann , for which he had already created the original music for Berlin - The Symphony of the Big City, was also created in his studio .

Meisel's music is characterized by partial atonality and emphasizes rhythm and the sound of the instruments in its design elements, since Meisel subordinated the music to the film dramaturgy by creating images-synchronously illustrative works. According to Wolfgang Thiel, they seem intentional, as Meisel's compositional skills lagged behind his ambitions. Lothar Prox, professor of media aesthetics at the Robert Schumann University of Applied Sciences in Düsseldorf , describes Meisel's Potemkin music as a “masterpiece” and writes that it is a “blatant misjudgment of his multifaceted oeuvre” when Meisel's performance is reduced to noise music and rhythmic behavior. With today's knowledge of his work, it can be "convincingly refuted".

He was married to Els Peters since 1924.

In November 1930, he was working on music for the film storms over the Mont Blanc by Arnold Franck , when he abducted because of an appendicitis to be taken to a Berlin clinic had. The emergency operation there came too late. Edmund Meisel died on November 14, 1930 at the age of 36. The burial took place in the Heerstrasse cemetery in today's Berlin-Westend district. The grave has not been preserved.

Works

Film music

Stage music

  • 1924: Red hype. Play by Felix Gasbarra , staged by Erwin Piscator ; First performance November 24, 1924 at the Central Theater.
  • 1925: Despite everything. Play by Felix Gasbarra; directed by Erwin Piscator; First performance July 12, 1925 in the Großes Schauspielhaus.
  • 1926: The robbers . Production by Erwin Piscator; First performance October 1, 1926 at the State Theater.
  • 1927: Oops, we're alive! by Ernst Toller ; Staged by Erwin Piscator on September 3, 1927 in the Theater am Nollendorfplatz.
  • 1928: The adventures of the good soldier Schwejk . Staged by Erwin Piscator on January 23, 1928 in the Theater am Nollendorfplatz.
  • 1930: The emperor's coolies. Novel by Theodor Plievier . Staged by Erwin Piscator on August 31, 1930 on the Piscator stage at the Lessing Theater .

literature

  • The silent film musician Edmund Meisel . Edited by Werner Sudendorf. German Film Museum, Frankfurt am Main 1984.

Web links

swell

  1. ^ Wolfgang Thiel, German Feature Films from the Beginnings to 1933 , p. 357, Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1988
  2. ↑ Lothar Prox: The one composed with the eyes. The film musician Edmund Meisel. In: Booklet on Battleship Potemkin. The Year 1905 , Deluxe Edition, Transit Classics 2007. pp. 10–12
  3. ↑ Edmund Meisel † . In: Vossische Zeitung . Saturday November 15, 1930, morning edition. P. 5.
  4. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 491.
personal data
SURNAME Meisel, Edmund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor, composer and violinist
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 1930
Place of death Berlin