Ernst Hermann Meyer

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At the Bach celebration in 1950, Ernst Hermann Meyer gave a lecture in line with the Marxist-Leninist inheritance theory (see background) on Johann Sebastian Bach - No end, a beginning .

Ernst Hermann Ludimar Meyer , (he also published under the name Ernst H. Meyer) (* December 8, 1905 in Berlin ; † October 8, 1988 ibid) was a German composer , musicologist and sociologist and member of the Central Committee of the SED . His oeuvre includes more than 500 compositions.

Meyer is considered to be one of the most important representatives of the socialist realism demanded by the Soviet Union in music in the GDR. After GDR President Wilhelm Pieck's speech at the 1950 Bach Conference, Meyer announced the so-called hereditary theory with a commemorative speech . He thus became groundbreaking in the GDR for the view of classical music.

Meyer's works include numerous songs, chamber music, three symphonies and other orchestral works, an opera and an oratorio. He wrote many musicological essays and a book on the chamber music of Old England. In the GDR, his musicological work was considered an essential contribution to Marxist historiography .

Life

EH Meyer (2nd from left) at the Berlin Composers' Congress (1982)

Ernst Hermann Meyer was born in Berlin in 1905 as the son of a doctor and an artist. The Jewish parents were murdered in the pogrom night in 1938 and in Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942.

He received his first piano lessons at the age of six and made his first attempts at composition at the age of eleven. The composer Walter Hirschberg taught him piano and music theory. From 1915 to 1924 he attended the Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in Berlin-Schöneberg . After graduating from high school in 1924, he completed an apprenticeship at a bank in Berlin. From 1926 to 1930 he studied musicology with Johannes Wolf , Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin and with Heinrich Besseler at the University of Heidelberg . In 1929 he met Hanns Eisler , with whom he became friends. In 1930 he joined the KPD . From 1930 to 1932 he worked for the Rote Fahne in Berlin. He also became editor of the magazine Kampfmusik of the Kampfgemeinschaft der Arbeitersänger and conductor of workers' choirs. In 1931 he traveled to the Soviet Union . He continued his composition studies at the Hochschule für Musik Berlin-Charlottenburg , where his teachers included James Simon and Paul Hindemith . He also received lessons from Max Butting at the radio test center.

In order to avoid arrest by the National Socialist authorities, Meyer used his participation in a musicological conference in Cambridge in Great Britain to flee in 1933 . There he became a close friend of Alan Bush ; he was able to do research on English chamber music of the 17th century and give lectures for the Workers Educational Association . Since 1939 he has also lectured at Bedford College , London. He became a member of the Free German Cultural Association , an association of emigrated artists. In 1945 Meyer received a visiting professorship at King's College, Cambridge . In 1946 he was treated for tuberculosis in Switzerland .

In 1948 Meyer returned to the Soviet Zone with his British wife Marjorie after the British authorities delayed his departure, as had many other communist exiles. He took over the newly created chair for music sociology at Berlin's Humboldt University and shaped it significantly over the years. In addition to his teaching and research activities, he was one of the most influential personalities in musical life in the GDR . Meyer was chairman of the association of composers and musicologists , chairman of the Handel Society and co-founder of the Handel Festival , which still takes place in Halle today. In 1951 his daughter Marion was born, who was later married to the writer Hermann Kant and works as a musicologist in England.

His contributions to the Marxist-Leninist hereditary theory were considered of extraordinary importance for the Marxist view of the history of music . In 1950 at the German Bach Festival in Leipzig he gave the commemorative speech: Johann Sebastian Bach - No end, a beginning. When the commemorative speech appeared in the collection Essays on Music in 1957 , he had carefully changed it in line with the now current SED policy. The once invoked spirit of German unity was erased and the legacy was limited to the peace-loving world. He emphatically advocated socialist realism in his book Musik im Zeitgeschehen . Here he turned against formalistic tendencies .

In 1956 he gave a lecture on Mozart, Mozart - Dreamer or Fighter.

Meyer's compositions have been certified by official bodies for high artistic mastery, partiality and loyalty to the people. The Mansfeld oratorio and the choirs from the cantata Des Sieges - certainty "Home we won't let you" and "Thank you, you Soviet soldiers", were regarded as important evidence of socialist-realistic music creation . He has written over 500 songs and choirs, "all works testify to the humanistic commitment of a revolutionary musician", as it was called in an obituary in 1989, the year the GDR fell. His life and work were shaped by the theory of Marxism-Leninism. He later corrected “certain dogmatic assessments” from the time of Stalinism (which was always in line with the party ).

Ernst Hermann Meyer had been a candidate since 1963 and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party from 1971 until his death in 1988 .

Meyer's honorary grave at the Friedrichsfeld Central Cemetery, June 2010

In 1963 he received the National Prize 1st Class for Art and Literature with the following reason: "For his vocal-symphonic, chamber music and symphonic compositions, which are of trend-setting importance for the socialist-realistic music creation of our time."

In 1972, Ernst Hermann Meyer, who came from a Jewish family, arranged for a memorial to eight members of the Meyer family who had died during the National Socialist era in the concentration camps Auschwitz , Jungfernhof near Riga , Majdanek and Theresienstadt to be erected in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery . He was also buried there after his death.

Tasks and mandates

Awards

Works

music

In addition to over 300 songs and other instrumental and vocal works:

  • Quintet for clarinet and string quartet (1944)
  • String Symphony (1958, first version 1947)
  • Mansfeld Oratorio (1950)
  • String Quartet No. 1 in G major (1956)
  • The Gate of Buchenwald (cantata, 1959)
  • String Quartet No. 2 (1959)
  • Concertante symphony for piano and orchestra (1961)
  • Poem for viola and orchestra (1961)
  • Concerto for violin and orchestra (1964)
  • As long as there is life in me (film music, 1965)
  • Toccata appassionata for piano (1966)
  • Symphony in Bb (1968, first version 1967 as Sinfonietta)
  • String Quartet No. 3 (1967)
  • Concerto for harp and chamber orchestra (1968)
  • Leinefelder Divertimento (1969)
  • Concerto Grosso (1969)
  • Lenin has spoken (cantata, 1970)
  • Toccata for orchestra (1971)
  • In spite of all! (Soundtrack, 1972)
  • Reiter der Nacht (Opera, 1972) premiered in
    1973 at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden
  • String Quartet No. 4 (1974)
  • Concerto for orchestra with obbligato piano (1975)
  • Contrasts-Conflicts, Sinfonia for orchestra (1977)
  • Concerto for viola and orchestra (1978)
  • String Quartet No. 5 (1978)
  • Sonata for viola and piano (1979)
  • Sinfonietta (1980)
  • String Quartet No. 6 (1982)
  • Essay for viola solo (1983)
  • Symphonic dedication for orchestra and organ (1983)
  • Concerto for violoncello and orchestra
    (1988, only 1st movement completed)

Film music

Publications

In addition to countless articles and essays:

  • The polyphonic game music of the 17th century in Northern and Central Europe. Kassel: Bärenreiter 1934 (Heidelberg Studies in Musicology, Vol. 2).
  • English Chamber Music: The History of a Great Art. From the Middle Ages to Purcell. London: Lawrence & Wishart 1946 (2nd edition 1982), German translation: The Chamber Music of Old England. From the Middle Ages to the death of Henry Purcell. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1958.
  • Music in current affairs. Berlin: Verlag Bruno Henschel and Son 1952.
  • Essays on music. Berlin: Henschel Verlag 1957.
  • Songs and singing. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1962 (1st volume), 1971 (2nd volume), 1983 (3rd volume).
  • Renaissance Music - Enlightenment - Classical , ed. by Heinz Alfred Brockhaus. Leipzig: Verlag Philipp Reclam jun. 1973 (Reclams Universal Library, Vol. 524).
  • Contrasts - conflicts. Memories - Conversations - Comments , ed. by Dietrich Brennecke and Mathias Hansen. Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik 1979.

literature

  • Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Meyer, Ernst Hermann . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  • Werner Danneberg:  Meyer, Ernst Hermann. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , p. 334 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Golan Gur: Classicism as Anti-Fascist Heritage: Realism and Myth in Ernst Hermann Meyer's Mansfelder Oratorium (1950) . In: Kyle Frackman, Larson Powell (Eds.): Classical Music in the German Democratic Republic: Production and Reception. Rochester: Camden House 2015, ISBN 978-1-57113-916-0 , pp. 34-57
  • Mathias Hansen (ed.): Ernst Hermann Meyer. The compositional and theoretical work . Leipzig: Deutscher Verlag für Musik 1976 (manuals of the music section), OCLC 4807295 .
  • Mathias Hansen: Ernst Hermann Meyer . In: Dietrich Brennecke, Hannelore Gerlach, Mathias Hansen (eds.): Musicians in our time. Members of the music section of the GDR Academy of the Arts . Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig 1979, p. 57 ff.
  • Georg Knepler (ed.): Festschrift for Ernst Hermann Meyer for his sixtieth birthday . Leipzig: German publishing house for music 1973.
  • Meyer, Ernst Hermann. In: Brockhaus-Riemann Musiklexikon. CD-Rom, Directmedia Publishing, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89853-438-3 , p. 6747.

Web links

Commons : Ernst Hermann Meyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Notes / individual evidence

  1. ↑ Published as an article: Ernst H. Meyer: Johann Sebastian Bach - No end, a beginning. In: Ernst H. Meyer: Essays on music. Henschelverlag, Berlin 1957, p. 10ff, cf. also Bach Bibliography homepages.bw.edu .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Information from the explanation board of the Meyer honorary burial site at the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery.
  3. ^ Meyer: 1. Ernst Hermann. In: Jugendlexikon Musik, ed. Heila Brock and Christoph Kleinschmidt: 4th revised edition, VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, 1989, page 219.
  4. ^ Konrad Niemann: In memory of Ernst Hermann Meyer. In: Contributions to musicology. Issue 3/1989. Published by the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR. Verlag Neue Musik Berlin (East), page 155ff. A contemporary obituary.
  5. ↑ Cf. Konrad Niemann: In memory. 1989, p. 156.
  6. ↑ Cf. Heiner Timmermann: Agenda GDR research. Results, problems, controversies. Lit-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-8258-6909-1 . books.google.de .
  7. ↑ Neue Zeit , No. 234 of October 7, 1963, p. 4.
  8. ↑ Cf. Konrad Niemann: In memory. 1989, p. 156.
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Ernst Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meyer, Ernst H .; Meyer, Ernst Hermann Ludimar (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer, musicologist and music sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH October 8, 1988
Place of death Berlin