Erwin Bodky

Erwin Bodky (born March 7, 1896 in Ragnit , East Prussia ; † December 6, 1958 in Lucerne ) was a German-American musicologist, pianist, harpsichordist and composer.

Life

Bodky attended the Tilsiter secondary school and was considered a child prodigy at the piano. He began studying music in Berlin and served as a soldier in the First World War from 1916 to 1918 . In 1919 he continued his studies at the Berlin University of Music . His teachers included Paul Juon , Robert Kahn , Richard Rössler and Ernst von Dohnányi . After graduating in 1920, he was able to continue his training with Ferruccio Busoni and Richard Strauss on a scholarship . He won the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Prize twice . His compositions from this period have not been published.

Bodky worked as a teacher at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory and at the Berlin State Academy for Church and School Music, where he had been a professor since 1928. He made his first major public appearance as a pianist under Wilhelm Furtwängler with the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig . Bodky's and Busoni's views on the playing practice of Bach's music diverged, and in 1932 he published the work The Lecture of Old Piano Music . Bodky played historicizing interpretations on an original Ruckers harpsichord and other instruments from the Prussian musical instrument collection and recorded them on sound carriers in L'Anthologie Sonore : 1934 Johann Kuhnau's The Dispute Between David and Goliath and 1935 Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Farewell to my Silbermann pianos in a rondeau and five clavichord pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach .

After the National Socialists won the Reichstag elections in March 1933 , he was banned from practicing his profession as a Jew . He emigrated to the Netherlands , where he found employment as a music teacher in Amsterdam . In 1938 he emigrated to the United States and initially worked at the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Cambridge (Massachusetts) . In 1950 he became professor of music history at Brandeis University . Bodky's early music efforts resulted in the founding of the Cambridge Society for Early Music (CSEM). His television series Roads to Bach was one of the first programs on educational television in the USA in 1955 .

In 1957, Bodky received the title of professor at the Academy of Arts (Berlin) as part of the German reparation policy . The CSEM has been granting an Erwin Bodky Award since 1968 , which, for example, was given to Robert Hill in 1982 , who became a teacher for historical performance practice at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in 1990 , as well as Martin Pearlman (1972), Jeanne Lamon (1974) and Marion Verbruggen (1979) .

The Interpretation of Bach's Keyboard Works , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960
- The lecture of the piano works by JS Bach , Tutzing: H. Schneider, 1970
The character piece , Wolfenbüttel: Möseler, 1960 (musical forms in historical series, first 1933)
The lecture of old piano music , Berlin: Hesse, 1932 (Max Hesse's handbooks. 95.)

Stanley Sadie (Ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Macmillan, London 1980. Lemma Bodky, Erwin .
MGG , Bärenreiter-Verlag 2000, vol. 3, p. 194

Literature by and about Erwin Bodky in the catalog of the German National Library
Inventory of the Erwin Bodky Papers at: ME Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives
Erwin Bodky at: Cambridge Society for Early Music CSEM
Bodky, Erwin 1896–1958 at worldcat

personal data
SURNAME	Bodky, Erwin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German-American musicologist, pianist, harpsichordist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH	March 7, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ragnite
DATE OF DEATH	December 6, 1958
Place of death	Lucerne