Franz Servatius Bruinier

Franz Servatius Bruinier (born May 13, 1905 in Biebrich , † July 31, 1928 in Berlin ) was a composer and pianist . He is best known as the first professional composer with whom Bertolt Brecht worked. Some of the notes attached to Bertolt Brecht's in-house mail originate from him, mostly developed together with Brecht .

Life

Bruinier was a son of the Dutchman Jan Berend Hendrik Bruinier (1863-1934) living in Germany and Sophie Wagner (* 1867), a German from Biebrich. Jan Bruinier worked from 1904 as a manager at a company in Biebrich and from 1907 as managing director of an industrial association in Berlin. Although he had lived and worked in Germany “from the age of 9”, he had remained Dutch and had never acquired German citizenship. In 1914 he applied for naturalization, but the application was unsuccessful. This is probably why the children were also Dutch citizens; this certainly applies to Franz Bruinier's older brother, Ansco Bruinier . Both parents were enthusiastic about music and theater.

Franz S. Bruinier and his twin sister Anneliese were the youngest of the couple's six children. He first attended the Paulsen-Gymnasium in Berlin-Steglitz and received piano lessons at the same time. At the age of 15 he left school “because of poor performance” with the secondary school leaving certificate and began studying at the Berlin University of Music ; the pianist Egon Petri is named as his teacher.

Bruinier began to appear publicly at local events early on, initially together with two of his brothers as a piano trio ( violin / cello / piano) and especially with his brother August Heinrich Bruinier , a professional musician (violin), as a duo. He recorded a series of popular pieces for two record companies, in one case with August Heinrich, in the other with the flautist Fritz Kröckel . In 1924 and 1925 Franz S. Bruinier was the piano accompanist for Jean Moreau , a popular chanson singer who appeared in Rudolf Nelson's cabaret Chat noir in Friedrichstrasse . In this context he also began to compose: two Shimmys appeared in print in 1924, a Russian ballad and a poem setting by Nikolaus Lenau , performed by Moreau and Bruinier, were broadcast on the Berlin radio . Bruinier often worked as a pianist and arranger for the radio during these years . Among other things, he composed music for Walter Mehring's series of radio plays, Sahara . Bruinier was also active on a large scale for various Berlin theaters. He composed the music for a fairy tale performance at the Lustspielhaus in Friedrichstrasse and for the Berliner Posse Liebeswirren im Alkoven , the fifth episode of the revue From the Rhythm of Times , which was given to Luise Werckmeister's “Summer Night Theater in the Zoo”.

Since November 1925 there is evidence of a collaboration between Bruinier and Brecht, who apparently met each other at the Berliner Rundfunk. A sheet music manuscript with piano movements for three Brecht poems is dated this month , in two cases Bruinier is the sole composer, in one together with Brecht himself. However, only one of these settings appeared in the notes appendix to the house postil: the Alabama Song , albeit without Mention of the composer Bruinier.

In autumn 1926 the Ullstein editor Reinhard R. Braun founded a new cabaret series, the so-called MA (the name is derived from Monday evening ). August Heinrich and Franz S. Bruinier played a key role in its conception and implementation, and two other Bruinier brothers, the singer Karl Bruinier and the jazz trumpeter Julius Ansco Bruinier, also played a regular role. The program included very different numbers: performances of pieces by contemporary composers ( Igor Stravinsky , Paul Hindemith , Ernst Krenek ) and readings of works by contemporary writers, melodramatic scenes, parodies of the established theater business, self-written revues and much more. Bruinier played an important role both as a composer and as a pianist: for example, he wrote the music for Paris burns , a poem by Yvan Goll , whose text Braun had edited for an “ecstatic scene with jazz”, and played, for example, The Great Gate of Kiev from Mussorgski's Pictures at an Exhibition . Brecht was a regular visitor to the MA events and also represented in the program as an author, including a song about the car set to music together with Bruinier in February 1927 .

From 1927 further compositions for poems from Brecht's house postil have been preserved in the manuscript, in particular for Memory of Marie A. , the ballad by Hanna Cash and Das Lied vom Surabaya-Johnny . Here, too, Brecht and Bruinier appear partly as composers, partly Bruinier alone.

Bruinier spent the summer of this year in the Harz Mountains , where he was the musical director of the festival in the Bergtheater Thale . Among other things, he composed music for the stage for Friedrich Hebbel's Nibelungs there . On the recommendation of Tilla Durieux , Bruinier successfully applied as Kapellmeister to the Dutch Operetta Society in The Hague . There he composed for another revue, and in March 1928 the MA also made a guest appearance in Amsterdam with the Mitropa program , which contained numerous numbers composed by Bruinier, including Paris burns and three Brecht songs.

In the resin itself Bruinier had a pleurisy drawn, in The Hague, the doctors then diagnosed a pulmonary tuberculosis , where the composer in July 1928 died.

plant

Bruinier wrote utility music for specific occasions. This may be one reason why most of his compositions are lost. In particular, all larger pieces, such as the stage music and the composition of "Paris is burning", have been lost. However, individual receipts have been received for “Paris is on fire”. In a letter to Nino Frank , Yvan Goll , the lyricist himself, praised the “mimic performance” of MA “with the accompanying music by a twenty-year-old composer, in which the Marseillaise , Clairons français, the Marche Funèbre and novel blues sounds go far beyond my verses chanted more aggressively than in “ Royal Palace ”, an opera by Kurt Weill with text by Goll, which premiered two days after the MA performance in Paris. Apparently Bruinier used the French national anthem, horn signals, funeral marches and other traditional music as material and alienated them with the help of contemporary harmonies and rhythms from jazz and blues. Goll was particularly impressed by the rhythmic dimension: "A hall full of young people who were carried away by the rhythms." Kurt Pinthus wrote an equally enthusiastic review for the Berliner 8 Uhr Abendblatt and praised the "jazz music that, lyrically and rhythmically clarifying, melted together with the seal ”.

Mainly songs, lieder and related small musical forms are preserved in print or in manuscripts. On the basis of the pieces that have been handed down, Fritz Hennenberg judges Bruinier to be a skilled composer whose skills lay mainly in the field of effective text interpretation. The lyricists he set to music included Brecht, Goll and Mehring, as well as Klabund and Frank Wedekind . Hennenberg attests Bruinier's sense of declamation , parody and punch lines , but does not consider his compositions to be original: "There is usually no individual tone and there is only a more or less skilful assembly of clichés."

About the interpretation and illustration of texts through music, the focus of his work, Bruinier himself published an article in the Rundfunk-Rundschau in 1927 in connection with his music on the Sahara : The musical radio play illustration . There he suggested an expansion of text-illustrative music to "noise music" and relied on the "finesse of the microphone".

Bruinier's collaboration with Brecht had been completely forgotten, since Brecht did not mention him either in the mail or elsewhere. That only changed in 1973, when the fourth volume of the inventory of Brecht's literary estate appeared. It contained Bruinier's autographs with a series of Brecht settings from 1925 and 1927, which Brecht had kept. The cooperation between the two evidently resulted from the fact that in 1925 Brecht had to complete the annexes to the house postil and his skills in handling the notation were insufficient for the creation of a print template.

Bruinier's share in Brecht's songs varied from the mere recording of the melodies written by Brecht himself to the independent composition, as the information on the manuscripts show. The music of the Alabama Song , as it appears in the notes appendix to the house postil , comes entirely from Bruinier . The later setting of the same work by Kurt Weill for the rise and fall of the city of Mahagonny owes Bruinier's composition at least the basics of the declamation rhythm as well as some elements of the melody.

literature

• Horst Bergmeier, Rainer Lotz : The Bruinier family. In: Fox at No. 78. 12, summer 1993, ISSN  0948-0412 .
• Albrecht Dümling : Berlin, Brecht, Bruinier. In: Albrecht Dümling: Don't let yourself be seduced. Brecht and the music. Kindler, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-463-40033-2 , pp. 127-134.
• Fritz Hennenberg (Ed.): Brecht-Liederbuch (= Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 1216). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-37716-7 , p. 374.
• Fritz Hennenberg: Bruinier and Brecht: News about the first Brecht composer. In: The International Brecht Society (ed.): Experiments on Brecht. Brecht yearbook. Volume 15, 1990, University of Maryland, University of Wisconsin Press, ISBN 0-9623206-1-7 , pp. 1-43.
• Joachim Lucchesi : Franz S. Bruinier. Brecht's first composer. In: The magazine . Volume XXXII, No. 1, 1985, pp. 66-70.
• Joachim Lucchesi: Illustrator of Modernism. Franz S. Bruinier - the first Brecht composer. In: Music and Society . Volume 35, 1985, pp. 276-278.
• Joachim Lucchesi, Ronald K. Shull: Music with Brecht. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-518-02601-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The date of birth is given differently in the literature, so May 15th is sometimes mentioned. The indication “13. Mai “can be confirmed by Didericus Gijsbertus van Epen: Nederland's Patriciaat. Volume 13, Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie en Heraldiek, 's Gravenhage 1923, p. 25 ( digitized version http: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dnederlandspatric13epen~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D25~doppelseiten%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D). This is also plausible due to the second first name Servatius, since the so-called Ice Saint Servatius of Tongeren stands for May 13th in the saints calendar .
2. ↑ See Bergmeier / Lotz: The Bruinier family. 1993, p. 8, based on information from Ansco Bruinier, whom they personally know.
3. ↑ Hennenberg 1990, p. 5.
4. ↑ Both quotations from a letter from Goll to Frank of March 7, 1927, here quoted from Ricarda Wackers: Dialog der Künste. Waxmann, Münster 2004, p. 65.
5. ↑ KP: Goll's “Paris is burning” in “Ma”. In: 8 o'clock in the evening paper of March 1, 1927. Quoted here from: Ricarda Wackers: Dialog der Künste. Waxmann, Münster 2004, p. 64.
6. ↑ Hennenberg 1990, p. 11.
7. ^ Franz S. Bruinier: The musical radio play illustration. In: Rundfunk-Rundschau. 2nd year, 1927, p. 736. Quoted here from Hennenberg 1990, p. 34.