Fritz Hennenberg

Fritz Hennenberg

Fritz Hennenberg (born June 11, 1932 in Döbeln ) is a German musicologist and dramaturge .

life and work

Fritz Hennenberg was born in 1932 as the son of the architect and builder Kurt Hennenberg and his wife Johanna in Döbeln. After graduating from high school in 1951 at Döbelner Realgymnasium (Lessing-Oberschule) he studied piano and conducting with Oskar Halfter and Martin Flämig as well as musicology with Walter Serauky and Hellmuth Christian Wolff at the University of Leipzig . He also attended lectures by Ernst Bloch (philosophy) and Eva Lips (ethnology). In 1965 he was with a dissertation on The cantatas by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel to Dr. phil. PhD.

From 1954 to 1956 he was a lecturer at the Leipzig Theater Academy and from 1956 to 1959 assistant for music history at the Halle Conservatory . In the 1950s he created music for the student stage at Leipzig University and the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin.

In 1956 he met the composer Paul Dessau and was closely connected to him until his death in 1979. In 1964, at the request of the conductor Herbert Kegel , Hennenberg became concert editor of the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra , initially as a freelance artist, under a permanent contract from 1974 to 1979. In 1965 he founded the Leipzig Town Hall Concerts , which were opened with the composer Wolfgang Fortner . In 1972 he was appointed chief dramaturge at the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Kurt Masur . On the radio he devoted himself primarily to promoting contemporary music and set up a series of concerts for composers as interpreters with guest performances by Luigi Dallapiccola , Hans Werner Henze , Boris Blacher , Ernst Krenek , Cristóbal Halffter , Witold Lutosławski , Luigi Nono and Krzysztof Penderecki, among others .

From 1969 he worked with the singer Roswitha Trexler , also as an accompanying pianist, and made guest appearances with her in Austria, Switzerland, Denmark and the USA. He developed interpretation models for the complete recording of Hanns Eisler's songs as part of the Eisler record edition.

In 1987 he completed his habilitation at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg .

From 1990 to 1997 Fritz Hennenberg worked at the Leipzig Opera with director Udo Zimmermann as chief dramaturge.

In 1996 he met the composer Victor Fenigstein and presented analytical and biographical works about him. In 1998 and 2003 he received research assignments from the Orff Center in Munich to study, among other things, the relationship between Carl Orff and Bertolt Brecht .

Numerous guest lectures and workshops, including at Harvard University in Cambridge, at the Eduard van Beinum Foundation in Amsterdam, at the University of San Diego , at the Schoenberg Institute Los Angeles, at the music academies in Hamburg and Cologne and at the Mozarteum Salzburg .

Publications

• The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra . Leipzig: Edition Leipzig, 1962. New version Frankfurt am Main / Leipzig: Insel Verlag, 1992.
• Dessau-Brecht: Musical work . Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1963.
• Paul Dessau. A biography . Leipzig: German publishing house for music, 1965.
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . Leipzig: Reclam, 1970 / 2nd edition 1976. New version Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1992 / 2nd new version 2005. Translated from: Japanese, Croatian, Hungarian audio book 2006 (Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft / “Die Zeit”). Rowohlt Digital Book Plus (E-Book) 2011.
• Paul Dessau: Notes on sheet music . (Editor.) Leipzig: Reclam, 1974.
• The cantatas of Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel . Leipzig: German publishing house for music, 1976.
• Tadeusz Kaczyński: Conversations with Witold Lutosławski . (Editor.) Leipzig: Reclam, 1976.
• As editor: The great Brecht songbook . Berlin: Henschelverlag / Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1984. Paperback edition Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1985.
• Hanns Eisler . Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1986 / Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1987 (2nd edition 1998). Translator: chin.
• Singing and faces. Roswitha Trexler in encounters with musicians and music . Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1990.
• Udo Zimmermann. Passion for music - adventure theater . Bonn / Berlin: Bouvier, 1992.
• 300 years of the Leipzig Opera. Past and present . Munich: Langen Müller, 1993.
• As editor: John Dew directs Mozart . Berlin: Henschelverlag, 1995.
• It must be something wonderful ... Ralph Benatzky. Between “Weißes Rössl” and Hollywood. Vienna: Zsolnay, 1998.
• My life - a game. A portrait of the composer Victor Fenigstein . With the participation of Luc Deitz. Luxembourg: Kairos Edition , 2005.
• As co-editor: materials on Brecht / Weill “Mahagonny” . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​2006.
• Ralph Benatzky. Operetta on the way to becoming a musical. Life report and catalog raisonné. Vienna: Edition Steinbauer, 2009.
• History of the Leipzig Opera from its beginnings to the present. Beucha / Markkleeberg: Sax-Verlag, 2009.
• Encounters with Kurt Schwaen and his music. Berlin: Kurt Schwaen Archive, 2011.
• Orff studies. Leipzig: Engelsdorfer Verlag, 2011.
• Victor Fenigstein. Life protocol - work comments - catalogs. Saarbrücken: Pfau-Verlag, 2013.

Award

• 1986: Hanns Eisler Prize

literature

• Music + dramaturgy. Fritz Hennenberg on his 65th birthday. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997. (With contributions by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Dieter Schnebel, Jan Knopf and Udo Zimmermann, among others.)
• Hennenberg, Fritz. In: Brockhaus-Riemann Musiklexikon. CD-Rom, Directmedia Publishing, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-89853-438-3 , p. 12770 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz Hennenberg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Official homepage of Fritz Hennenberg