Hans Schläger

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Hans "Johann" Schläger (born December 5, 1820 in Feldkirchen an der Donau , † May 17, 1885 in Salzburg ) was an Austrian conductor and composer . He was the second director of the Salzburg Cathedral Music Association and the Mozarteum and a founding member of the International Mozarteum Foundation .

Hans Schläger, lithograph by Eduard Kaiser , 1858

Life

After Schläger had received his first music lessons from his father (teacher in Feldkirchen), he became a choirboy in St. Florian in 1832 , where he was five years above Anton Bruckner , with whom he was well known and whom he influenced in the field of male choirs. In order to evade military service, Schläger attended the preparatory course for teachers in Linz from 1836 to 1838 and, after his time as a school assistant and Regau , became an assistant teacher at the elementary school in St. Florian. Bruckner, who was teaching in Kronsdorf at the time, got to know the men's choir he founded in St. Florian, who then also put together a men's quartet.

In 1845 Schläger went to Vienna and was there until 1847 composition student of Gottfried von Preyer at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde . At that time Preyer was director of the conservatory and at the same time vice court conductor. From 1851 to 1854 Schläger was singing professor at the "Academy of Music" founded in 1851 by the music publisher Franz Xaver Glöggl in Vienna and from 1854 to 1861 director of the Vienna Men's Choir . At this time he began working as a composer. In 1861 Schläger received the honorary award with the Vienna Men's Choir at the Singing Festival in Nuremberg.

In 1861 he became the successor of Alois Taux, who died surprisingly at a rehearsal at the Salzburg Liedertafel , and thus director of the Cathedral Music Association and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Anton Bruckner also tried for this position, but could not prevail over the much more experienced and renowned racket at the time. During his time in Salzburg, this ensured smooth cooperation between the Mozarteum, the Singakademie and the Liedertafel, both of which he also directed and united them to form an ensemble at larger concert events. During his time in Salzburg, Schläger was particularly committed to the then little-known work of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Robert Schumann . So he conducted u. a. Salzburg premieres of Schumann's Paradies und die Peri (1864) and Mendelssohn's Paulus (1867). He also won important soloists for concerts in Salzburg, e.g. B. the violin virtuosos Joseph Joachim and Ferdinand David (1863) or Clara Schumann (1868). His wedding to Pauline von Oldershausen, b. Countess von Zichy (1830–1890) induced him to resign in May 1868 all offices. His successor in the Dommusikverein and Mozarteum was the Viennese composer and conductor Otto Bach .

From then on, Schläger devoted himself entirely to composition, but continued to work for the Mozarteum and also for the Mozart Complete Edition at Breitkopf & Härtel . In 1870 Schläger was one of the founders and subsequently also a consultant and functionary of the “International Mozart Foundation”, from which the International Mozarteum Foundation emerged in 1880 . In 1870 he donated the net proceeds from his opera "Heinrich und Ilse", which were successfully performed in Salzburg and Berlin, to the Mozart Foundation as start-up capital. Due to increasing hearing loss, in 1878 he withdrew from his commitment to the Mozart Foundation and increasingly from social life. Schläger died on the morning of May 17, 1885.

Works

In total, Schläger completed 53 works with an opus number, 25 of which were published. He composed primarily vocal music (especially songs for one or two voices as well as choral works), but also piano music, three masses (of which a mass in F major for solos, choir and orchestra performed in Vienna in 1867 is worth mentioning), graduals, an offertory and one Ave Maria. In orchestral works he created a symphony in A major op. 15 (1858) in the highly romantic style and a “concert overture” for large orchestra. Of his three operas, the first “Heinrich und Ilse” (1870), which was influenced by Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser , was the most successful. The third of three string quartets in F major op. 29 was awarded a prize by the “Societá del Quartetto” in Milan in 1871.

style

According to Constantin Schneider, Schläger is stylistically “ directly influenced by Schumann and Mendelssohn, in orchestral and declamatory terms by Richard Wagner .” Constant von Wurzbach writes: “In Schläger's compositions, art critics praise the originality of the invention, stylish characteristics of the characters and plot, and colorful instrumentation. In everything he writes, he reveals a thorough musical education and, above all, good taste. “Even though Schläger's larger-scale compositions were generally well received by the audience, opinions on his songs were often divided. A reviewer of the Leipziger Allgemeine Musical Zeitung writes about the “Three Songs for Women's Voices” op. 23: “ We would have expected better and fuller things from the deserving director of the Salzburg Mozarteum than these three duets, which, so to speak, have neither hand nor foot in them the musical lyric poetry meager and untrained, the thoughts weak, the alternating singing without any musical logic and consistency, the accompaniment is very poor and empty . "

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schläger dedicated a "German war song" to Bruckner for his move to Linz in 1856, just as Bruckner had dedicated his "Song of the German Fatherland" (WAB 78) to him as early as 1845. See Leopold Nowak: Anton Bruckner. Music and Life , Linz 1973, p. 55.
  2. ↑ See the catalog raisonné in the annual report of the International Mozarteum Foundation 6 (1886). P. 28.
  3. ↑ Constantin Schneider: History of Music in Salzburg from the Earliest Times to the Present , Salzburg 1935, p. 176
  4. ↑ Article "Hans Schläger", in: Constant von Wurzbach: Biographische Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich , Bd. 30, p. 49.
  5. ↑ Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung 2 (1867), p. 41.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Thug, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thug, Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian musician
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1820
PLACE OF BIRTH Feldkirchen on the Danube
DATE OF DEATH May 17, 1885
Place of death Salzburg