Hellmuth Christian Wolff

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Hellmuth Christian Wolff (born May 23, 1906 in Zurich ; † July 1, 1988 in Leipzig ) was a German musicologist , painter and composer .

Life

Wolff was born in 1906 in Zurich as the son of Hellmuth Wolff, Professor of Statistics and Transportation. He grew up in Halle / Saale; After graduating from high school in 1925 at the humanistic Stadtgymnasium Halle he studied musicology (with Hermann Abert , Friedrich Blume , Curt Sachs , Arnold Schering and Erich Moritz von Hornbostel ) as well as art history (with Edmund Hildebrandt and Paul Frankl ) and philosophy (with Max Dessoir ) at Friedrich -Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin and the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg . A study trip took him to Italy in 1927. From 1925 to 1933 he was a member of the Freie Volksbühne Berlin ; In 1933/34 he worked as an assistant for direction and dramaturgy (with Heinz Hilpert ) at the Volksbühne Berlin . In 1936, he was at Arnold Schering with the dissertation The Venetian opera in the second half of the 17th century at the Faculty for Dr. phil. PhD. Since then he has also appeared compositionally (operas, ballets, orchestral works, vocal and chamber music).

In 1936 he worked with Hermann Scherchen in Winterthur / Switzerland. He was denied a habilitation (in Berlin) in 1941 for political reasons; He did not receive a lectureship until 1945. In 1942 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on “The Hamburg Opera in the Age of Baroque (1678–1738)” at the Philosophical Faculty of the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel . The reviewers were Arnold Schering, Friedrich Blume and Max Schneider . From 1942 to 1944 he was managing director of the Lower Saxony Music Society and municipal music officer in Braunschweig and published the newsletter of the Lower Saxony Music Society in 1943/44 . In 1943 he edited and translated the Handel opera Agrippina .

From 1945 to 1947 he worked as a conductor in Halle. He held his teaching rehearsal in 1947 on the subject of "Baroque music on the contemporary stage". In the same year he was appointed lecturer for musicology with a teaching assignment for modern music at the University of Leipzig . In 1954 he became a professor with a teaching position for musicology at the Institute for Musicology . He was also the initiator of the course (for non-European music); his main research area was the history of the opera . In 1960 he received a full teaching post and became deputy director of the Institute for Musicology and the Musical Instrument Museum . He dedicated himself to the composers Béla Bartók , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Igor Stravinsky , Arnold Schönberg , Alban Berg , Anton Webern and Paul Hindemith as well as the composer group Les Six , where he was personally known to Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith as well as Luigi Nono and Ernst Krenek . 1967 was against him because of the (unpublished) article cane and forefinger , he at the East Berlin weekly magazine Sunday , one had sent disciplinary proceedings opened in the course of which he was dismissed. In 1968 he was only hired again as a temporary assistant. He now devoted himself to the Handel Handbook . In 1971 he retired. Posthumously (1991), his 1967 disciplinary sentence was lifted by the Rehabilitation Commission of the University of Leipzig.

In 1945 Wolff was one of the founders of the GDR Cultural Association . From 1958 to 1967 he worked for the International Felix Mendelssohn Society in Basel. From 1963 to 1965 he was a member of the board of the Society for Music Research . From 1961 he was a corresponding member of the Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis in Utrecht and from 1977 a member of the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna and from 1979 of the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo. He headed the commission for the publication of a Répertoire iconographique de l'opéra and was a board member of the Pan-German Society for Music Research and the International Musicological Society .

From the mid-1950s he also devoted himself to the fine arts (numerous oil paintings, watercolors and drawings) with exhibitions in Leipzig and Düsseldorf.

Wolff, Evangelical Lutheran , was married to the singer Liselotte Zeman and the father of two children, including the festival director Ann-Elisabeth Wolff (* 1953).

Publications (selection)

  • The Venetian Opera in the second half of the 17th century (1937)
  • Agrippina - an Italian youth opera by GF Handel (1943)
  • The Music of the Old Dutch (15th and 16th Centuries) (1956)
  • The Handel Opera on the Modern Stage (1957)
  • The Baroque Opera in Hamburg (1678–1738) (2 vol., 1957)
  • Opera - scene and representation from 1600 to 1900. Music history in pictures (1968)
  • The Opera (1971–1973)
  • Order and shape - music from 1900 to 1950 (1978)
  • History of comic opera (1981)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Hellmuth Christian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musicologist, painter and composer
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH July 1, 1988
Place of death Leipzig