Hugo Kauder

Anton Josef Trčka : Hugo Kauder (1926)

Hugo Kauder (born June 9, 1888 in Tovačov , Austria-Hungary ; died July 22, 1972 in Bussum , Netherlands ) was an Austrian-American composer and violinist.

Life

Hugo Kauder's father was a senior teacher at the German elementary school in Tobitschau. He received basic musical training and violin lessons on site. In 1905 he began to study engineering at the Technical University of Vienna , which he broke off, instead he deepened his musical training autodidactically and studied early music of the Flemish from the 15th and 16th centuries in the State Archives with Egon Lustgarten .

From 1911 to 1917 Kauder played the violin and then the viola in the Vienna Tonkünstler Orchestra . From 1917 to 1922 he played as a violist in the Vienna “Gottesmann Quartet”. He made friends with the horn player Willem Valkenier (1887–1986), which encouraged him to write many compositions for horn. In 1919 he became friends with the philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz .

Kauder worked as a freelance composer, music teacher and music writer. Among other things, he published from 1919 to 1922 for the music sheets of the beginning . In 1923 he married the art historian and linguist Helene Guttman (1898–1949), they had a son, Otto Kauder (1926–2006). In 1928 he received the composition prize of the city of Vienna for his 1st symphony. Kauder founded the Hugo Kauder Choir in 1928, which cultivated works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods as well as contemporary music . Josef Mertin was a chorister .

After the annexation of Austria , he had to emigrate to the Netherlands in December 1938 . From England he came to the USA in 1940 and from then on lived in New York City. There he found employment as a composition teacher at the music school of the exile Hermann Grab and wrote music reviews for the Austro-American Tribune . During the last decades of his life, he was also the editor of the posthumous writings of the natural philosopher Ernst Fuhrmann .

Kauder's work comprises over 200 compositions, including five symphonies and 19 string quartets. His musical work is characterized by polyphonic structures from his preoccupation with Franco-Flemish music, especially Josquin Desprez , and a conservative harmony ( Hartmut Krones ).

Fonts (selection)

• Draft of a new theory of melody and harmony . Vienna: Universal Edition, 1932
• Counterpoint: An Introduction to Polyphonic Composition . New York: Macmillan, 1960

literature

• Karin Wagner : Hugo Kauder (1888–1972): composer - music philosopher - theorist. A biography . Böhlau Verlag , Vienna, 2018, ISBN 978-3-205-20015-4
• Hartmut Krones :  Kauder, Hugo. In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present . Second edition, personal section, volume 9 (Himmel - Kelz). Bärenreiter / Metzler, Kassel et al. 2003, ISBN 3-7618-1119-5 , Sp. 1546–1548 ( online edition , subscription required for full access)
• Barbara Boisits: Kauder, Hugo. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 2, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-7001-3044-9 .
• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , pp. 603f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Hugo Kauder in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Hugo Kauder in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Hugo Kauder , at Hugo Kauder Gesellschaft
• Hugo Kauder , at Chicago University Library
• Karin Wagner:  Hugo Kauder in the Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians of the Nazi Era (LexM), as of August 18, 2017