Joseph Wheeler (music researcher)

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Joseph Hugh Wheeler , Joe Wheeler for short , (* 1927 in Bromley ; † October 11, 1977 ) was an English music researcher who was probably the first to create a complete performance version of Gustav Mahler's unfinished 10th Symphony .

Wheeler was the son of an amateur musician who played in a brass band . Joe Wheeler himself showed musical ambitions as a wind player and was a founding member of the "Guild of Gentlemen Trumpeters", but after the end of his military service with the RAF in 1948 he started a civil service career. The American music critic and Mahler enthusiast Jack Diether encouraged him to examine the torso of Gustav Mahler's 10th Symphony .

From 1952/1953, Wheeler worked on a total of four complete versions of the work. The first version was completed in 1959, but, like a second version, remained unperformed ( Deryck Cooke also began in 1959 , from whom the complete version of Mahler's 10th Symphony is most frequently performed today , initially without knowledge of Wheeler's works and his additions). A third version by Wheeler was premiered in May 1965 with the Caecilian Symphony Orchestra under Arthur Bloom. A fourth version was performed in New York in November 1966 under Ionel Perlea with the Manhattan School of Music Orchestra. This version is the basis of two recordings made by the conductor Robert Olson in 1997 with the Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra and in 2000 with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Compared to the completions by other arrangers, Wheeler's last version remains perhaps closest to Mahler's existing short score and in the instrumentation (which sometimes prefers brass) refers to the thinning in Mahler's late work ( Lied von der Erde ). Although Wheeler had not completed a music degree, it was definitely recognized and was also used as a basis for a later completion by Remo Mazzetti .

literature

  • Text supplement to the CD recording of Gustav Mahler's 10th Symphony in the reconstruction by Joe Wheeler. Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Olson. Naxos 8.554811

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Wheeler, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wheeler, Joe
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Bromley
DATE OF DEATH October 11, 1977