Julius Roentgen

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Julius Roentgen

Julius Röntgen (born May 9, 1855 in Leipzig , † September 13, 1932 in Utrecht ) was a German - Dutch composer and pianist .

Life

Julius Röntgen comes from a German-Dutch family of musicians. His father Engelbert Röntgen was concert master of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra , and Röntgen was distantly related to the physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen . His mother Pauline was a pianist and came from the renowned Leipzig musician family Klengel. Julius Klengel , cellist at the Gewandhaus, was his cousin.

He was a particularly gifted child and, like his two sisters, did not go to school. They were taught music by their parents and grandparents, private teachers were responsible for the other subjects. Röntgen received his first piano lessons from Carl Reinecke , director of the Gewandhaus Orchestra . His first compositions (even as a child) were influenced by Reinecke, but also by Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms .

In March 1870, at the age of 14, Röntgen visited Franz Liszt in Weimar and, after an audition, was invited to a soiree in Liszt's house.

Röntgen later went to Munich, where he studied piano with Franz Lachner , a friend of Franz Schubert . At the age of 18 he began a career as a professional pianist. A concert tour through southern Germany brought him together with the 29-year-old singer Julius Stockhausen . It was also during this time that he met the Swedish music student Amanda Maier , whom he married in 1880.

In 1877 Röntgen was faced with a decision that would shape his life, either to go to Vienna or to Amsterdam . He opted for Amsterdam and a position as a piano teacher at the local music school. Professor Loman, professor of theology at Amsterdam University and an important figure in the city's cultural life, who was friends with Röntgen's father, promised his parents to take the 22-year-old son under his wing.

A letter dated December 1877 shows that Röntgen describes the music school as a place for children and amateurs who, since it is not publicly supported, looks more at the number than the quality of its students.

Between 1878 and 1885 Johannes Brahms often visited Amsterdam, where he also got to know Röntgen. In 1884, Röntgen played his Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83 under Brahms' direction . In 1883 he founded the "Amsterdamsch Conservatorium" ( Conservatorium van Amsterdam ) together with the composers Frans Coenen and Daniel de Lange .

In 1884 planning began for a new concert hall, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw , in which Röntgen was heavily involved. In 1888 he applied to lead the orchestra, which was now playing in this hall, but was greatly disappointed when the German Hans von Bülow was preferred. The committee had doubts about Röntgen's artistic abilities as a conductor, on the other hand von Bülow was not available due to lack of time. Ultimately, the decision was made for the violinist Willem Kes .

Messchaert and Röntgen.
Silhouette of Otto Böhler

Röntgen turned increasingly to composing chamber music and his work for the conservatory. He enjoyed great success as the accompanying pianist of the great violinist Carl Flesch , the singer Johannes Messchaert and the cellist Pau Casals . He and Messchaert visited Vienna at least once a year, where he also repeatedly met Brahms.

During this time he became friends with the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg , whom he often visited in his Villa Troldhaugen in Bergen. Grieg in turn visited Amsterdam several times to perform there in the Concertgebouw . The friendship with Grieg was of decisive importance for the development of Röntgen's music. When Grieg died in Norway in 1907, he was also looking into the estate of the famous Norwegian composer. After Grieg's death, Röntgen wrote an interesting biography in Dutch with parts of their extensive correspondence.

During the artistic rest period in summer in Amsterdam, Röntgen often traveled to Denmark with his family, where he met Bodil de Neergaard. In this house " Fuglsang ", which is very important for Denmark's musical life , he got to know the Danish composers Emil Hartmann and Carl Nielsen , among others . This resulted in a long and fruitful artistic relationship and a close relationship with Denmark, which resulted in his sons becoming fluent in Danish.

For a few years, Röntgen formed a piano trio with his sons from their first marriage. His second marriage (1897) to the talented piano teacher Abrahamina des Amorie van der Hoeven (his first wife Amanda had died in 1894) resulted in four further sons, three of whom also embarked on a professional music career.

Shortly after the First World War (1919), Röntgen became a Dutch citizen . The reason was that his first son from his second marriage, Johannes, was asked to do German military service. His second son from his first marriage, the cellist Engelbert, who emigrated to America, became a soldier in a medical company of the US Army. As a result, Röntgen was unable to perform as a musician in his home country for many years.

Villa Gaudeamus

In 1924 Julius Röntgen retired. He moved to Bilthoven near Utrecht. His son Frants built for him the Gaudeamus country estate in the style of the “Amsterdam School”. The music room was round and “floated above the ground, so to speak”: the architect had placed the music room on a small foundation at the villa. During the last eight years of his life he created around 100 compositions, mostly chamber music and songs, but also 21 symphonies, only three of which were performed during his lifetime.

Many well-known musicians visited him on Gaudeamus . a. the Spanish cellist Pau Casals and the young Australian pianist and composer Percy Grainger . Röntgen taught music analysis, especially on compositions by Hindemith , Stravinsky , Schönberg and Willem Pijper .

In 1928 Röntgen visited his son Engelbert in the United States. The latter now led the cellist group at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. There he was enthusiastic about jazz music. The young composer George Gershwin in particular made a deep impression on him. Some compositions in recent years have been influenced by jazz music.

In his last year Röntgen experimented with atonal music, he wrote a bitonal symphony that was never published during his lifetime, but is now available on a CD from the new CD label Cobra (Cobra 0016). At the Tuschinsky cinema in Amsterdam, he sometimes provided piano accompaniment to silent films by folklorist Dick van der Ven . He played folk music pieces that he had already edited. Like many other pianists of his time, he also made recordings with the pianola .

In 1930 Röntgen received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh . The British musicologist Donald F. Tovey wrote in his obituary in The Times newspaper that Röntgen's compositional work encompassed every musical art form, represented a perfect mastery of compositional techniques and that every series of his works culminated in a unique mastery.

Julius Röntgen died on September 13, 1932 in a clinic in Utrecht.

After the Second World War , Villa Gaudeamus became the seat of the Gaudeamus Society , a society for modern Dutch music.

The German classical music label cpo , which specializes in first-time classical music , released (as of 2018) twelve CDs with its symphonies (3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 15, 18, 19, 21), violin, cello and piano concerts. and made a significant contribution to making his name known again. The label has announced that it will record all of its symphonies. It works together with the Nederlands Muziekinstituut .

Published works (selection)

Ballad for piano (Musikverlag Hofmeister)
passaglia and fugue for piano (Musikverlag Hofmeister)
Prelude and fugue for piano (Musikverlag Hofmeister)
Cello Sonata in A minor op.41 (Musikverlag B-Note)
Sonata No. 1 for oboe and piano (Universal Edition)
Sonata for bassoon and piano (Accolade Musikverlag)
Sonata for viola and piano (Donemus, Amsterdam)
Trio for flute, oboe, bassoon in G major op.86 (Accolade Musikverlag)
Hirtenlied for oboe, 2 violins and double bass (Karthauser Musikverlag)
Jung Volker op.54 for male choir (Verlag Thomi-Berg)

Web links

Commons : Julius Röntgen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ jpc.de
  2. ↑ jpc.de
  3. ↑ [1]
personal data
SURNAME Roentgen, Julius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Dutch composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig , Germany
DATE OF DEATH September 13, 1932
Place of death Utrecht , Netherlands