Karl M. May

Karl M. May (born as Karl Michael Mayer on August 9, 1893 in Vienna ; died on April 19, 1943 in Madrid ) was an Austrian composer of hits, revues, operettas and film music.

Live and act

The seven years younger brother of the composer and film composer Hans Mayer, artist name Hans May , studied law and musicology at the university in his hometown of Vienna with Guido Adler and at the music academy with Hermann Graedener , before he was drafted at the beginning of the First World War and deployed on the Eastern Front has been. There Mayer / May was captured by the Russians in 1916 and was deported to a camp in Vladivostok in the far east of the country. Here he directed a prisoner of war orchestra for three years. Back home in Vienna, Karl Mayer took his first steps as a musician. He now called himself Karl M. May and from then on worked as Kapellmeister, wrote pop music ( I have a small brown mandolin, masked ball in the goose stable; Malwine kisses unheard of, In love for the first time, my darling, open your heart; Bimbambulla in love ) and so-called Viennese songs (e.g. A Glaserl wine ).

In addition, Karl composed. M. May also several revues between 1926 and 1936 ( Vienna and the Viennese, Rund um die Niese, Madame, what are you doing today ?; A Maharajah and a thousand women ) and operettas ( Aphrodite, The blonde danger ). With the dawn of the sound film age, Karl found. M. May, like his brother before, also worked as a composer in German film, although, unlike Hans, he did not achieve great success there. Most of the time he collaborated on his film songs and compositions with well-known colleagues such as Willy Schmidt-Gentner , Bronislaw Kaper and Marc Roland . In 1933 both Jewish May brothers had to leave Germany, which had become Nazi, and initially returned to Vienna. There, Hans and Karl M. May wrote the film music for Richard Oswald's vocal romance. When you're young, the world is yours . While Hans May was able to successfully continue his film career a little later in exile in England, Karl M. May's path finally led to Spain, where he died in the middle of the war, not yet 50 years old.

Filmography

• 1930: two people
• 1930: darling of the gods
• 1930: Affair
• 1931: Shooting festival in Schilda
• 1931: a sweet secret
• 1932: Hasenklein can't help it
• 1932: The eleven Schill officers
• 1933: When you are young, the world is yours
• 1934: De big van het regiment
• 1937: The pastor of Kirchfeld

literature

• Karin Ploog: When grades learned to run. History and stories of popular music up to 1945. Volume 1.2 .: Composers HO., Book on Demand 2019, p. 227. (here with the wrong year of birth)
• Monika Kornberger: May (own Mayer), brothers. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 3, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-7001-3045-7 .

Web links

• Karl M. May in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Karl M. May at filmportal.de
• May retrospective (in French)
• Karl M. May at the Institute for Historical Musicology, University of Hamburg