Karl Weigl (composer)

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Karl Ignaz Weigl (born February 6, 1881 in Vienna , † August 11, 1949 in New York ) was an Austrian composer who had to emigrate to the USA in 1938 because of his Jewish origins and who took on US citizenship there in 1944 .

Life

Youth and education

Karl Weigl was born on February 6, 1881 in Vienna as the son of Gabriele (Ella) Stein Weigl and Ludwig Weigl. By gutbürgerlich-off parents (his father was a banker) consisting of Timisoara , in the Hungarian part of the then Austro-Hungarian , came Located monarchy, the young Karl came early in contact with music and took her by Alexander von Zemlinsky , a family friend, his first Composition lessons. After passing his Matura at the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium in Vienna, he began to study musicology with Guido Adler in 1899 at the University of Vienna . At the same time he attended classes at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde with Anton Door (piano) and Robert Fuchs (composition). Weigl received his doctorate from the university in 1903 and wrote his doctoral thesis on Emanuel Aloys Förster , a contemporary of Beethoven.

During these years he got to know Anton von Webern , who also studied musicology, and Arnold Schönberg , who, like Weigl, was still composing in the late romantic expressionist style.

The acquaintance with Schönberg continued throughout his life, even if not always nourished by mutual consent. Although Schoenberg, although only a few years older than Weigl was, but was early to the authority figure in his generation, his expression looked on atonality in new compositional techniques, he respected at least the line of his younger colleague whose musical language the emotional of late Romanticism arrested stayed, and so did Weigl's decision not to go along with the twelve-tone technique .

In 1903 Weigl became a member of the Association of Creative Musicians , which he founded together with Zemlinsky and Schönberg and of which Gustav Mahler was honorary president . In 1904/1905 this group organized a series of concerts with both symphonic music and chamber music. For example, the Sinfonia domestica by Richard Strauss , the mermaid by Zemlinsky, Mahler's Kindertotenlieder and Wunderhornlieder, the first performance of Schönberg's Pelleas and Melisande and songs and chamber music by Hans Pfitzner, Max Reger, Bruno Walter and Karl Weigl were all to be found.

Career

In the same year 1904, after the death of his father, he was engaged by Gustav Mahler as a solo repetitor at the Vienna Court Opera and worked with singers such as Leo Slezak , Lotte Lehmann and Selma Kurz . Shortly before his death, Weigl was to write about this time, during which he eagerly followed and admired Mahler's musical work at close quarters: “Even today I consider the years in which I worked under Gustav Mahler to be the most instructive time of my life . “Inspired by the work in the opera itself for vocal music, Weigl then wrote a large number of songs and choral works.

After being employed at the Court Opera from 1904 to 1906, Weigl lived as a freelance composer in Vienna until the beginning of the First World War. Via Mahler's recommendation, who followed a call to the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1907 and left Vienna, Weigl met Mahler's brother-in-law, Arnold Rosé , concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic and first violinist of the Rosé Quartet , who performed the string sextet with his ensemble in 1907/1910 and premiered the A major string quartet.

In 1910 Weigl married the singer Elsa Pazeller, whom he had met in the house of Adele Strauss , Johann Strauss ' third wife . In the same year he received the Beethoven Prize of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde for his string quartet in A major op. 4. As a result, an intensive collaboration began with Universal Edition , which produced several works, including the string quartets in A major op. 4 and G major op. 31 and his 1st symphony, published. On May 17, 1911, their daughter Maria was born in this marriage, who would later become a psychoanalyst and child psychologist.

In 1912 Karl Weigl, who had previously been a Hungarian citizen, was granted Austrian citizenship and, divorced from his wife Elsa in 1913, drafted into the army in 1914.

After the First World War

After the war, Karl Weigl was appointed Professor of Theory and Composition at the New Vienna Conservatory in 1918 . His new position and the marriage to Valerie (Vally) Pick , a former student and pianist, seem to have given his work new impetus as well, and his presence in musical life increased. In 1922 he was awarded the Philadelphia Mendelssohn Club Prize for the eight-part choral work Hymne , and in 1924 he received the Vienna Art Prize for his Symphonic Cantata World Celebration, which was commissioned by Paul Wittgenstein and published by Schott in Mainz .

In the years that followed, the interpreters of his works included names such as Wilhelm Furtwängler , the Vienna Philharmonic (Fantastic Intermezzo, Comedy Overture), George Szell , Mieczysław Horszowski , the Busch Quartet (dedicatee of the 5th String Quartet in G major op.31), the Kolisch Quartet (2nd string quartet) and Elisabeth Schumann and the Rosé Quartet (five songs for soprano and string quartet).

Weigl's son Wolfgang Johannes (John) was born in 1926, in 1928 Karl Weigl was awarded the title of Professor by the Austrian government, and in 1929 he succeeded Hans Gal as lecturer for harmony and counterpoint at the Musicological Institute of the University of Vienna. Among his students were Hanns Eisler , Erich Wolfgang Korngold , Erich Zeisl , Kurt Roger , Kurt Adler , Ernst Bacon , Rosy Wertheim , Frederic Waldman and Daniel Sternberg .

After 1933

After Hitler's seizure of power in Germany in 1933, Weigl, who was of Jewish descent, felt for the first time severe restrictions on his musical creativity due to the ban on non-Aryan music. The threat grew and in 1938, after Hitler marched into Austria, it also became a real danger to life and limb. At that time his name had already been deleted from the lists of music publishers.

In September 1938, shortly after his mother's death, he and his family managed to escape to the United States with the help of American friends, where he and Kurt Adler and Emanuel Feuermann arrived in New York on October 9, 1938. His daughter Maria and her husband, the psychoanalyst Gerhart Pisk-Piers , also emigrated a year later, via Switzerland.

The 57-year-old Weigl was suddenly faced with the situation of having to start his life abroad a second time; The hard-won standard of living of a middle-class existence had suddenly given way to "survival" in a one-room apartment.

The Weigls struggled to stay afloat with private lessons, and even for a composer who was courted and valued in the “Old World” it was almost impossible to find a job. The exceptional economic situation that also prevailed in the USA even made various letters of recommendation from Arnold Schönberg, Richard Strauss and Bruno Walter, with which Weigl was equipped, almost ineffective. In 1940 a three-movement sonata for viola and piano was written.

Among the institutes at which he later got teaching opportunities in his new home were the Hartt School of Music , Brooklyn College , the Boston Conservatory (where he was head of the theory department between 1945 and 1948) and the Philadelphia Academy of Music .

In 1944, Karl Weigl became an American citizen, although his heart still fervently beat for his old homeland. After all, the enthusiastic nature lover and mountaineer found some consolation in the Californian mountains, which he got to know for the first time while visiting his son and daughter-in-law in the western United States. For the last few years Karl Weigl lived withdrawn and almost isolated on his musical island, composed two large symphonies, three string quartets and several smaller works and finally died of bone marrow cancer on August 11, 1949 in New York after a long illness .

obituary

In the decades that followed, Karl Weigl's name appeared sporadically in the programs of various musicians such as Leopold Stokowski (premier of the 5th Apokalyptische Symphony in 1968 in Carnegie Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra ), Isidore Cohen , Richard Goode , the Loewenguth Quartet , Paul Doktor , Roman Totenberg and Sydney Harth , but so far it has not really been possible to re-establish Weigl's music in international concert halls. A new recording of the two quartets in C minor, Op. 20 and G major, Op. 31 by Nimbus - after Orfeo's recording of the A major Op. 4 in 1990 - represents another attempt by the Artis Quartet Vienna, to present his music to a wider audience and finally to tear it away from oblivion.

"Karl Weigl's music will not be lost, one will come back to it when the storm will have passed [...]" ( Pablo Casals , German: "Karl Weigl's music will not be lost, you will come back to it when the Storm has stopped [...] ")

His estate is held at Yale University .

Works (selection)

  • The 71st Psalm for female choir and orchestra, 1901
  • 1st string quartet in C minor, Op. 20, 1905/1906
  • 2nd string quartet in E major with viola d'amour, 1906
  • 1st Symphony in E major, Op. 5, 1908
  • 3rd String Quartet in A major, Op. 4, 1909
  • Three poems by Lenau for eight-part mixed choir a cappella op. 6, 1909
  • Five songs for a high voice and piano, op.23, 1911
  • Three chants for high female voice and orchestra, 1916
  • Fantastic Intermezzo , 1922
  • 2nd Symphony in D minor, Op. 19, 1922
  • 1. Sonata for violin and piano op.16, 1923
  • Piano Concerto in E flat major for the left hand, 1924
  • Violin Concerto in D major, 1928
  • 3rd Symphony in B flat minor, 1931
  • Concerto for piano and large orchestra in F minor, Op. 21, 1931
  • The Pied Piper of Hameln op.24, fairy tale game in four pictures, 1932
  • Symphonic prelude to a tragedy, 1933
  • 4th Symphony in F minor, 1936
  • Music for the Young (Boy Scouts Overture) for small orchestra, 1939
  • Rhapsody for piano and orchestra, 1940
  • 5th Apocalyptic Symphony , 1945
  • 6th Symphony in A minor, 1947
  • 8th String Quartet in D major, 1949

literature

Web links

notes

  1. ↑ Official Gazette of the City of Vienna No. 39 of May 14, 1924
  2. ↑ see about her: Working group in exile music at the Musicological Institute of the University of Hamburg (ed.): Paths of life of musicians in the “Third Reich” and in exile. von Bockel, Neumünster 2000, ISBN 9783932696374 , pp. 65-85
personal data
SURNAME Weigl, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weigl, Karl Ignaz (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American composer
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1949
Place of death new York