Kurt Roger

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Kurt Georg Roger (born May 3, 1895 in Auschwitz , Galicia , † August 4, 1966 in Vienna ) was an Austrian-American composer and musicologist .

Life

Kurt Roger grew up in Vienna, where he studied composition with Karl Weigl and Arnold Schönberg and musicology with Guido Adler . In 1921 he received his doctorate from the latter. phil. 1923-38 he worked as a teacher for music theory and composition at the New Vienna Conservatory. In 1938, after Austria was "annexed" to the German Empire, Roger fled from the National Socialists to London. In order to prepare for his onward journey to Great Britain, Kurt Roger stayed in Basel from August 9 to September 14, 1938.

Since his efforts to obtain permanent residence in England were in vain, he emigrated to the USA in 1939, where he taught at the University of Washington, among other places. In 1945 he was granted American citizenship. In 1958 he taught as part of a summer course at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and in 1964 as a visiting professor at Queen's University in Belfast, Ireland.

Kurt Roger died on August 4, 1966 while visiting his old hometown of Vienna. He was buried in the urn grove of the Simmering fire hall (Department 8, Ring 3, Group 1, Number 50). His grave is one of the honorary dedicated or honorary custody grave sites of the City of Vienna.

Works

Roger's compositional oeuvre encompasses 116 works, including compositions for orchestra (symphonies and concerts), choral works, songs, chamber music and the Gothic Passacaglia organ work published by Doblinger in Vienna from 1936. Stylistically, he is closer to his first composition teacher, the post-romanticist Karl Weigl as Arnold Schönberg, whose step into atonality he did not take part. Nonetheless, Roger's counterpoint shows influences from the “motivic work” typical of Schönberg's composing. The expressiveness of Roger's music is occasionally reminiscent of the tension-laden art of expression of his second teacher. And finally, Schönberg's great openness to new sounds and his undogmatic openness to everything independent and original should have rubbed off on Roger, at least ideally. In his years in Vienna he appeared as a music writer as an apologist for new music. For example, he campaigned for Stravinsky's work.

Although Roger remained committed to tonality, he always knew how to gain new facets from it. With his relatively traditional tonal language, which is somewhere between the German-Austrian romanticism and a moderately modern neoclassicism, he found his own tone. Many prominent performers recognized the high quality of his music and performed it, such as the Rosé Quartet or the conductors Erich Leinsdorf , Rafael Kubelík , Charles Groves and Jac van Steen . After Roger's death, his widow gave his compositional estate to the Musikfreunde archive in Vienna.

literature

  • Otto Biba : Program for the portrait concert Kurt Roger, Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, June 21, 2004
  • Sonia Stevenson: Booklet for the Naxos CD 8.572238 (chamber music works by Kurt Roger, Naxos 2009)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ State Archive Basel-Stadt Signature: PD-REG 3a 30358 ( [1] )
  2. ↑ www.friedhoefewien.at - Graves dedicated to honor in the fire hall Simmering cemetery (PDF 2016), accessed on March 7, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Roger, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian composer and musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Auschwitz
DATE OF DEATH June 21, 1966
Place of death Vienna