Leopold Godowsky

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Leopold Godowsky ( Jan Ciągliński , 1911)

Leopold Godowsky (born February 13, 1870 in Žasliai , Vilnius Governorate , † November 21, 1938 in New York City ) was a Polish-American pianist and composer.

Life

Godowskys was born into a Jewish family, his parents were Mordkhel Godowsky (1848–1872), from Merkinė , and Khana-Sheyna Godowsky (born Levin, 1848–1918), from Gelvonai. The musical child prodigy showed up at the age of 3. At the age of 7 the first compositions were created; and at the age of 9 - in Vilnius - Godowsky first appeared as a pianist in front of an audience. His piano teacher seems to have been Ernst Friedrich until then.

In the winter semester of 1883/84, at the age of almost 14, Godowsky was accepted as a student at the Academic University of Music in Berlin . The piano department was headed by Ernst Rudorff . For the entrance exam, Godowsky offered to play Chopin's Scherzo in B flat minor, Op. 31 . Rudorff rejected this as salon music . Instead, he wanted to hear rich music. When Rudorff then traveled to Italy, Godowsky was assigned to the lessons of a Schultze, Rudorff's assistant. In class with Schultze, Godowsky played Bach's French Suites . He got the impression that Schultze could not help him with advice in any way. Finally Rudorff returned from Italy. There were new differences of opinion about Chopin, whom Rudorff did not want to put above Cécile Chaminade . In Berlin Woldemar Bargiel Godowsky taught composition . After a stay at the Academic University of about 3 months, Godowsky dropped out of classes with Rudorff. In 1884 he joined a concert company for a tour in the United States of America. In the United States he gave concerts with Clara Louise Kellogg and Emma Thursby. He has also performed several orchestral concerts at the Casino in New York. Eventually he toured the United States and Canada with the Belgian violinist Ovide Musin .

In 1886 Godowsky returned to Europe. It had been his intention to study with Franz Liszt in Weimar . After Liszt died on July 31, 1886, Godowsky came too late. He was presented to Camille Saint-Saëns in 1887 . Saint-Saëns, who heard Godowsky performing his own compositions and developed a strong affection, agreed to take over the further training of the young virtuoso in Paris. Godowsky lived in Paris until the summer of 1890 . In terms of his education, he was largely left to fend for himself because Saint-Saëns was often absent when traveling. In the fall of 1890 Godowsky returned to New York. There he married Frieda Saxe on April 30, 1891. On that occasion, he accepted American citizenship. He and his wife went on a honeymoon in Europe. Then he returned to America. After very successful concerts he was hired in 1894 in Philadelphia in a leading position at the piano department of the Conservatory on Broad Street, the later Combs College of Music. From 1895 he headed the piano department at the Conservatory College in Chicago .

Debut in Berlin, as a professor in Vienna, tours

In 1900 Godowsky made the decision to start a European career. After a brilliant debut in Berlin on December 6, 1900, he settled there as his main residence. Successful tours through Germany, the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy and Russia followed. Heinrich Neuhaus was Godowsky's most important student in the Berlin years . In 1909 he was employed as the successor to Ferruccio Busoni and Emil Sauer as director of the piano department of the Imperial and Royal Academy for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. From November 1912 to April 1913 and from December 1913 to March 1914 he again gave concerts in the United States of America. This phase of Godowsky's biography came to an end in August 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War . Godowsky was currently in Middelkerke near Ostend in Belgium. Together with his family, d. H. his wife and two daughters Vanita and Dagmar and their sons Leopold Junior and Gordon, he fled first to London. From there he went to the United States, where he had his permanent residence until the end of his life. He left an extensive musical library, a collection of autograph pictures and numerous memorabilia in Vienna.

After the First World War

Leopold Godowsky in his final years ( Carl Van Vechten , 1935)

Until the end of the 1920s, Godowsky dealt primarily with his compositions and with concert appearances as a pianist. He gave one last concert in the United States in 1922. He continued to tour, however, which took him to Central and South America, in Europe to Constantinople and in the Far East to Java .

Godowsky had been struggling with private problems since the 1920s. Since 1924 this included a serious illness in his wife Frieda. From 1928 onwards there were strong tensions with the son Gordon. In addition, there were financial problems that resulted from Black Thursday on October 24, 1929. In order to reorganize himself in this regard, Godowsky wanted to undertake new concert tours. But a new catastrophe soon struck: In the spring of 1930 Godowsky and his wife traveled to Dresden to spend their 39th wedding anniversary there. There he received a telegram offer to record Chopin's Etudes and Scherzi in a recording studio in London . He also accepted the offer, but collapsed on June 17, 1930 - a few hours after the recording of Chopin's Scherzo in E major - with a stroke . Godowsky did recover from the stroke; in December 1932, however, his son Gordon committed suicide and his wife died in 1933. Afterwards Godowsky lived with his daughter Dagmar in an apartment in New York. He had given up playing in public since his collapse, but was occasionally heard to play the piano when friends visited. The extent to which he was still composing cannot be determined in detail. Proof that he still wrote sheet music at all is a booklet with light arrangements of melodies by Bizet from the opera Carmen . In the preface written by Godowsky, March 1936 is given as the date. On November 21, 1938, Godowsky died in New York of complications from a serious stomach ailment.

Works

Like Chopin, Godowsky composed almost exclusively piano music. His career as a composer began in 1899. Split up between the two American publishers Schirmer and Schmidt, piano pieces with opus numbers 11–16 were published that year. Schmidt also published an arrangement of Chopin's Rondo, Op. 16, an arrangement of Chopin's Waltz, Op. 18, in which the original waltz is expanded with additional parts and other ingredients, and a similar arrangement of the Etude Si oiseau j'etais op.2.6 by Adolf Henselt . Schirmer published 10 more studies on Chopin's etudes.

The opus numbers 1–10 have remained unoccupied; and there are no other works by Godowsky with opus numbers. The process may have been based on the idea that Godowsky, at the age of almost 30, did not want to approach the audience as a beginner, but as a finished composer who already had a considerable number of published works to show. Some of the pieces summarized under the opus numbers 11–16 were already available in 1889 as Twilight Thoughts in a private print in Paris. The 10 studies on Chopin's etudes published by Schirmer were preceded by an edition of the study on the etude op. 25,6 in December 1894 by another American publisher, Kleber in Pittsburgh , with a dedication to Saint-Saëns.

With the pieces Sarabande , Menuet and Courante of his Op. 12, Godowsky also tied on historical models.

Studies on Chopin's Etudes

Godowsky-Chopin, Study for the left hand only on the Etude op. 10,3

After his debut in Berlin in December 1900, Godowsky continued the project of his studies on Chopin's etudes until 1914. The Schlesinger publishing house in Berlin had taken over the project since 1903. In listings from 1903 and 1909 it was announced which pieces were still to be expected. It should be a cycle of 50 pieces. In the meantime, a cycle of 56 pieces was planned. The project was completed in 1914 with a total of 53 pieces, although about half a dozen of the pieces previously announced, including an arrangement of the original etude op.25.7 and an arrangement as a combination of the three etudes op.10.2 , op.25.4 and Op. 25.11, either never was written or has remained unpublished for other reasons.

Godowsky is considered a "left hand genius":

“With the 22 studies for the left hand alone, the author wants to refute the generally prevailing view that the left hand is less capable of development than the right. The left hand has many advantages over the right, and it is incorrect to believe that the left hand is less capable of perfect training than the right; yes, one could enumerate peculiarities that prove that the left hand has a downright advantage over the right. The left hand has the advantage of having the stronger part of the hand available for the more emphasized part of the melody, just as the stronger fingers lead the upper part on double notes and chords. In addition, the left hand, which controls the lower part of the keyboard, produces a fuller, softer tone with less effort and more elasticity - qualitatively and quantitatively superior to the right hand. Another reason why the left hand is more amenable to training is that the muscles of the left hand are more flexible (more elastic) due to the reduced use of the same. Proof of the correctness of this view is that, as far as the author knows - with one exception - no composition has been written for the right hand alone, while many of them exist for the left hand alone. The majority of the compositions that already exist for the left hand alone essentially show the composer's endeavor to develop the left hand mainly on the superficial, virtuoso side. "

- Leopold Godowsky

Educational adaptations

After Godowsky had settled in the United States after the outbreak of World War I, his salary as a professor in Vienna had ceased. For an indefinite period of time, he also had to forego concert tours in his familiar territory in Europe. This may be related to the fact that he was now busy with a project that was completely atypical for his reputation. He was involved partly as an editor, partly as an editor in Educational Adaptions and in Progressive Series Compositions .

The educational adaptations contained very light arrangements of folk melodies and dances from various European countries, melodies from operas and pieces from the symphonic, sacred and chamber music repertoire. There were also very simple arrangements of songs by Schubert and other composers.

The Progressive Series Compositions booklets were instructive editions of piano pieces for advanced amateurs. Each booklet contained a foreword with a sketched biography of the respective composer as well as a detailed musical analysis. With equipment that was exemplary in terms of the time, the two series continued into the 1930s. They may have been part of Godowsky's effort to make a living.

Triacontamerone

In 1919 and 1920 the 30 moods and images were created in three-four time . The last movement of the cycle is Requiem (1914–1918): Epilogue headed . It ends with a paraphrase of The Star-Spangled Banner , the American anthem. As the Star Spangled Banner , this final part was also published as a separate one-off item.

Works from the 1920s

In the 1920s, new arrangements were made, along with a large number of original compositions. The arrangements include a booklet with 12 pieces on Franz Schubert's songs . Godowsky kept the original melodies, but z. Some major changes were made to the harmonies and the accompanying figuration. Another example of the arrangements made in the 1920s are the three sonatas for unaccompanied violin and the three suites for unaccompanied cello by Johann Sebastian Bach . Godowsky transformed the pieces into piano works with lavish ingredients.

The original works from the 1920s include an extensive Passacaglia with a fugue on the opening melody of the symphony in B minor (Schubert) . The piece is played very rarely, while it is to be regarded as a major work because of its demanding form. In the years 1924 and 1925, Godowsky developed 12 pieces of the Phonorama of the Java Suite , which he developed a harmonious language that can be regarded as his personal type of impressionism . In a movement rich in dissonance, the color is more important than the tension in the chords. In other works from the 1920s, too, including Poems for 2 Hands and Waltz Poems for the Left Hand alone, Godowsky clearly moved away from late Romantic harmony. The notable original works from the 1920s include a prelude with fugue on the BACH theme and a suite in D major, both works for the left hand alone.

reception

As a pianist, Godowsky is on a par with his contemporaries Scriabin and Rachmaninoff , but as a musician he cannot achieve them. Many of his original works and arrangements seem overloaded. Under the spell of the 19th century, Godowsky found no access to modernity after the First World War . The music of Igor Stravinsky , Edgar Varèse and Arnold Schönberg remained alien to him. The Passacaglia - written in 1928 on the 100th year of Schubert's death and Godowsky's Opus summum  - is seldom performed. After 44 variations and an epilogue on Schubert's B minor theme, it is difficult to include a fugue on the theme. Godowsky shares the admiration for Johann Sebastian Bach and the pronounced sense for counterpoint with Max Reger . Undeniable are original fingerings and extreme care in music theory .

Recordings

From the years 1907–1930 there are more than 200 piano rolls and acoustic recordings for vinyl. For record, Godowsky wrote Beethoven's Les Adieux op. 81a , the Etudes op. 25, 1-3, the Scherzo op. 54 and the last two movements of Chopin's sonata in B flat minor op. 35 , the Ballad op. 24 by Grieg , Schumann's Carnaval , Liszt 's etudes La leggierezza and La campanella , the Rigoletto paraphrase and the transcription of Chopin's song Meine Freuden , Debussy's Clair de lune from the Bergamasque Suite , Tchaikovsky's Barcarolle op.37.6 and Rubinstein's Melody in F major op.3.1 recorded. An acoustic recording of Godowsky's own works is known only from the piece The Gardens of Buitenzorg from the Phonorama of the Java Suite . Godowsky recorded many of his own works as piano roles.

In the case of piano roles, there were options for subsequent correction. In Godowsky's time, however, acoustic recordings had to be made in one piece, and no mistakes were allowed to happen. This may have been one reason why Godowsky felt particularly uncomfortable and unfree in the recording studio. In his striving for perfection, he felt himself exposed to strong emotional pressure in the studio, but also in concert. It is often emphasized that Godowsky's really outstanding game could be heard above all in private among friends. The recordings show that Godowsky was an excellent pianist in his time. As such, he was recognized by virtuoso friends, including Józef Hofmann and Sergei Rachmaninow .

See also

literature

  • Elmer M. Steueragel: Leopold Godowsky - pianist, composer, arranger . Dissertation University of Pittsburgh, undated
  • Igor Kirpnis, Marc-André Roberge: Godowsky, Leopold , in: Music in the past and present. Second, revised edition, Person Part Volume 7, Col. 1183 f.
  • Donald Manildi: Guides to Godowsky. Piano & Keyboard, January – February 1998, p. 40 f.
  • Richard McCandless Gipson: The Life of Emma Thursby, 1845-1931. New York 1940.
  • Jeremy Nicholas : Godowsky. A pianist for pianists - A biography of Leopold Godowsky. Staccato-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2012, ISBN 978-3-932976-50-6 .
  • Leonard S. Saxe: The published music of Leopold Godowsky , in: Music Library Association Notes , Second Series, Vol. XIV, No. 2, March 1957, p. 165 ff.
  • Emerson Withorne: Biographical Sketch. In: Leopold Godowsky: A Night in Spring (spring night) , Progressive Series Compositions Catalog No. 1208. Art Publication Society, St. Louis, 1915, pp. 1 ff.
  • Artis Woodhouse: Godowsky comes of age. Piano & Keyboard, July – August 1997, p. 31 ff.

Web links

Commons : Leopold Godowsky  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ The name Ernst Friedrichs as Godowsky's first teacher was taken from: Jones: Essay , p. 11.
  2. ↑ Clara Louise Kellogg (1842-1916) was an American singer.
  3. ↑ On the person see: McCandless Gipson: The Life of Emma Thursby, 1845-1931 .
  4. ↑ The position was originally set up for Emil Sauer. Sauer was followed by Busoni, who, however, was dismissed in 1909 due to high tension with the direction of the conservatory. The Godowsky position was then transferred.
  5. ↑ As a hobby, Leopold Junior and his friend Leopold Mannes undertook experiments to improve photo plates. The experiments were ultimately supported by the Eastman-Kodak company; cf .: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 104. After the successful outcome of their experiments, the two hobby researchers were compensated in 1935 with a severance payment in the double-digit millions. Leopold Junior was married to a sister of George Gershwin .
  6. ↑ Gordon, b. 1906, was named "Gutram" after his birth. The name was later Americanized as "Gordon"; see: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 56.
  7. ↑ Gordon had met the dancer Yvonne Hughes on New Year's Eve 1926. Despite strong opposition from his father, she became his wife in 1928. See: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , pp. 134 and 148.
  8. ↑ Godowsky's works continued to appear in print. When exactly the works were created, however, must first be determined in each individual case. The “Symphonic Metamorphoses on the Treasure Waltz” set for the left hand, for example, were published in 1941 by Godowsky's son-in-law David Saperton, but were written in Vienna in spring 1928; see: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 135.
  9. ↑ In addition to the transposition from E major to D flat major, Godowsky's metronome is remarkable. His Lento, ma non troppo is half as fast as Chopin's pace.
  10. ↑ The series contains e.g. B. Editions of the Grande Sonate pathetique op. 13 by L. van Beethoven , the Impromptus op. 90.4 and op. 142.3 by Fr. Schubert , the Impromptus in F sharp major op. 36 and in C sharp minor op. 66 posth by Fr. Chopin , the children's scenes op. 15, the 4th piece from the follow-ups op. 23, the play Vogel als Prophet from the forest scenes op. 82 and other pieces by R. Schumann as well as two pieces from the 1st year (Switzerland) of the Années de Pèlerinage by Mrs. Liszt . But there were also “more modern” composers such as M. Balakirew , B. Godard , E. Grieg , A. Liadow , M. Moszkowski , A. Rubinstein , S. Rachmaninoff , Chr. Sinding and R. Strauss represented with works. Godowsky himself presented an edition of the play A Night in Spring (spring night ). The piece was announced as early as 1889 in connection with the Twilight Thoughts and in 1899 as op.15.2, but remained unpublished.
  11. ^ The arrangements were made in 1927, probably with a view to the 100th anniversary of Schubert's death in 1928.
  12. ↑ The Passacaglia was also created in 1927. In this case, a reference to the 100th anniversary of Schubert's death in 1928 emerges from Godowsky's foreword.
  13. ↑ Phonorama should be understood as an "acoustic side piece" to an optical panorama .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Whithorne: Biographical Sketch , p. 1.
  2. ^ Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 16.
  3. ↑ See: Saxe: Published Works , p. 165.
  4. ↑ a b Whithorne: Biographical Sketch , p. 2.
  5. ↑ See: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 87.
  6. ^ See: Saxe: Published Works , p. 166.
  7. ↑ See: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 138.
  8. ^ See: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 146.
  9. ^ See: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 151.
  10. ^ See: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , p. 161.
  11. ↑ See: Saxe: Published Works , p. 168 f.
  12. ↑ See: Saxe: Published Works , p. 173. According to: Saxe: Published Works , p. 165, William Mason persuaded the Schirmer publishing house to take over the Chopin studies.
  13. ↑ For details see: Jones: Essay , p. 29 f.
  14. ↑ See: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , pp. Xxii. See. There also page 147, after which Godowsky the opera Wozzeck by Alban Berg felt as a crime against civilization.
  15. ↑ See the article about Godowsky in: The music in history and present .
  16. ↑ See Jones: Essay , p. 17.
  17. ↑ See the article about Godowsky in: The music in history and present .
  18. ↑ See e.g. E.g .: Nicholas: Pianists' Pianist , pp. Xvii, pp. 142 and 214.
  19. ↑ cf. z. E.g .: Woodhouse: Godowsky comes of age , p. 32
  20. ↑ See Jones: Essay , p. 16.
personal data
SURNAME Godowsky, Leopold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Godowski, Leopold
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American pianist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Žasliai , Vilnius Governorate
DATE OF DEATH November 21, 1938
Place of death New York City