Marcel Mihalovici

Marcel Mihalovici (born October 22, 1898 in Bucharest , † August 12, 1985 in Paris ) was a Romanian - French composer .

Life

Youth and education in Romania

Raised in a wealthy family in Bucharest with parents Michael and Helene Mihalovici and four brothers, Mihalovici received his first violin lessons from Franz Fischer and Benjamin Bernfeld at an early age . The composer Dimitrie Cuclin gave him regular harmony lessons in Romania , and Robert Cremer taught counterpoint . The youth works include an opera Chitra , which has not survived , songs based on texts by Goethe, Klopstock, Bethge and Klabund as well as piano pieces. In spring 1919, George Enescu recommended Mihalovici's parents, after examining his compositions, to send him to Vincent d'Indy at the Schola Cantorum in Paris.

Relocation to Paris

In the summer of the same year Mihalovici traveled to Paris via Berlin, where he was visiting one of his brothers, and immediately enrolled at the Schola as a student. There he attended composition lessons from Vincent d'Indy between 1919 and 1925, he studied harmony with Léon Saint-Réquier and his deputy Paul Le Flem , whom he held in high regard. Mihalovici was particularly inspired by the world of Gregorian chant , which he discovered through Amédée Gastoué . In violin playing he continued his education with Nestor Lejeune and graduated with the grade "très bien". Mihalovici did not obtain a diploma. While still studying, Mihalovici developed an intensive artistic activity in Paris, for example in collaboration with the Romanian dancer Lizica Codreanu and the Russian painter couple Michail Larionow and Natalja Goncharova . He was also close friends with the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși and the artist Irène Codreanu from Romania. In avant-garde productions from 1921 to 1925 with Lizica Codreanu, the works Prélude antique and Une vie de Polichinelle were heard, to which Codreanu danced. Mihalovici worked with Larionow, Goncharova and Frank Martin in 1924 in the performance of his ballet Karagueuz op. 23. Mihalovici won the Prix national de composition George Enescu several times (1919, 1921 and 1925). His works, such as the string quartet op. 10, were performed in Parisian music societies such as the Société Musicale Indépendente, the orchestral pieces Notturno and Fantaisie op. 26 were performed in the Straram concerts.

From 1928 a total of seven works by Mihalovici by Michel Dillard were published by La Sirène musicale in Paris, and concerts were held to promote them, including compositions by Bohuslav Martinů, Conrad Beck and Tibor Harsányi . It was not until 1932 that the press - and Mihalovici himself - brought this group of composers into connection with the École de Paris , which also included visual artists. Alexandre Tansman and Alexander Tcherepnin , who were close friends with Mihalovici , also belonged to this “École de Paris” , a collection of Parisian artists mostly from abroad . Mihalovici's graphic work comes from the 1930s; In addition to sketches in ink and pencil, there are also two large-format pictures depicting Irène and Lizica Codreanu.

Mihalovici lived at 56 rue Monsieur le Prince until early 1931, then at 44bis avenue de Châtillon. From August 1937 until the end of his life, Mihalovici lived at 15 Rue du Dragon. He stayed in Paris and became a French citizen. In 1932 Mihalovici founded the chamber music society Le Triton together with Pierre-Octave Ferroud and well-known Parisian composers, supported by an international committee. This institution, which held concerts until 1939, saw itself as an open forum for the presentation of contemporary works from home and abroad. As part of Triton, various works by Mihalovici were heard, such as the Sonata op.35 in 1933, the Suite de Karagueuz op.23 in 1934, Divertissement op.38 in 1935 and an early version of the Toccata op.44 in Triton's last concert. At the IGNM music festival Mihalovici met Paul Sacher in Barcelona in 1936, who from then on actively supported him with commissions for compositions and the performance of works. Mihalovici was able to present his own works several times (1930, 1936, 1939, 1949 and 1952) at the IGNM music festivals. Before the Second World War, Mihalovici regularly spent the summer months in his Romanian homeland. The works Toccata op.44, Prélude et invention op.42 and the first opera L'intransigeant Pluton op.27 were composed up to the exile in Cannes.

Exile in Cannes

During the occupation of Paris, Mihalovici, who was of Jewish faith, had to flee into exile in Cannes in the summer of 1940, together with Irène and Lizica Codreanu and their son François. Sometimes the pianist Monique Haas , who later became Mihalovici's wife, came to visit. In exile he composed the sonatas op. 45 and op. 47, Ricercari op. 46 for piano and, until 1944, the confessional work Symphonies pour le temps présent op. 48. Mihalovici suffered patiently during the exile, enduring fate, constant fear and unbearable waiting , just difficult. After Gestapo officials searched Mihalovici's apartment several times and found his place of exile, Mihalovici had to go into hiding until the end of the German occupation of France in World War II and stayed with friends in Mont-Saint-Léger for a while. At that time he participated in a committee of the Front national (Résistance) , which actively campaigned for the works of composers who had been persecuted by the National Socialists.

Return to Paris

From 1945 Mihalovici worked intensively for the newly strengthened French radio and wrote not only radio music on the subject of ancient tragedy for the Club d'Essai, but also the opera Phèdre op. 58 in collaboration with Yvan Goll in 1948. He was also responsible for a series of concerts. A trip to Palestine in the spring of 1947 brought the first family meeting after the end of the war. Before Phèdre was first broadcast on French radio in April 1950, Paul Sacher performed Variations op.54 in Basel and shortly afterwards ordered a short orchestral work, which was premiered in Basel on December 14, 1951 under the title Sinfonia giocosa op.65 .

Mihalovici and the German musical life

Mihalovici's activities in German-speaking countries intensified not only through his collaboration with the conductor Ferdinand Leitner, who directed the staged premiere of Phèdre op.58 in Stuttgart on June 9, 1951, but also through his acquaintance with the musicologist Heinrich Strobel. For the Donaueschinger Musiktage, which he organized, Mihalovici composed the Étude en deux parties op. 64, and thanks to its use, the Sinfonia partita op. 66 was premiered on March 1, 1953 with the Südwestfunkorchester. Sacher also campaigned for Mihalovici again in 1954 with the world premiere of the radio opera Die Heimkehr op. 70. Mihalovici and Haas mostly spent the summer in the country, for example in La Chapelle en Serval, where Mihalovici was pushing composition projects and Haas was preparing the program for the coming season. This division of the year into a longer summer break outside Paris, during which there was intensive work, and active concert activity from autumn onwards should prove itself in the following years.

Mihalovici received his first award for his compositional work in 1955 when he was awarded the Ludwig Spohr Prize by the city of Braunschweig . In Braunschweig, several works by Mihalovici were heard in the following years thanks to the engagement of the conductor Heinz Zeebe, for example Elégie op.72 in 1955, Phèdre op.58 in 1956, Thésée au labyrinthe in 1957 and Alternamenti op.54 in 1959. George Enescu died in 1955 Mihalovici's patron and friend, whose fragmentary work Mihalovici partially supplemented at Enescu's request. During a three-month stay in Australia, Haas was on a concert tour there, Mihalovici began in 1955 with the large-scale choral and orchestral work Sinfonia cantata op.68, which was premiered on November 24, 1964 in Paris and is one of Mihalovici's main works.

Between 1958 and 1962 Mihalovici returned for a short time after his studies, now as a teacher at the Schola Cantorum in Paris and taught "morphology", that is, form theory. Mihalovici only carried out this activity for a few years with little enthusiasm. Rather, he invested his energies in new composition projects, such as an opera with his friend Samuel Beckett, which had been planned since May 1959 and was completed in July 1960 with the completion of the score for Krapp op. 81. The English and German translation of the French libretto was created in collaboration with Samuel Beckett and Elmar Tophoven in the spring of 1960. After an extended summer break, the first preparations were made for the performance in November 1960 and January 1961 and the premiere itself in Bielefeld on February 25, 1961. In In this successful year Mihalovici also received the composition prize of the Copley Foundation Chicago, on whose advisory board Darius Milhaud was a member.

Work for French radio and opera successes

At the end of 1960 Mihalovici had completed his Sinfonia variata op. 82, which had been commissioned by Igor Markevitsch. The world premiere on January 5, 1962, however, took place later by the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under the direction of Hans Rosbaud, who valued and strongly promoted Mihalovici's oeuvre. At that time Mihalovici was again actively involved in French radio. He became a member of the Comité de la Musique, which had the task of selecting contemporary works for radio production. He worked in this capacity until 1964, when French radio was fundamentally redesigned. From 1965 to 1973 he was a member of the Bureau de Lecture de Partitions Musicales, a committee with the same task. In September 1961 Mihalovici began his last music-dramatic work, the operetta Les Jumeaux op. 84, which was also premiered on January 23, 1963 at the Braunschweig State Theater.

In 1962 Mihalovici turned again to a text by Beckett, the radio play Cascando, which he was able to complete at the end of the year after having used the summer break in Ascona (Switzerland) to complete Les Jumeaux op. 84. The radio play was produced in Paris on June 13, 1963 and received limited approval from Beckett. Mihalovici used the summer of 1963 to compose the Musique nocturne op. 87, a commission from the Lucerne Festival, and to conclude the Sinfonia cantata op. 88 for baritone, choir and orchestra, which premiered on November 24, 1964 in Paris. He received another honor in the same year from Paris. He became a corresponding member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts at the Institut de France, which made him proud.

After Mihalovici and Haas became seriously ill in the spring of 1965, it was still possible to take part in the important production of Krapp op. 81 on September 25, 1965 in Berlin, which, however, was received critically. Further productions of this opera followed in 1967 in Zurich, 1968 in Paris, 1979 in Darmstadt, 1984 in Oldenburg, 1985 in Madrid and after Mihalovici's death also in London, Toronto and Prague. As early as 1966 Mihalovici received the commission for his Fifth Symphony op. 94 directly from the Ministère des Arts et Lettres, which was Mihalovici's last examination of Beckett's work. The symphonic work with soprano solo, which is based on the poem "que ferais-je sans ce monde sans visage sans questions", was only finished in 1969, because Mihalovici suffered a severe heart attack on the night of November 6th and 7th, 1967 had to stop working. The world premiere of the Fifth Symphony took place on October 7, 1971 in Bucharest.

Major works and late honors

The ties to Switzerland intensified at the time when he came into contact with the conductor and composer Erich Schmid, who premiered the work Périples op. 93 in 1968 and recorded his Fifth Symphony op. 94 for Swiss radio in 1973. From 1969 onwards, Mihalovici was increasingly involved in international juries, such as the Music Council of the Prince Pierre de Monaco Foundation for the award of the Prix de Composition Musicale Prince Rainier III de Monaco, where he sat until 1979. In 1970 and 1972, Haas and Mihalovici traveled to California, where Haas gave concerts and Mihalovici visited his brother Leo, who had emigrated to the United States. Mihalovici received further orders from the French ministry until 1975, for example for Cantilène op. 100, before he himself became a member of the commission des commandes des Ministère des Affaires Culturelles in 1975.

One of Mihalovici's last great orchestral compositions was Follia op. 106 (1976), which was commissioned by French radio and is dedicated to Ferdinand Leitner. Mihalovici also composed music for the stage at that time, such as Héracles after Euripides. In 1976 Haas fell seriously ill and suffered from a persistent bowel disease until her death. Mihalovici also had to endure various operations. The last works were written in the 1980s, such as the fourth string quartet, Op. 111, Miroir des songes, Op. 112, Torse, Op. 113 and Elégie II, Op. 114. Towards the end of life, Mihalovici received further awards, such as the 1972 Grand Prix de la ville de Paris and in 1979 the SACEM Grand Prix. After a serious burn accident by Monique Haas in 1984, Mihalovici and Haas got into a precarious financial situation, which was alleviated by a generous financial contribution from Paul Sacher, who received manuscripts from Mihalovici as compensation. After the death of Mihalovici on August 12, 1985 and Monique Haas on June 9, 1987, both of whom were buried in the urn grave 16083 in the Père-Lachaise cemetery, large parts of the estate ended up in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel.

literature

• Lukas Näf: The one-act play Phèdre op. 58 by Marcel Mihalovici and Yvan Goll, licentiate thesis University of Zurich 2003.
• Lukas Näf: "Music always wins". Marcel Mihalovici and Samuel Beckett, dissertation University of Zurich 2008.
• Lukas Näf: Haas, Monique, in: Annette Kreutzinger-Herr and Melanie Unseld (eds.), Lexicon Music and Gender, Kassel / Stuttgart: Bärenreiter / Metzler 2010, p. 270.
• Lukas Näf: "Que ferais-je sans ce monde". On the Fifth Symphony by Marcel Mihalovici based on a poem by Samuel Beckett, in: Dissonanz 106 (2009), pp. 20–23.
• Lukas Näf: Paul Sacher and Marcel Mihalovici, in: Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 22 (2009), pp. 14–19.