Felix Otto Dessoff

Felix Otto Dessoff

Felix Otto Dessoff (born January 14, 1835 in Leipzig , † October 28, 1892 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German composer and conductor .

Life

Dessoff came from a Jewish cloth merchant family and received his training from 1851 to 1854 at the Leipzig Conservatory , where he made friends with Johannes Brahms .

He got his first job at the Actientheater in Chemnitz . He then became music director in succession in Altenburg , Düsseldorf , Kassel , Aachen and Magdeburg . Appointed as Hofoperkapellmeister to Vienna in 1860 , a year later he got a job as a composition teacher in the Conservatory of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna (predecessor of the Vienna Music Academy ). In Vienna he taught among others Arthur Nikisch , Felix Mottl , Ernst von Schuch , Heinrich von Herzogenberg , Adolf Wallnöfer and Robert Fuchs . He became a conductor at the Vienna Court Opera and was a subscription conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic from 1862 to 1875 .

In 1875 he accepted the offer to go as Kapellmeister of the Grand Ducal Badische Hofkapelle Karlsruhe , where he succeeded Hermann Levi . On November 4, 1876, he conducted the world premiere of Brahms' 1st Symphony in Karlsruhe. In 1877 he directed the first Salzburg Music Festival .

In 1880 he followed a call to the newly created position of "First Kapellmeister" at the Frankfurt Opera . He opened the recently completed opera house on October 20, 1880 with a performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni . In Frankfurt he became a member of the Freemason Lodge Socrates for steadfastness .

As a composer, he has made himself known for piano , chamber music and vocal works, which stylistically are mainly based on Brahms.

Decades after his sudden death on October 28, 1892 in Frankfurt am Main, Dessoff was still considered one of the most important conductors of his time. After the seizure of power of the Nazis he was defamed as a Jew, his work and its significance for the history of music were forgotten. It was only after the Second World War that it was re-evaluated and rediscovered. In 2005 the Jewish Museum Frankfurt dedicated an exhibition to him.

His daughter Margarete Dessoff was a choir director in Frankfurt and New York. Otto Dessoff's grave is located in the main cemetery in Frankfurt am Main. In 1955, Dessoffgasse in Vienna- Liesing (23rd district) was named after him.

Works (excerpt)

• op. 2 Three piano pieces
• op. 3 Sonata for Pianoforte
• op.7 String Quartet in F major (1878)
• op. 8 Five songs for a medium voice with accompaniment of the pianoforte
• op.10 String Quintet in G major (1878)
• op. 11 String Quartet in E major

Student (selection)

• Paul Ehrke

literature

• Constantin von Wurzbach : Dessoff, Felix Otto . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 24th part. Imperial and Royal Court and State Printing Office, Vienna 1872, p. 387 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Johannes Brahms. Correspondence . Berlin: Publishing house of the German Brahms Society. Volume 16: Johannes Brahms in correspondence with Ph. Spitta and Otto Dessoff . Edited by Carl Krebs, 1922, 220 pp.
• Joachim Draheim, Gerhard Albert Jahn (ed.): Otto Dessoff (1835-1892). A conductor, composer and companion of Johannes Brahms ; on the occasion of the Otto Dessoff exhibition in Karlsruhe, Vienna, Baden-Baden, Chemnitz, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Kassel, Leipzig and Zwickau. Edited by Joachim Draheim, Gerhard Albert Jahn and the Association of Friends of the Vienna Philharmonic. - Munich: Musikverlag Katzbichler, 2001, 196 pages, ISBN 3-87397-590-4
• [Catalog] Otto Dessoff: (1835-1892). A conductor, composer and companion of Johannes Brahms , [on the occasion of the Otto Dessoff exhibition in Karlsruhe, Vienna, Baden-Baden, Chemnitz, Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Kassel, Leipzig and Zwickau], ed. by Joachim Draheim, Munich: Musikverlag Katzbichler 2001, 196 pp.

Web links

• Literature by and about Felix Otto Dessoff in the catalog of the German National Library
• Tone clips from string quartet No. 1 a. short CV (Engl.)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Philipps University of Marburg Opening of the Frankfurt Opera in 1880