Paul Bekker

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Paul Bekker as opera director in Kassel, approx. 1925–27

Max Paul Eugen Bekker (born September 2, 1882 in Berlin ; † March 13, 1937 in New York ) was a German conductor , artistic director and one of the most influential music critics in the first third of the 20th century.

Live and act

Bekker took violin lessons from Fabian Rehfeld and Benno Horwitz , his piano teacher was Alfred Sormann . He made his debut as a violinist (first violinist) with the Berlin Philharmonic and then went to Aschaffenburg and Görlitz as a conductor . From 1906 onwards, Bekker worked as a music critic and writer. He wrote for the Berliner Neuesten Nachrichten , from 1909 for the Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung , from 1911 to 1922 for the Frankfurter Zeitung . In 1919 he coined the term New Music and from then on stood up for its first pioneers: Gustav Mahler , Franz Schreker , Arnold Schönberg and Ernst Krenek .

In 1925 he became general manager of the Kassel State Theater at the suggestion of Leo Kestenberg , whose open-minded and popular education-oriented cultural policy was close to Bekker . From 1927 to 1932, Bekker was the artistic director of the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden . After the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933, he moved first to Paris , then to New York. There he wrote mainly on behalf of the émigré press. So he wrote z. B. 1935 for the legal émigré journal Intellectual Property, International Journal for Theory and Practice of Copyright and its subsidiary areas, a treatise on musical copyright.

Paul Bekker was seen under National Socialism as "presenting a particular danger due to the undoubted, one-sidedly applied abilities of a corrosive, critical mind".

Bekker was married to the German painter, collector and art dealer Hanna Bekker vom Rath from 1920 to 1930 .

Fonts (selection)

  • Jacques Offenbach , 1909
  • Beethoven , Schuster & Löffler, Berlin 1911
  • German musical life. Attempt at a sociological consideration of music , 1916
  • Politics and intellectual work , 1908
  • The symphony from Beethoven to Mahler , 1918
  • Franz Schreker , 1919
  • New Music , 1919
  • Art and Revolution , 1919
  • The international reputation of German music , 1920
  • Gustav Mahler's Symphonies , 1921
  • Critical Zeitbilder (Gesammelte Schriften 1) , 1921 - 26 articles from the Frankfurter Zeitung 1911–1921
  • Klang und Eros (Gesammelte Schriften 2) , 1922–43 article from the Frankfurter Zeitung 1907–1922
  • Contemporary German Music , 1922
  • New Music (Gesammelte Schriften 3) , 1923 - six lectures 1917–1921
  • Richard Wagner. Life at work , 1924
  • From the natural kingdoms of sound. Ground plan for a phenomenology of music , 1924
  • Music history as the history of musical form changes , 1926
  • Material foundations of music , 1926
  • Organic and Mechanical Music , 1927 - five essays 1923–1925
  • The opera theater , 1930
  • Letters to contemporary musicians , 1932
  • Changes of the Opera , 1934
  • The Story of the Orchestra , 1936 (first German edition: Das Orchester. History, Composers, Stile , Kassel [1989])
  • Paul Bekker / Franz Schreker: Correspondence. With all of Bekker's reviews of Schreker , ed. by Christopher Hailey, Aachen 1994

See also

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Paul Bekker  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Seeger : Musiklexikon Personen A – Z / Deutscher Verlag für Musik Leipzig (1981), page 77
  2. ^ Paul Bekker: New Music In: Collected writings . 3rd volume. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart / Berlin 1923, pp. 85–118 ( Wikisource )
  3. ↑ a b Brockhaus Riemann Music Lexicon . Volume 1. (1998), ISBN 3-254-08396-2 , p. 123
  4. ↑ Hans Költzsch: Judaism in Music. In: Theodor Fritsch: Handbuch der Judenfrage. The most important facts for judging the Jewish people. Leipzig, 38th edition. / 171. – 180. Thousand. 1935, quoted from the facsimile in: Albrecht Dümling , Peter Girth : Entartete Musik. For the 1938 exhibition in Düsseldorf. An annotated reconstruction by Albrecht Dümling and Peter Girth . Düsseldorf 1988, p. 81 f.
personal data
SURNAME Bekker, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bekker, Max Paul Eugen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German conductor, music critic and artistic director
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 13, 1937
Place of death New York City