Richard Mondt

Richard Mondt (1945)

Richard Wilhelm August Mondt (born April 5, 1873 in Mannheim , † April 22, 1959 in Lucerne ) was a German composer and poet .

Life

1883-1900

Early years

Richard Mondt was born in Mannheim and grew up in Karlsruhe. His father Wilhelm Adolph Mondt ran a school supplies publisher here. The mother, as an enthusiastic Richard Wagner fan and opera goer, made it possible for her 10-year-old son to attend a “Tristan” performance and thus awakened his love for music, especially Wagner. At the age of 15, Mondt performed the first act of Tristan on the piano for the Karlsruhe opera director Felix Mottl by heart. Mondt was close friends with Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy , a grandson of the composer and later founder of the Institute for Foreign Policy in Hamburg, and Werner von Grünau , the son of Prince Löwenstein-Wettstein .

Munich and Berlin

Mondt studied at the Munich Music Academy with Josef Rheinberger (together with Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari ) and with Heinrich von Herzogenberg in Berlin, where he met Brahms , Grieg , Hugo Wolf , Anton Rubinstein , Hans von Bülow , Eugen d'Albert and Joachim . At this time he had composed his first songs (based on texts by Arnold Mendelssohn and Heinrich Heine ) and had started a major opera.

In Berlin he met his later partner and muse Maria Thilo . They moved into a house together in Geltow, which gave Mondt the necessary leisure to delve into Wagner's scores until the house was sold.

1901-1929

Trip to Switzerland

In 1900, Mondt traveled with Maria to Switzerland with a grant from the Baden court. They found a house in Oberbergen near Ruswil in the canton of Lucerne . The luggage included a few boxes with books and manuscripts and a Blüthner wing. When it was triggered at the ticket counter, there were initial difficulties. In the absence of passports and marriage certificates, they encountered problems in dealing with government offices, post offices and banks. With the exception of a few trips to Münster, London and Rapallo , Mondt was never to leave Switzerland.

The opera "Alda"

Mondt worked intensively on his opera. In the second year he should have presented the first act to the court, but completion was delayed. Mondt was constantly fine-tuning the text and the plot. A. Mendelssohn, the text author, tired of the many proposed amendments, fell increasingly behind and fell silent in the end. In the opinion that Mondt was wasting time, the court refused to allow him to continue paying the scholarship, which dried up the most important source of income. “Alda” had flourished in the fair copy up to and including the prelude to the second act. Mondt and Maria tried in vain for a textual continuation. The opera remained a torso, since the completed 1st act ultimately no longer fitted into the further developed course. Tired of music, Mondt turned to poetry and philosophy. He wrote a treatise on the theory of relativity, a "philosophy of mathematics". He also maintained a lively correspondence with Romain Rolland , Tagore , Hermann Hesse , Stefan George and Albert Steffen . Stefan George traveled to Ruswil with Friedrich Gundolf . Mondt was close friends with the Münster glass painter and book designer Melchior Lechter .

"The tiaras of the grave"

A cousin from England recommended Mondt to combine his poems in one book and offered him funding for a publication. Around 1915, Otto von Holten , Berlin, published an extensive volume entitled “Diadems of the Grave of the Mediator”. As agreed, it should have been a simple edition, but the artistic designer Melchior Lechter (editor of the first Stefan George volumes) created a luxury bibliophile volume that significantly exceeded the budget, whereupon the financier withdrew. The money was missing and Holten is said to have destroyed the edition. Mondt himself only owned a single-bound copy. The work consists mainly of poetry on 560 pages. It is divided into nine books:

1. The register ledger
2. The key book: Entrance mother reason
3. Genius Book: Whitsun Walk
4. Cross light source book: The little dragon sphinx
5. Hymnal (fragments): Ceremonially withdrawn
6. Love Supper Thought Book: Night and Star Veil
7. The Book of the Golden Gate: Legends
8. The miracle book of grace: purple and gold
9. Closing ceremony from: The Book of the Night: Transapostle Oedipus. Texts marked with Oedipus come from Mondt, those with Maria are from his companion Maria and dated to the years 1908–1914.

Domestic problems

Mondt and Thilo both had a small fortune, but the interest was insufficient to support them. Having become penniless, they were forced to vacate their home and find makeshift accommodation in a farmhouse, where, however, they could not do their paperwork undisturbed. For many years the Wolhus-based industrialist Eduard Geistlich helped over the worst hardships.

Here Erdis

The artistic awakening of Maria Thilo also fell during Mondt's poetic attempts, her first poem was written in 1910. She took an active part in Mondt's work on the "Diademen" and made her own contributions (marked with "Maria"). In a few years she created a wealth of lyrical works, some of which were set to music by Mondt. The chosen poet name Here Erdis combines Greek and Germanic mythology : Hera the Greek goddess, Erda the ancient Wala of the north. The name includes both heaven and earth. In 1927 Maria found a dilapidated house on the Rigihang near Weggis on Lake Lucerne , which offered a magnificent view of the lake and the mountains, but had neither running water nor electricity.

1929-1959

Weggis

The death of Here Erdis left behind a broken, lonely person and crippled Mondt's compositional creativity for years. His main task now was to organize your loose sheets of paper into ready-to-print books. The financial hardships were omnipresent. Eduard Geistlich succeeded in persuading the London-based cousin Mondts and rich art dealer Otto Gutekunst to pay a small pension that barely covered the house rent. His connections to the environment became more sparse. Every now and then a holiday guest got lost in his hermitage. A welcome guest, Eugen d'Albert , died in 1932. An encounter with Rachmaninov , who also lives in Weggis, was without profit. The Zurich patron and Liszt student Lilly Reiff performed some of Mondt's chants in her house.

Lucerne

Mondt spent the last years of his life in a Lucerne family who took care of his physical well-being and kept a radio available. Through the mediation of the Bern conductor Luc Balmer , Radio Bern broadcast some of his songs in three programs. Eduard Geistlich's daughters financed a private printing of selected poems by Here Erdis (“Hohe Erde”). When Richard Mondt died in 1959 at the age of 86, the music world took no notice. His grave in the Weggiser cemetery was destroyed in the course of a redesign of the facility.

Appreciation

Comments from contemporaries

“You are so unique that I couldn't integrate you into a program with any other composer. You need an audience that likes very high culture. The fact that you have remained so unknown is damaging to art ”(Eugen d'Albert, Hertenstein 1931).

"Mondt moves in elevated regions and therefore does not find an audience" ( Max Conrad , Kapellmeister Zurich 1933).

The Zurich conductor Dr. Volkmar Andreae realized that Mondt needed help, but could not help him artistically in any way: “Mondt is a terrible dilettante and dreamer. The banker Reiff wanted to stand up for the poor man. But the matinée in his house was a complete fiasco. "

The human being

Mondt was a person of profound religiosity. According to his own statement, the music fell to him in visions. For him, artistic inspiration was a gift from a mystical source and a sacred mandate to create a work. Without inspiration or vision, there was no point in composing. Nothing of Mondt's work has reached the public. Mondt insisted uncompromisingly that a concert should only contain his own works. He was convinced that an understanding of his music could only result from the context. Every reproduction of individual works only results in a fragment. When in 1912 he received the invitation to premier one of his choral works in London, he turned it down because the program still included works by other composers and recommended that the organizers consider Max Reger . For the same reason, a piano recital to be performed together with Rachmaninov did not take place in Weggis. Mondt remained untouched by the currents of his time. What he knew about Strauss , Reger and Mahler came from the time before 1900. In Switzerland he neither went to concerts nor did the financial means allow him to buy music. He only benefited from the invention of the radio towards the end of his life in Lucerne, and it was at this time that he first encountered the music of Debussy and Stravinsky on the radio .

Work and redemption mysticism

Mondt's oeuvre comprises 60 songs and symphonic chants with piano accompaniment, some with two pianos, harp (s) and percussion, as well as four choral works with orchestra, an unfinished opera, and numerous poetic and philosophical writings.

From 1922 Mondt composed only for the piano and developed a polyphonic-orchestral style, an orchestral language that was transferred to the piano. Often characteristic instruments are noted in the piano part and their sound is emphasized. To make it easier to understand, the piano part is notated using three or four systems of lines. His music can be characterized as tonal, emotional, going into introverted self-talk, there aiming from elemental force to great effect with dramatically layered chord sequences, less artistically compared to his contemporaries.

Mondt was not an innovator. Mondt shared the problem of the Wagner succession with many of his contemporaries. He received decisive impulses for his composition from Wagner's scores. Echoes of Wagner and Liszt are unmistakable. Like Hans Pfitzner , he too adhered to a “ mysticism of redemption ” influenced by Schopenhauer (“Redemption is the main goal of all art”).

Works

• 1st orchestra (covered):
  • By God (with eight-part choir and solos)
  • Mignon's lamenting grief (two orchestras, soloists and choir, organ eight hands)
  • Buddha - God's rest (with singing)
  • Alda Opera (prelude and act 1, act prelude to act 2)

• 2. Goethe songs and chants:
  • Found
  • Spring over the year
  • Mignon's lamenting grief
  • Wanderer's Nightsong
  • Heidenröslein
  • Blessed longing
  • The rare guest of truth "Why is truth far and wide? ..."
• 3. Here Erdi's settings:
  • The soul of poverty "Whether rich or poor ..."
  • By God "How the sun goes by in the evening ..."
  • Buddah - God's rest
  • The heart
  • The most sacred rose of love
  • From God Amen and The Old Consort "Come Beloved ..."
  • Gotteins "Three strings sound in me ..."
  • I am your child SOEBEN (new words instead of Walter Calé)
  • The snowflake "A shepherd boy asks the stone ..."
  • God relationship "Seven candles light up ..."
  • Certainty "I am a little nightingale ..."
  • Grave wish "Lonely in the dead of night I am called ..."
  • In you "The time and its webs ..."
  • How do I have to thank father, "My eye is still ..."
  • My boy in the light "Fall asleep my boy asleep ..."
  • The most sacred rose of love "Do you know where that rose blooms ..."
  • The love of God "It sounds like the times again ..."
  • Worried question "My ship is going there without a rudder ..."
  • Mignon The old harper's last song
• 4. Settings from earlier times based on texts by Stefan George , Hermann Hesse , Julius Sturm , Albrecht Mendelssohn-Bartholdy , Walter Calé , Walther von der Vogelweide , Friedrich Theodor Vischer

literature

• Rizzardo Pezzotta: Richard Mondt - Portrait of an outsider. Swiss Music Newspaper, Nov./Dec. 1982

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Mondt in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Birth register of StA Mannheim, No. 514/1873
2. ↑ Death register Ziv. StA Luzern, vol. 1959 / no. 347