Rudolf Louis

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Rudolf Louis.jpg

Rudolf Louis (born January 30, 1870 in Schwetzingen , † November 15, 1914 in Munich ) was a German musician, music writer and music critic.

Life

Louis studied philosophy and musicology in Geneva and Vienna, where he was awarded a doctorate with a dissertation on the "contradiction in music". phil. received his doctorate. He then took composition lessons with Friedrich Klose and later conducting with Felix Mottl in Karlsruhe. This was followed by Kapellmeister activities in Landshut and Lübeck. From 1897 he lived in Munich. He worked as a music writer and from 1900 as a music critic for the Munich Latest News . Since he sometimes wrote relentless reviews in this leading daily newspaper, there were sometimes violent arguments. The most famous and momentous was a criticism in January 1908 of some winds in the Kaim Orchestra (the later Munich Philharmonic ). It led to a strike by the musicians and ultimately to the dissolution of this famous orchestra.

His compositions could not prevail. He gained notoriety in the music world through his harmony theory, which he wrote together with Ludwig Thuille and which was published several times. This textbook, the music theoretical part of which comes from Louis, is a compromise between Hugo Riemann's functional theory and figured bass numbering and, together with the exercise book, is still considered a guide to modern harmonic thinking.

“ Hector Berlioz (1904) and Anton Bruckner (1904) in particular deserve interest from his writings . However, the content, which is strongly influenced by personal preferences, should not always stand up to critical assessment. He created a compendium of his musical views with Die deutsche Musik der Gegenwart (1909, 3rd edition 1912); Here, too, his literary peculiarities urge caution in the assessment despite the good presentation. "

Like many music critics in the German Empire , he adored Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt . Nationalist and anti-Semitic ways of thinking are evident in his attitude towards Gustav Mahler :

“What is so horribly repulsive about Mahler's music is its decidedly Jewish basic character . And, to be precise, not this one alone. For what is Jewish as such could appear exotic, strange and strange, but not initially repulsive. If Mahler's music spoke Jewish , I might not understand it. But she is disgusting to me because she is Jewish . That means: she speaks musical German, if I may say so, but with the accent, with the tone and above all with the gesture of the eastern, the all-too-eastern Jew. "

- Rudolf Louis

Louis died at the age of 44.

Publications

  • The contradiction in music - building blocks for an aesthetic of sound art based on real dialectics , Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1893, 115 S. archive.org
  • Richard Wagner as a music aesthetician , 1897
  • Richard Wagner's Weltanschauung , Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1898, 193 S. archive.org
  • Franz Liszt , Berlin: Bondi 1900, 173 pp.
  • Hector Berlioz , Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel 1904, 207 S. archive.org
  • Anton Bruckner , Munich: G. Müller-Verlag 1905, 233 S. archive.org
  • The German music of the present , Munich: G. Müller-Verlag 1909, 324 S. archive.org
  • with Ludwig Thuille :
    • Harmonielehre , Stuttgart: Klett & Hartmann 1907. 7th edition (1920) on archive.org
    • Outline of the theory of harmony , Stuttgart: Klett 1908
    • Tasks for teaching harmony , Stuttgart 1911
    • Key to the theory of harmony , Stuttgart 1912 [solutions to the tasks]

items

  • Article by and about Louis in the magazine Die Musik [to be found by searching for "Rudolf Louis"]
  • Article by and about Louis in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik [to be found with the search term "Rudolf Louis"]

Musical works

  • Symphonic fantasy "Proteus" (premiered in June 1903 on the Tonkünstler-Vers. Of the ADMV)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelm Altmann , Paul Frank: Kurzgefasstes Tonkünstler-Lexikon . 14th greatly expanded edition. Bosse Verlag, Regensburg 1936
  2. ^ Mechthild Albus:  Louis, Rudolf. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 259 ( digitized version ).
  3. ^ Rudolf Louis: Die deutsche Musik der Gegenwart , p. 182; Italic is blocked in the original Text archive - Internet Archive
personal data
SURNAME Louis, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musician, music writer and music critic
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Schwetzingen
DATE OF DEATH November 15, 1914
Place of death Munich