Wolfgang Fortner

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Wolfgang Fortner (born October 12, 1907 in Leipzig ; † September 5, 1987 in Heidelberg ) was a German composer , composition teacher and conductor .

Live and act

Former State Conservatory of Music Leipzig

Through his parents' house - father and mother were both singers - Fortner had intensive contact with music from an early age. In 1927 he began his studies in Leipzig at the Conservatory ( organ , composition ) and at the university ( philosophy , musicology , German studies ). Some of his early compositions were performed publicly while he was still a student. In Berlin he met Arnold Schönberg and wrote his Leipzig thesis on the chamber music of Paul Hindemith .

In 1931 he completed his studies with the state examination for the higher teaching post, after which he took over a lectureship in music theory at the Evangelical Church Music Institute in Heidelberg . Public attacks on him as a " cultural Bolshevik " followed.

Career in the Third Reich

In 1935/1936 Fortner founded the Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra , with which he also performed new music by himself and other contemporaries and undertook extensive concert tours for "Wehrmacht support", from Scandinavia to Holland to Greece. In the same year he also took over the leadership of the Bannorchester der Hitler-Jugend Heidelberg, a (string) orchestra made up of young amateurs, which he relinquished in 1939. On September 1, 1939, he applied for membership in the NSDAP . On January 1, 1940, he was registered under the party number 7.818.245. In 1940 he was drafted as a medical soldier “home capable of working”, in the same year he published the “Heidelberg songbook for the recovering soldier” (without his own compositional contributions).

Career in post-war Germany

After the end of the war, Fortner was classified as a follower in the denazification and was not affected by the professional ban. Fortner moved to the Villa Braunbehrens at the Kohlhof in Heidelberg, where he gathered a group of young students who were interested in modern music from before 1933. In 1948 he was one of the founders of the Kranichsteiner (later Darmstadt) holiday courses for new music , in which he also taught himself. In 1954 he became a professor of composition, initially at the Northwest German Music Academy in Detmold , from 1957 until his retirement in 1973 at the State University of Music in Freiburg im Breisgau . In 1964 he took over the Musica Viva concerts in Munich, succeeding Karl Amadeus Hartmann until 1978.

From 1950 onwards, Wolfgang Fortner was on the advisory board of GEMA , in 1955 the Akademie der Künste in Berlin appointed him a member, and a year later he was appointed to the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts in Munich . He also served as President of the German Section of the International Society for New Music (IGNM) for a total of 14 years (from 1957 to 1971 ). In 1975 the Dramatiker-Union , Germany's oldest national association of authors, appointed him president.

On his 70th birthday in 1977 he received the Federal Cross of Merit with a star and an honorary doctorate from the universities of Freiburg and Heidelberg.

Fortner was buried in the cemetery in Heidelberg-Handschuhsheim.

Awards

student

His students include the composers Günther Becker , Arthur Dangel , Friedhelm Döhl , Hans Ulrich Engelmann , Diego H. Feinstein , Peter Förtig , Volkmar Fritsche , Hans Werner Henze , Werner Jacob , Milko Kelemen , Rudolf Kelterborn , Karl Michael Komma , Arghyris Kounadis , Ton de Kruyf , Uwe Lohrmann , Wolfgang Ludewig , Bruce MacCombie , Roland Moser , Diether de la Motte , Nam June Paik , Graciela Paraskevaídis , Robert HP Platz , Rolf Riehm , Wolfgang Rihm , Griffith Rose , Mauricio Rosenmann , Dieter Schönbach , Rolf Schweizer , Stephan Simeon , Manfred Stahnke , Henk Stam , Wilfried Steinbrenner , Peter Westergaard , Hans Zender , Bernd Alois Zimmermann , Heinz Werner Zimmermann , Rudolf Zöbeley , the conductors Thomas Baldner and Arturo Tamayo and the writer and musician Hans Wollschläger .

According to his own information, the composer friends Giselher Klebe and Aribert Reimann are not among his close circle of students , even if this is claimed in various reference works.

Around 1948 Fortner also met the Hamburg music student Wolfgang Held (1924–2006) in Heidelberg, whose mentor, protector and partner he became and whom he officially adopted in 1958 . In 1966 he gave his adopted son a job as a music teacher at the Odenwald School , where his former Freiburg student Wilfried Steinbrenner (1943–1975) also worked as a music teacher between 1967 and 1969. Held worked as a teacher there until 1989 and is considered to be one of the main perpetrators of systematic sexual abuse against hundreds of students. Fortner then regularly stayed at the Odenwald School himself, for which he wrote Undine , a “school game with music”, which he premiered and conducted on May 21, 1969 in Oberhambach. This “school opera” is an adaptation of the story of the same name by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué . During this time Fortner also gave the then OSO students Güher and Süher Pekinel private piano lessons.

Works

Operas

Ballets

Vocal works

  • Four Marian Antiphons (1928) for choir and orchestra
  • "Limits of Mankind", for the inauguration of the New Heidelberg University (1931)
  • Little Choral Motets (1932)
  • Two male choirs based on words by Friedrich Hölderlin (1933)
  • Four chants based on words by Friedrich Hölderlin (1933)
  • Three sacred songs for a capella choir (1934)
  • A German Song Mass (1935)
  • A German Lied Mass (1934) for mixed choir. Premiere 1935 Dresden (conductor: Rudolf Mauersberger )
  • On the strength of community , cantata for mixed choir and orchestra for the bicentenary of the University of Göttingen based on a text by Wolfram Brockmeier (1937)
  • "Nuptiae Catulli" cantata for ten., 6-part choir and orchestra (1937)
  • You should go a part of the way with me . Song for women's choir (1941). Text: Erwin Guido Kolbenheyer
  • Lord stay with us! Sacred evening music for a low voice, mixed choir and string orchestra (1945)
  • To those born after, for speaker, tenor, choir and orchestra (1948)
  • The Whitsun story according to Luke , gospel setting for tenor solo, six-part choir, 11 instrumentalists and organ (1963)
  • Machaut -Balladen for voice and orchestra (1974)

Orchestral works

  • Sweelinck Suite (1930)
  • Concerto for Organ and Orchestra (1932)
  • Concerto for string orchestra (1933)
  • Concertino for viola and chamber orchestra (1934)
  • Harpsichord Concerto (1935)
  • Concertante Symphony for Orchestra (1937)
  • Capriccio and Finale (1939)
  • Serious Music (1941)
  • Piano Concerto in C major (1943)
  • String Music II (1945)
  • Concerto for violin and orchestra (1947)
  • Symphony 1947 (1947)
  • Fantasy on the pitch sequence BACH for 2 pianos, 9 solo instruments and orchestra (1950)
  • Mouvements for piano and orchestra (1953)
  • Impromptus for large orchestra (1957)
  • Triplum for 3 pianos and orchestra (1966)
  • Prisms for flute, oboe, harp, percussion and orchestra (1967)
  • Marginalia. In memory of a good dog . For orchestra (1969)
  • Cycle for cello and chamber orchestra without strings (1970)
  • Triptych for orchestra (1977)
  • La Cecchina , Italian overture after Niccolò Piccinni

Chamber music

  • 1st string quartet (1929)
  • Suite for solo cello (1934)
  • 2nd string quartet (1938)
  • Four Little Pieces for Strings (1939)
  • Two piano trios (1978 and 1983)

Organ music

  • Toccata and Fugue (1930)
  • Preamble and Fugue (1935)
  • Prelude in F (1942)
  • Intermezzi from "Pentecost story" (1962)
  • epitaph

Piano music

  • Sonatina (1934)
  • Rondo based on Swabian folk dances (1936/82)
  • Chamber music for piano (1944)
  • Seven Elegies (1951)
  • Seven Epigrams (1964)
  • Six Little Late Pieces (1982)

literature

Essays
  • Uwe Lohrmann : Wolfgang Fortner. In: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik , vol. 143 (1982), issue 10.
  • Rainer Mohrs: Wolfgang Fortner's organ music. A composer caught between tradition and avant-garde. In: Musica sacra , vol. 113 (1993).
  • Rainer Mohrs: Tradition versus avant-garde. On the stylistic range of Wolfgang Fortner's organ music, Part 1: The early organ pieces. In: Organ - Journal für die Orgel , Vol. 10 (2007).
  • Rainer Mohrs: On the primacy of composition. On the stylistic range of Wolfgang Fortner's organ music, Part 2: The late organ works. In: Organ - Journal für die Orgel, vol. 11 (2008).
  • Matthias Roth: The composer Wolfgang Fortner and his "Kohlhof Club". In: Georg Stein (Ed.): The island in the forest. 300 years of Heidelberg Kohlhof. Palmyra-Verlag, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-930378-71-X .
  • Thomas Schipperges : Music under the swastika. Heidelberg 1933-45. In: Jörn Bahrns (Ed.): Seduced and betrayed. Youth under National Socialism. Fragments from the region. Kurpfälzisches Museum, Heidelberg 1995. (Catalog for the exhibition of the same name)
Books
  • Hermann Danuser , Gianmario Borio (ed.): In the zenith of modernity. The International Summer Courses for New Music Darmstadt 1946–1966. Edition Rombach, Freiburg / Br. 1997, ISBN 3-7930-9138-4 . (4 vols.)
  • Heinrich Lindlar (Ed.): Wolfgang Fortner. A monograph. (Counterpoints; 4). Edition Tonger, Rodenkirchen 1960.
  • Matthias Roth: A modern marshalling yard. The composer Wolfgang Fortner and his group of students (1931-1986); Memories, documents, backgrounds, portraits. Edition Rombach, Freiburg / Br. 2008, ISBN 978-3-7930-9521-7 .
  • Rudolf Stephan u. a. (Ed.): From Kranichstein to the present. 50 years of Darmstadt summer courses, 1946-1996. DACO-Verlag, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-87135-028-1 .
  • Brigitta Weber: Wolfgang Fortner and his opera compositions. Schott, Mainz 1995, ISBN 3-7957-0308-5 .
  • About Fortner performances by the Dresden Kreuzchor, in: Matthias Herrmann (Ed.): Dresdner Kreuzchor and contemporary choral music. World premieres between Richter and Kreile, Marburg 2017, pp. 66–67, 236–237, 300–302 (Schriften des Dresdner Kreuzchor, Vol. 2). ISBN 978-3-8288-3906-9

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Fred K. Prieberg : Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945 , CD-Rom-Lexikon, Kiel 2004, p. 1631.
  2. ^ Jens Brachmann: Tatort Odenwald School. The perpetrator system and the discursive practice of coming to terms with incidents of sexual violence , Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2019; on Fortner and Wolfgang H. there the chapter The main culprit Wolfgang H. , pp. 60–95, passim; on Güher and Süher Pekinel there p. 70.
  3. ^ Fred K. Prieberg: Handbook of German Musicians 1933–1945. CD-Rom Lexicon. Kiel 2004, p. 1.633, and p. 8324.
personal data
SURNAME Fortner, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Leipzig
DATE OF DEATH 5th September 1987
Place of death Heidelberg