Wolfgang Ruoff

Wolfgang Ruoff (born May 8, 1882 in Rüschlikon ; † November 9, 1964 in Munich ) was a pianist and music professor who taught piano at the Munich Academy of Music from 1920 to 1948 . He is known as Wolfgang Sawallisch's first academic teacher .

life and work

Ruoff was born in Rüschlikon near Zurich, the son of Theodor Ruoff, a businessman, and Maria Ruoff, née Müller. He graduated from the Karls-Gymnasium Stuttgart and went to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich to study the humanities . He changed his subject and studied piano and music theory at the Munich Academy of Music from 1901 to 1904 with Anton Beer-Walbrunn and Viktor Gluth , as well as in the master class with Bernhard Stavenhagen and graduated with him. He then performed as a pianist and as a concert accompanist at home and abroad. His “successful” career as a companion to Hermine Bosetti , Johannes Messchaert , Ludwig Wüllner or Paul Bender took place predominantly in the romantic and classical fields, but he also had an interest in contemporary music, especially as a chamber musician. Karl Thomann was a regular partner in chamber music . With this career he gained a reputation that in 1920 led to a position as a lecturer at the Munich Music Academy, where he taught piano as a major. In 1925 he was appointed associate professor and in 1943 he was promoted to full professor. In 1948 he was retired for reasons of age and was made an honorary member of the Academy.

Wolfgang Sawallisch reported in his memoirs of Ruoff, with whom he already took private lessons as a pupil and between high school and military service:

“It was an event how he [Ruoff] developed the music from the technical mastery of a phrase, how he made it clear to me that the music becomes different when the technology is different. With him I understood that the mastery of the technique is one of the prerequisites for quality, an insight that for me became part of my entire musical education - also in terms of conducting. "

Other students of Ruoff were Herbert Spitzenberger and Philippine Schick .

Ruoff was not a member of the NSDAP , and the comparatively late appointment as a full professor speaks against good contacts with those in power. However, in 1934 he moved to the Munich Hildebrandhaus in Bogenhausen, which is famous for its artistic culture, and there he saw firsthand how his landlady and resident of the neighboring apartment were persecuted because of her non- Aryan descent and the house was expropriated and Aryanized in 1941 . In addition to Ruoff, two other professors from the music academy lived in the Hildebrandhaus, from 1936 to 1937 the violinist and music professor Wilhelm Stross and from 1941 the pianist and music professor Rosl Schmid . Then there were the sculptors Ernst Andreas Rauch , Wilhelm Nida-Rümelin and Theodor Georgii . The latter was the son-in-law of the builder Adolf von Hildebrand .

Ruoff lived in the Hildebrandhaus until his death in 1964. He maintained a lively correspondence with colleagues and artists such as Erwin Kroll , Walter Frickert, Richard Würz, Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen and Josef Magnus Wehner

Web links

• Wolfgang Ruoff in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Ruoff in the Bavarian Musicians' Lexicon Online (BMLO)
2. ↑ ^{a b} Wilhelm Zentner : Wolfgang Ruoff † . In: Fred Hamel (Ed.): Musica . Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 1965, p. 76.
3. ↑ Erich Müller (Ed.): German Musicians Lexicon . Wilhelm Limpert Verlag, Dresden 1929, p. 1195
4. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the depiction of life is based on: Christiane Kuller, Maximilian Schreiber: Das Hildebrandhaus - A Munich artist villa and its inhabitants during the Nazi era . Allitera Verlag 2006, ISBN 978-3-86520-130-0 , p. 116 f. The representation there is based largely on his personal files at the Munich Music Academy and the files held by the Main State Archives in Munich
5. ↑ Wolfgang Sawallisch: In the interest of clarity . Hamburg 1988, p. 22.
6. ^ Kalliope network : Wolfgang Ruoff