Austrian composer (1857?1941)
Wilhelm Kienzl
(17 January 1857 ? 3 October 1941
[1]
) was an Austrian composer.
Biography
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Kienzl was born in the small, picturesque
Upper Austrian
town of
Waizenkirchen
. His family moved to the Styrian capital of
Graz
in 1860, where he studied the violin under Ignaz Uhl, piano under Johann Buwa, and composition from 1872 under the
Chopin
scholar Louis Stanislaus Mortier de Fontaine. From 1874, he studied composition under
Wilhelm Mayer
(also known as W.A. Remy), music aesthetics under
Eduard Hanslick
and music history under Friedrich von Hausegger. He was subsequently sent to the music conservatorium at
Prague University
to study under
Josef Krejci
, the director of the conservatorium. After that he went to
Leipzig Conservatory
in 1877, then to
Weimar
to study under
Liszt
, before completing doctoral studies at the
University of Vienna
.
While Kienzl was at Prague, Krejci took him to the
Bayreuth Festival
to hear the first performance of Wagner's
Ring Cycle
. It made a lasting impression on Kienzl, so much so that he founded the "Graz Richard Wagner Association" (now the "Austrian Richard Wagner Company, Graz Office") with Hausegger and with
Friedrich Hofmann
. Although he subsequently fell out with "The Wagnerites", he never lost his love for Wagner's music.
In 1879, Kienzl departed on a tour of Europe as a pianist and conductor. He became the director of the
Deutsche Oper
in Amsterdam during 1883, but he soon returned to Graz, where in 1886, he took over the leadership of the
Steiermarkischen Musikvereins und Aufgaben am Konservatorium
. He was engaged by the manager
Bernhard Pollini
as
Kapellmeister
at the Hamburg
Stadttheater
for the 1890?91 season, but was dismissed in mid-January 1891 because of the hostile reviews he received (his successor was
Gustav Mahler
). Later he conducted in Munich.
In 1894, he wrote his third and most famous opera,
Der Evangelimann
, but was unable to match its success with
Don Quixote
(1897). Only
Der Kuhreigen
(1911) reached a similar level of popularity, and that very briefly. In 1917, Kienzl moved to Vienna, where his first wife, the Wagnerian soprano Lili Hoke, died in 1919, and he married
Henny Bauer
, the librettist of his three most recent operas, in 1921.
After World War I, he composed the melody to a poem written by
Karl Renner
,
Deutschosterreich, du herrliches Land
(
German Austria, you wonderful country
), which became the unofficial national anthem of the first Austrian Republic until 1929. Aware of changes in the dynamics of modern music, he ceased to write large works after 1926, and abandoned composition altogether in 1936 due to bad health. As of 1933, Kienzl openly supported
Hitler
’s regime in
Germany
.
[2]
Kienzl's first love was opera, then vocal music, and it was in these two genres that he made his name. For a while he was considered, along with
Hugo Wolf
, one of the finest composers of
Lieder
(art songs) since
Schubert
. His most famous work,
Der Evangelimann
, best known for its aria
Selig sind, die Verfolgung leiden
(
Blessed are the persecuted
), continues to be revived occasionally. It is a folk opera which has been compared to
Humperdinck
's
Hansel and Gretel
, and contains elements of
verismo
. After Humperdinck and
Siegfried Wagner
, the composers of fairy-tale operas, Kienzl is the most important opera composer of the romantic post-Wagner era. However, Kienzl's strengths actually lie in the depiction of everyday scenes. In his last years, his ample corpus of songs achieved prominence, though it has largely been neglected since then.
Despite the fact that opera came first in his life, Kienzl by no means ignored instrumental music. He wrote three string quartets and a piano trio.
Political views
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]
Kienzl was an outspoken Nazi supporter. He praised Hitler before Austria's Anschluss in 1938 as an "imposing" and "impressive" character who is "entitled to command the peoples of the world".
[
citation needed
]
Death
[
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]
Kienzl died in Vienna and is buried in a
grave of honor
at the
Vienna Central Cemetery
. His death during the Nazi period explains his grave of honour, yet the honour has not been critically questioned since, in more than 70 years of democracy in Austria. Far from it, in 2007 the Republic of Austria issued a commemorative stamp in Kienzl's honour on the occasion of his 150th birthday.
[1]
See also
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References
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]
- ^
a
b
"Geburtstag von Wilhelm Kienzl"
.
- ^
Peter Utgaard,
Remembering and Forgetting Nazism: Education, National Identity, and the Victim Myth in Postwar Austria
(2003), p. 39.
External links
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