Egon Wellesz Explained

Egon Wellesz
Birth Name:Egon Joseph Wellesz
Birth Date:21 October 1885
Birth Place:Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Death Place:Oxford, England, UK
Education:
  • Musicologist
  • Composer
  • Academic teacher
Organization:Lincoln College, Oxford

Egon Joseph Wellesz, CBE, FBA (21 October 1885 – 9 November 1974) was an Austrian, later British composer, teacher and musicologist, notable particularly in the field of Byzantine music.

Early life and education in Vienna

Egon Joseph Wellesz was born on 21 October 1885 in the Schottengasse district of Vienna to Samú Wellesz and Ilona Wellesz (née Lovenyi).[1] Although his parents met and married in Vienna, they both originated from Hungary and came from Jewish families in that nation.[1] His parents, while ethnically Hungarian Jews, were both practicing Christians in Vienna and Wellesz received a Protestant upbringing.[1] He later converted to Catholicism.[2] As a boy he attended the Franz Josephs Gymnasium on Hegel Street where he received a classical education in Greek and Latin.[2]

Wellesz's father worked in the textile business and his parents initially intended Wellesz to join him in his work, or pursue a career as a civil servant.[1] [2] In order to achieve that aim, his parents were intent upon Wellesz pursuing an education in law.[1] Accordingly, Wellesz entered the University of Vienna as a law student following the completion of his studies at the Franz Josephs Gymnasium.[2] However, Wellesz's own career ambitions had been bent towards music for several years prior to his entrance to the University of Vienna.[1] This desire to pursue a music career had been formed after attending a performance of Carl Maria von Webers Der Freischütz under the baton of Gustav Mahler at the Vienna State Opera on October 21, 1898; a present from his parents on his 13th birthday.[1] This opera so moved Wellesz that he decided he wanted to become a composer.[1] Prior to this experience, Wellesz had already had some excellent music education as a boy, as his mother was a music enthusiast and amateur pianist who encouraged music studies as a hobby.[1] He began his initial music training at a young age studying the piano with his mother's teacher, Carl Frühling.[2]

In 1905, at the age of 19, Wellesz began studying harmony and counterpoint at Eugenie Schwarzwald's school with Arnold Schoenberg while simultaneously attending law classes at the university.[1] [2] Schwarzwald's school became an important part of not only his musical development but also his social life. There he became the conductor of a school choir and he met and befriended the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the architect Adolf Loos, and the painter Oskar Kokoschka; the latter of whom painted his portrait in 1911. He also met his future wife, Emmy Stross, who was a student at that school.[1] Wellesz's lessons with Schoenberg took place at Schoenberg 's Liechtensteinstrasse apartment where he received a thorough and rigorous training in the fundamentals of music.[1] These lessons, however, lasted only a matter of months, and ended when he began studies in musicology with Guido Adler at the University of Vienna later in 1905.[1] [2] Adler had founded the Musicological Institute at the University of Vienna and was a leading editor of the Austrian Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich. He and Schoenberg's dual influences shaped much of Wellesz's musical and scholarly thought.[1] His 1921 book on Schoenberg is still a standard source on Schoenberg's early period.[3]

Work as a scholar, lecturer, and composer in Vienna

The main focus of Wellesz's early musicological research was Baroque opera; particularly those by composer Giuseppe Bonno who was the subject of his dissertation at the University of Vienna. He also edited Johann Joseph Fux's 1723 opera Costanza e fortezza for publication in Adler's Denkmäler. Many years later Wellesz published a monograph on Fux in 1965. He graduated from the University of Vienna with a degree in musicology in 1908, and his dissertation on Bonno was published the following year.[1] He married Emmy Stross in 1908, and had a very long and happy marriage.[2]

In 1913 Wellesz joined the faculty of the University of Vienna as a lecturer in music history.[1] That same he embarked upon what would become a lifelong interest in the musical achievements of Byzantium.[4] This interest initially arose from dialogues and debates with the Austrian art historian Josef Strzygowski who at this time was putting forward a new theory that many of the elements of Early Christian architecture, such as the rounded dome, originated not in the West but in the East; ideas published in his Orient oder Rom. Wellesz had plenty of opportunity to discuss these theories directly with Strzygowski as his wife Emmy was an art historian who specialized in the art of India and was a disciple and close friend of Strzygowski.[2] These discussions awoke an interest in him to study the early roots of Christianity and compare the development of chant in the East and the West.[1]

1913 was also the first year one of Wellesz's compositions was publicly performed. The five movement String Quartet No 1, op 14 received its premiere on 31 October, showing the clear influence of Mahler and Schoenberg. Wellesz was the first pupil of Schoenberg to gain independent success as a composer, receiving a contract from Universal Edition before Berg or Webern.[5] Three further string quartets followed during the war years, establishing his preference for linear chromaticism, and some of them explicitly categorised as atonal.[6] However, it was with dramatic music that Wellesz really made his mark, starting with the ballet Das Wunder der Diana in 1914. In the following 12 years he completed five operas and three ballets, many of the libretti and ballet scenarios written by the important literary figures Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Jakob Wassermann. Operas such as Alkestis (1924) and Die Bakchantinnen (1931) take their subject matter from ancient mythology and, in contrast to the Wagnerian tradition, use techniques such as dance pantomime and coloratura singing derived from Claudio Monteverdi and Christoph Willibald Gluck.[6]

In 1922 Wellesz, along with Rudolph Reti and others, founded the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM) following theInternationale Kammermusikaufführungen Salzburg, a festival of modern chamber music held as part of the Salzburg Festival.[7] This soon evolved into the International Society for Contemporary Music, founded in 1923 with its headquarters in London. The Cambridge academic Edward J. Dent, whom Wellesz had met on his first trip to London in 1906, was elected as its president.[8] [9]

In 1929 Wellesz was promoted from lecturer to professor at the University of Vienna; succeeding Adler in his position at the university.[2] He remained in that post until the events of the Anschluss on 13 March 1938 made it no longer safe for him to reside in Austria.[2]

Life in England

His links to England turned out to be fortunate in 1938 when Wellesz was forced to leave Austria in the wake of the Anschluss. By good fortune he was in Amsterdam on 12 March 1938 to hear his orchestral suite Prosperos Beschwörungen ("Prospero's Invocation", after The Tempest) conducted by Bruno Walter.[10] Once in England he worked for a time on Grove's Dictionary of Music, but in July 1940 he was interned as an enemy alien, ultimately in Hutchinson Camp in the Isle of Man. He gained his release later that year, on 13 October,[11] thanks to intercessions by Ralph Vaughan Williams and H. C. Colles, the long-standing chief music critic of The Times.[12] Following his internment in 1940 Wellesz found himself unable to compose, a creative block eventually broken by the composition of the String Quartet No 5 (1943–44), the first important work of his English period.[13] His response to the great English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins also helped re-kindle his urge to compose, resulting in his setting of The Leaden and the Golden Echo in 1944.[14]

Despite his composing, Wellesz remains best known as an academic and teacher, and for his extensive scholarly contributions to the study of Byzantine music and opera in the 17th century. These contributions brought for him an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1932 and later a fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he remained until his death.[15] His pupils there included Herbert Chappell, Martin Cooper, Kunihiko Hashimoto, Spike Hughes, Frederick May, Wilfrid Mellers, Nigel Osborne and Peter Sculthorpe. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1953.

A portrait was made of Wellesz by Jean Cooke, who had been commissioned for the work by Lincoln College.[16] [17] (There is also an early portrait, painted in 1911 by Oskar Kokoschka).[18] Wellesz continued composing until he suffered a stroke in 1972. He died two years later and was buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. His widow Emmy Stross, whom he married in 1908, returned to live in Vienna until her own death in 1987.[13]

Music

Wellesz composed at least 112 works with opus numbers as well as some 20 without numbers. His large scale dramatic works (including six operas) were mostly completed during his Vienna period (the main exception being the comic opera Incognita, written with the Oxford poet Elizabeth Mackenzie and first staged there in 1952). Robert Layton regarded Alkestis as "probably his most remarkable achievement for the stage. Its invention is marvellously sustained and organically conceived".[19] It was successfully revived in the 1950s and 1960s.

Altogether he wrote nine symphonies and an equal number of string quartets, the former starting in 1945[20] and the latter series of works spread throughout his life. Several of his symphonies have titles, including the second (the English), fourth (the Austriaca) and seventh (Contra torrentum). They were generally well received in Austria, Germany and England, but even so the Third Symphony (1950–1) was only published posthumously and only received its world premiere in Vienna in 2000.[21] Other compositions included the Octet (using Schubert's combination); piano and violin concertos (one of each); choral works such as the Mass in F minor; and a number of vocal works with orchestral or chamber accompaniment.

Stylistically his earliest music, somewhat like that of Ernst Krenek, is in a dissonant but recognisably tonal style; there is a definite second period of sorts around the time of the first two symphonies (1940s) in which his music has a somewhat Brucknerian sound – in the symphonies sometimes an equal breadth, though still with something of a 20th-century feel and harmonies – but after the Fourth Symphony his music became more tonally vague in character, with serial techniques used, though still with hints of tonality, as in the Eighth Quartet.

Rather than follow his teacher Schoenberg's Expressionist style, Wellesz found inspiration in music from the pre-modern era (with the exception of Mahler), becoming a forerunner to the anti-Romantic currents of the twenties.[22] As well as the dramatic works, the chamber and orchestral pieces with voice often use these "baroque" elements. An example is the cantata Amor Timido (1933), a favourite of Wilfrid Mellers.[23] Elsewhere, the neo-classical spirit of Hindemith is evident, as in the Piano Concerto (1931) and (still there much later) in the Divertimento (1969).[24]

He wrote:

In place of the infinite melody, the finite must return, in the place of dissolved, amorphous structures, clear, clearly outlined forms. The opera of the future must tie in with the traditions of Baroque opera. This is the natural form, the innermost essence of opera.

Recordings

A complete recording set of his nine symphonies by Radio Symphonieorchester Wien conducted by Gottfried Rabl is available, and there are recordings of three of the quartets, choral works including the Mass, the violin and piano concertos, and other orchestral works including Prosperos Beschwörungen, Vorfrühling and the Symphonic Epilogue.[24] [25]

Works

Stage

Choral

Orchestral

Chamber and instrumental

Decorations and awards

Bibliography

See also

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. Encyclopedia: 2001 . Wellesz, Egon (Joseph). . Oxford Music Online . Oxford University Press. Caroline Cepin Benser. 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.30098.
  2. Book: https://books.google.com/books?id=MIx59DKdec0C&dq=Egon+Wellesz+Jewish+Catholic&pg=PA165. Egon Wellesz (1885–1974). Miloš Velimirović. 165–176. Medieval Scholarship: Philosophy and the arts. 29 August 1995 . Donald Fennema . Helen Damico . Joseph B. Zavadil . Karmen Lenz. 9780815333395. Garland Publishing.
  3. https://toccataclassics.com/product/egon-wellesz-chamber-music/ Bojan Bujić. 'Egon Wellesz Chamber Music', notes to Toccata CD TOCC0617 (2023)
  4. Miloš Velimirović. ''Egon Wellesz and the Study of Byzantine Chant, in Music Quarterly, April 1976, p 265-277
  5. https://www.chandos.net/chanimages/Booklets/NI5821.pdf MacDonald, Calum. Notes to Nimbus CD 5821 (2008)
  6. https://www.jstor.org/stable/739001 Hans Redlich and Arthur Mendel. 'Egon Wellesz' in Musical Quarterly, January 1940, p 65-75
  7. Web site: archives.nypl.org – League of Composers/ISCM records. Archives.nypl.org. 24 May 2018.
  8. Fauser, AnneGret. 'The Scholar behind the Medal: Edward J. Dent (1876–1957) and the Politics of Music History', in Journal of the Royal Musical Association Vol. 139, No. 2 (2014), pp. 235–260
  9. Haas, Michael. 'Egon Wellesz: The Forgotten Modernist', in Forbidden Music, 4 June 2014
  10. Web site: Krones . Hartmut . 5 December 2001 . Notes to US Premiere of Wellesz Symphony 3 . American Symphony Dialogues and Extensions . 22 December 2007 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20070927185910/http://www.americansymphony.org/dialogues_extensions/2001_02season/2001_12_5/wellesz.cfm . 27 September 2007 .
  11. https://books.google.com/books?id=wZeBUCRRmWcC Peter Revers 'Wellesz in Oxford' in Friedrich Stadler, Vertiebene Vernunft – Vol. 2, Part 2: Emigration – Exil – Kontinuität (2004)
  12. Web site: Egon Wellesz | Amanda Holden. 15 February 2011 .
  13. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000030098 Benser, Caroline Cepin. 'Wellesz, Egon (Joseph)' in Grove Music Online (2001)
  14. Mellers, Wilfrid. 'Egon Wellesz: An 80th Birthday Tribute' in The Musical Times, Vol. 106, No. 1472 (October 1965), pp. 766–767
  15. 'Lincoln College: Egon Wellesz and other Emigrées in 1930s Britain, Oxford Facility of Music
  16. News: Jean Cooke . Telegraph Media Group Limited . The Telegraph . 22 August 2008 . 5 January 2014.
  17. Web site: Your Paintings: Jean Cooke paintings slideshow . . 6 January 2014.
  18. https://music.si.edu/object-day/oskar-kokoschkas-portrait-egon-wellesz Smithsonian Institution
  19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/958907 Obituary, Musical Times, January 1975, p 68-9
  20. Web site: Conway. Paul. MusicWeb International. June 1999. An Austrian Symphonist in Britain. 22 December 2007.
  21. Web site: The long-awaited world premiere of the third symphony triumphs in Vienna. MusicWeb International. Conway. Paul. July 2000. 22 December 2007.
  22. Stephan. Rudolf. 1975. Egon Wellesz. Die Musikforschung. 28. 2. 153–156. 23230883. 0027-4801.
  23. Mellers, Wilfrid. 'The Music of Egon Wellesz', in The Listener, 31 August 1950, p 33
  24. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/march99/wellesz.htm Review of Pan Classics 510104 (1999) at MusicWeb International
  25. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2004/Jun04/Wellesz_spring.htm Capriccio 67 077 (2004), reviewed at MusicWeb International
  26. Book: Scholz, Gottfried . Österreichische Musik der Gegenwart : eine Anthologie zur Schallplattenreihe des Österreichische Musikrates . 1993 . Doblinger . 3-900695-22-9 . Wien . 31984326.
  27. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Jan07/Continental_Britons_NI5730.htm Continental Britons: The Emigre Composers

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