45worlds Forum - View Single Post - Classic FM List of Composers

Latest Posts » Classical Music » View Topic

View Single Post

Topic: Classic FM List of Composers

14th Aug 2014, 9:43 AM
	Pridesale Member since Mar 2013 798 Points	TopPopper wrote: Where's Engelbert Humperdinck? lack of recorded(as opposed to radio and performed) works/ or they missed him. (so far I only find the Overture on http://www.45worlds.com/vinyl/album/rtl2075c) Wiki: His reputation rests chiefly on his opera Hänsel and Gretel, which he began work on in Frankfurt in 1890. He first composed four songs to accompany a puppet show his nieces were giving at home. Then, using a libretto by his sister Adelheid Wette rather loosely based on the version of the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, he composed a Singspiel of 16 songs with piano accompaniment and connecting dialogue. By January 1891 he had begun working on a complete orchestration. The opera premiered in Weimar on 23 December 1893, under the baton of Richard Strauss, who called it "a masterpiece of the highest quality... all of it original, new, and so authentically German." With its highly original synthesis of Wagnerian techniques and traditional German folk songs, Hänsel und Gretel was an instant and overwhelming success. In 1900 he went to Berlin where he was appointed head of a Meister-Schule of composition. His students included the Basque composer Andrés Isasib{not on the list}. Among his other stage works are: Die sieben Geißlein (The Seven Little Kids), 1895 Königskinder (King's Children), 1897, 1910 Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty), 1902 Die Heirat wider Willen (The Reluctant Marriage), 1905 Bübchens Weihnachtstraum (The Christmas Dream), 1906 Die Marketenderin (The Provisioner), 1914 Gaudeamus: Szenen aus dem deutschen Studentenleben (Gaudeamus igitur: Scenes from German Student Life), 1919 While composing those works, Humperdinck held various teaching positions of distinction and collaborated in the theater, providing incidental music for a number of Max Reinhardt's productions in Berlin, for example, for Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in 1905. Though recognized as a disciple of Wagner rather than an innovator, he was nevertheless the first composer to use Sprechgesang—a vocal technique halfway between singing and speaking used later by Arnold Schoenberg—in his melodrama Die Königskinder In 1914, Humperdinck seems to have applied for the post of director of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in Australia, but with the outbreak of World War I it became unthinkable for a German to hold that position, and the job went instead to Belgium's Henri Verbrugghen. On 26 September 1921, Humperdinck attended a performance of Carl Maria von Weber's {not on the list either I note} Der Freischütz in Neustrelitz, Wolfram's first effort as a stage director. He suffered a heart attack during the performance and died the next day from a second heart attack. The Berlin State Opera performed Hänsel und Gretel in his memory a few weeks later