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The Second Viennese School was the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, particularly Alban Berg and Anton Webern, and close associates in early 20th-century Vienna. Their music was initially characterized by late-Romantic expanded tonality and later, a totally chromatic expressionism without a firm tonal centre, often referred to as atonality; and later still, Schoenberg's serial twelve-tone technique. Adorno said that the twelve-tone method, when it had evolved into maturity, was a "veritable message in a bottle", addressed to an unknown and uncertain future. Though this common development took place, it neither followed a common time-line nor a cooperative path. Likewise, it was not a direct result of Schoenberg's teaching—which, as his various published textbooks demonstrate, was highly traditional and conservative. Schoenberg's textbooks also reveal that the Second Viennese School spawned not from the development of his serial method, but rather from the influence of his creative example.
Ernst Heinrich Krenek was an Austrian, later American, composer. He explored atonality and other modern styles and wrote a number of books, including Music Here and Now (1939), a study of Johannes Ockeghem (1953), and Horizons Circled: Reflections on my Music (1974). Krenek wrote two pieces using the pseudonym Thornton Winsloe.
Jonny spielt auf, Op. 45, is a German-language Zeitoper with words and music by Austrian composer Ernst Krenek about a jazz violinist. He dedicated the opera to his second wife, Berta Herrmann. A performance lasts about two hours. The work typified the cultural freedom of the 'golden era' of the Weimar Republic.
Karl V. is an opera, described as a Bühnenwerk mit Musik by Ernst Krenek, his opus 73. The German libretto is by the composer. His student Virginia Seay collaborated with him on the English translation of the libretto.
Orpheus und Eurydike is an opera by Ernst Krenek. The German text is based on a play by Oskar Kokoschka. Kokoschka began writing his play during his convalescence and it premiered in 1921, one year before Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus appeared. In 1923 he let it be known that he was looking for a composer to write incidental music. Kokoschka's expressionist, psychological treatment of the Orpheus myth, marked by his passion for Alma Mahler, appealed to Krenek so he approached Kokoschka.
Schwergewicht, oder Die Ehre der Nation is a burleske Operette with text and music by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 55 and the third of his 1928 one-acters. This satirical skit was provoked by the German ambassador's comment that sports heroes – and not artists – were the true ambassadors of nations, and the title character Ochsenschwanz ("oxtail") is a reference to the boxer Max Schmeling.
Der Diktator is a tragic opera in one act with words and music by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 49 and the first of three one-acters which premiered on 6 May 1928 at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden as part of the Festspiele Wiesbaden. The score is inscribed with the date of completion, 28 August 1926.
Leben des Orest is a grand opera in five acts with words and music both by Ernst Krenek. It is his Op. 60 and the first of his own libretti with an antique setting. The score is inscribed with the dates of composition, 8 August 1928 – 13 May 1929, and includes indications of recommended cuts made for the first production. It premiered at the Neues Theater in Leipzig on 19 January 1930, and opened at the Kroll Opera House in Berlin in early March of the same year.
What Price Confidence? is a chamber opera in nine scenes with music and libretto by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 111. This "little drawing room comedy" is set in London at the turn of the 20th century, and features a protagonist not unlike Max in Jonny spielt auf, as the author points out in a preface; it owes something to Melville as well, as do his next two operas.
The Bell Tower is a chamber opera in one act by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 153. The English libretto by the composer was inspired by the short story by Herman Melville, the events only mysteriously hinted at in the story becoming a point of departure for the explicit dramatic action of Krenek's piece. It was commissioned by the Fromm Foundation and written in 1955–56, receiving its premiere on 17 March 1957 at the University of Illinois.
Cefalo e Procri is a chamber opera in three scenes and a prologue by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 77, begun in 1933 and finished on 3 August 1934. The Italian libretto by Rinaldo Küfferle was commissioned by Universal Edition for the third Venice Festival. The half-hour work was revived at the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice in October 2017 as part of a short double-bill with a setting of the 'Lamento di Procri' by Silvia Colasanti, conducted by Tito Ceccherini.
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Emmet Godfrey Lavery was an American playwright and screenwriter.
Sardakai, Op. 206, is a 1969 comic opera in two acts by Ernst Krenek which premiered in Hamburg in 1970. The "lightweight, fluffy farce", as Krenek described it, dealt with a Così fan tutte inspired scenario on the fictional South Seas island of Migo Migo. Krenek's libretto was intended to poke fun at both left and right wing "sacred cows". The premiere was a catastrophe, attributed by some contemporary and subsequent commentators to the Hamburg Opera director's decision to commission Krenek, who was living in California, to write his own libretto which proved to be out of touch with both the prevailing mood in Germany, and the situation at the Hamburg Opera.
Der Sprung über den Schatten is a 1924 opera by Ernst Krenek. The work parodied expressionism and psychoanalysis, and prefigured Jonny spielt auf in including jazz elements.
Das geheime Königreich is an opera in one act with words and music by Ernst Krenek, his Op. 50 and the second of three one-acters which premiered on 6 May 1928 at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden as part of the Mai-Festwoche Wiesbaden. It is subtitled Märchenoper in 1 Akt and has been called a satirical fairy-tale opera.
Gösta Neuwirth is an Austrian musicologist, composer and academic teacher. He studied in Vienna and Berlin, where he wrote a dissertation on harmony in Franz Schreker's Der ferne Klang. He has taught at universities and music schools including the Musikhochschule Graz, University of Graz, Hochschule der Künste Berlin and University of Freiburg. His compositions include a string quartet and a chamber opera.
Erik Wirl was a German operatic tenor and actor.
Virginia Claire Seay Ploeser was an American composer and musicologist who studied and collaborated with composer Ernst Krenek. She published her works under the name Virginia Seay.
References
Notes
- ↑ Stewart, p. 224.
- ↑ Krenek 1974, p. 45.
- ↑ 1984 Introduction to the 1933 Studien zu meinem Bühnenwerk Karl V in Musik-Konzepte Nos. 39–40.[ full citation needed ]
Sources
- Krenek: "Circling My Horizons" in Horizons Circled: Reflections on My Music University of California Press, 1974.
- Stewart, J., Ernst Krenek: The Man and His Music, University of California Press, 1991 ISBN 0-520-07014-3 ISBN 0-520-07014-3.
