Goetz, Hermann

Preface

Goetz, Hermann – The 137th Psalm op.14 for choir, soprano solo and orchestra

(b. Königsberg, 7 December 1840 – d. Hottingen, Zurich, 3 December 1876)

Preface
Only since the 1990s – the external, purely calendrical impetus for this will have been the 150th anniversary of his birth – has the image begun to expand perceptibly, that the music-interested public can form of Mr Goetz. However, even though his main instrumental and vocal works are now available in professional recordings, we are further away than ever from an actual rediscovery of the composer. Although the initiatives that committed musicians take time and again prevent the prematurely deceased composer from being completely forgotten, they cannot compensate for the almost paradoxical fact that the only work with which Hermann Goetz was able to celebrate great success during his lifetime has been largely ignored by German-speaking theatres since the end of the Second World War at the latest: The Shakespeare opera “The Taming of the Shrew”, which premiered in Mannheim in 1874 and was then performed in rapid succession in Vienna, London, Rotterdam, Zurich and New York, among other places, has hardly been staged since 19451. As a result of the additions to the discography, the image of the composer Hermann Goetz is gaining facets. At the same time it is fading and losing its presence and substance, the more his only actual repertoire piece disappears from the general consciousness.

Up until then, the classification that Willi Kahl had still communicated in 1956 in the first edition of the MGG (Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Kassel 1949 – 1968) was typical: together with Otto Nicolai (1810 – 1849) and Peter Cornelius (1824 – 1874), Hermann Goetz (1840 – 1876) formed the compositional triumvirate to whom the only comic operas of note in the German language are owed – with the exception of Richard Wagner’s “Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg”, of course. In addition, there was the obvious biographical coincidence, already reflected immediately after Goetz’s death, that he “shared the fate of the musicians who were marked by consumption and called away from their work all too soon” with his two Königsberg compatriots, namely Nicolai and Adolf Jensen (1837 – 1879), who was considered a Wagnerian. At the same time, Kahl did not fail to emphasise that Nicolai’s comic-fantastic opera “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (1849), which is also based on a Shakespeare comedy, Cornelius’ comic opera “The Barber of Bagdad” with its oriental subject (1858) and Goetz’ comic opera “The Taming of the Shrew” (1874) are aesthetically designed from completely different perspectives and are hardly comparable in terms of style. …

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