Klose, Friedrich

Friedrich Klose – Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar
(The Pilgrimage to Kevelaer, 1910)
on the eponymous poem by Heinrich Heine

(b. Karlsruhe, 29 November 1862 – d. Ruvigliana, 24 December 1942)

for declamation, three choirs, organ and orchestra

I The Procession (p. 3) – II In the Dome (p. 7) – III The Fulfilment (p. 16)

Preface
Friedrich Klose is a prime example of those composers whose names crop up again and again but practically none of whose music is ever heard. He is invariably mentioned whenever the question of Bruckner’s important pupils arises. This was not the case during his productive years. But one reason why he had already been largely forgotten during his lifetime was undoubtedly his premature silence. After completing his Five Songs after Giordano Bruno, published by Universal in 1918, Klose regarded his musical output as finished. At least some information on his complete oeuvre can be obtained from the slender volume Friedrich Klose (Munich, 1921), written by the Munich conductor and professor of composition Heinrich Knappe (1887-1980) and published by Dreimasken Verlag in its series Zeitgenössische Komponisten, edited by Klose’s acclaimed younger colleague Hermann Wolfgang von Waltershausen (1882-1954). This volume, written with Klose’s assistance, gives no indication that his creative work had come to an end. To the present day it remains the standard work for Klose scholarship.

Knappe reports that “Klose himself determined that three elements must interact in his music in order to produce a work of art: an inner experience, its translation into artistic form, and musical inspiration.” In the afterword he notes: “Whereas Pfitzner points to the Romantic composers Weber and Schumann, and Reger is remote from typical Romanticism owing to his close ties to the music of Bach, Klose and Richard Strauss number among the New Romantics. In the music of this school’s primary figure, Wagner, we find traces of Mozart and others of late Beethoven. Strauss’s muse is related to these Mozartean traits; Klose’s art, in contrast, proceeds from Wagner’s Beethovenian aspect. […] ….

Read full preface > HERE