Pfitzner, Hans

Pfitzner, Hans

Der arme Heinrich (full opera score in three acts with German libretto)

SKU: 2156 Category: Tag:

72,00 

Preface

Hans Pfitzner – Der arme Heinrich

(b. Moscow, 5 May 1869 – d. Salzburg, 22 May 1949)

Preface
Hans Pfitzner is remembered primarily as a theatre composer, due to the success of his great opera Palestrina, though he also had a long and successful career as a conductor and as a teacher (and was, in fact, a much more prolific composer of songs and chamber music). Pfitzner was born in Moscow, and received his foundational musical training in Frankfurt at the Hoch Conservatory. The musical conservatism of the Hoch Conservatory—which was strongly oriented towards Brahms and against Wagner and the New German School—left a lasting impression on Pfitzner, whose early music reflected a Wagnerian influence but who would later rail against musical progressivism, and especially the aesthetic of the Second Viennese School. Indeed, Pfitzner’s would remain a staunch advocate of the 19th century German Romanticism of composers like Weber and Schumann, and would spend much of his career defending the supremacy of German musical culture and fighting what he regarded as foreign influences that might undermine or otherwise weaken that tradition. Pfitzner spoke out against Jewish and modernist encroachments on the German tradition, and also rejected jazz as a debasement of German culture.

During the early years of his career, Pfitzner was something of a marginal figure: he struggled to make a living as a teacher and composer, and enjoyed only modest success with his early works. In 1907, approaching middle age, he finally earned a significant post when he was appointed director at the Strasbourg conservatory in Alsace-Lorraine. There, he composed his best-known work, the opera Palestrina, in 1917; however, he lost his position the following year, in the wake of Germany’s defeat in the First World War. Embittered by the German defeat, Pfitzner became a vocal supporter of the Nazi party and an outspoken anti-Semite, and throughout the Nazi era his works were frequently performed. But Pfitzner himself was never fully embraced by the Nazis, perhaps in part because he was also an unrepentant admirer of Jewish composers (such as Mendelssohn and Mahler) and because he maintained friendships with Jewish musicians and artists—and surely also because Hitler himself was suspicious of Pfitzner’s racial purity. Pfitzner survived the war, was found not guilty during the post-war denazification process, and died in Salzburg in 1949. …

 

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Score Data

Score Number

2156

Edition

Opera Explorer

Genre

Opera

Pages

422

Size

210 x 297 mm

Printing

Reprint

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