Franz August Julius Schreker / Schrecker

Franz Schreker (originally Schrecker; b. March 23, 1878, Monaco – d. March 21, 1934, Berlin) was an Austrian composer, conductor, teacher and administrator.[1] Primarily a composer of operas, his style is characterized by aesthetic plurality (a mixture of Romanticism, Naturalism, Symbolism, Impressionism, Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit), timbral experimentation, strategies of extended tonality and conception of total music theatre into the narrative of 20th-century music.

Biography. Schreker was the son of the Bohemian Jewish court photographer Ignaz Schrecker (1834-1888) and his (second) wife Eleonore von Clossmann (1854-1919), who was a member of the Catholic aristocracy of Styria. Christened Franz August Julius Schrecker, he was the second of five children. His siblings were:

• Alexander Franz Maria (b. Monaco, 22 January 1877 - d. Monaco, 26 July 1878)
• Henriette Eleonore Gertrude Maria (b. Trieste, 5 June 1881 - d. Vienna, 17 April 1890)
• Eleonore Gertrude Leonia (b. Linz, 15 July 1883 - d. Vienna, 6 October 1957)
• Carl August (b. Linz, 10 September 1885 - d. Berlin, 193_)

Franz grew up traveling around Europe. After his father's death in 1888 the family moved from Linz to Vienna (Döbling), where in 1892, with the help of a scholarship, Schreker entered the Conservatory. Starting with violin studies, with Sigismund Bachrich and Arnold Rosé,[2][3] he entered the composition course given by Robert Fuchs. He graduated as a composer in 1900. His first success was with the Intermezzo op.8 for Strings which won an important prize sponsored by the Neue musikalische Presse in 1901. Schreker had begun conducting in 1895, when he had founded the Verein der Musikfreunde Döbling. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory he spent several years taking various bread-and-butter jobs. In 1907 he formed the Philharmonic Chorus, which he conducted until 1920, and among the many works it premièred were Zemlinsky's Psalm XXIII and Arnold Schönberg's Friede auf Erden and Gurre-Lieder.

Schreker married Maria Binder (1892-1979) on November 9, 1909. Their daughter Ottilie Hedwig Maria Philomena, called Haidy, was born Aug. 10, 1910. Son Imanuel Schreker was born Dec. 23, 1914.

Schreker's "pantomime", Der Geburtstag der Infantin, commissioned by the dancer Grete Wiesenthal and her sister Elsa for the opening of the 1908 Kunstschau, first called attention to his development as a composer. Such was the success of the venture that Schreker composed several more dance-related works for the two sisters including Der Wind, Valse lente and Ein Tanzspiel (Rokoko). In 1912, the first performance in Frankfurt of the opera Der ferne Klang, on which he had been working since 1903, consolidated his fame.

Also in 1912, Schreker was appointed Professor at the Music Academy in Vienna (among his students there was Ernest Kanitz). The professorial appointment heralded a decade of great success for the composer. His opera Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin was given simultaneous premières in Frankfurt and Vienna (March 15, 1913), and although it less well received than earlier works, (subsequently Schreker revised it as a one-act 'Mysterium' entitled simply Das Spielwerk, 1915), the scandal which this opera caused in Vienna only made Schreker's name more widely known. Also in 1913 Schreker conducted the world premiere of Guerreliedern, by Arnold Schönberg, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Choir.

The outbreak of World War I interrupted Schreker's success, but with the première of his opera Die Gezeichneten (Frankfurt, April 25, 1918) Schreker moved to the front ranks of contemporary opera composers. The first performance of Der Schatzgräber (Frankfurt, January 21, 1920) was the high point of his career. His Chamber Symphony, composed between the two operas, for the faculty of the Vienna Academy in 1916, quickly entered the repertoire and remains Schreker's most frequently performed work today. In March 1920 he was appointed director of the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin. He taught a range of subjects; Berthold Goldschmidt, Alois Hába, Jascha Horenstein, Ernst Krenek, Artur Rodziński, Stefan Wolpe, Grete von Zieritz were among his students.

Schreker's fame and influence peaked during the early years of the Weimar Republic when he was the most performed living opera composer after Richard Strauss. The decline of his artistic fortunes began with the mixed reception given to Irrelohe (Cologne, 1923 under Otto Klemperer) and the failure of Der singende Teufel (Berlin, 1928 under Erich Kleiber). Political developments and the spread of anti-Semitism also contributed -- they heralded the end of Schreker's career. Right-wing demonstrations marred the première of Der Schmied von Gent (Berlin, 1932) and National Socialist pressure forced the cancellation of the scheduled Freiburg première of Christophorus (the work was finally performed in 1978). Finally, in June 1932, Schreker lost his position as Director of the Musikhochschule in Berlin and, the following year, also his post as professor of composition at the Akademie der Künste. He took on a Master Class at the Prussian Academy of Fine Arts, but was dismissed from there on May 17, 1933; Schönberg was dismissed on May 23.

In his lifetime Franz Schreker had gone from being hailed as the future of German opera to being considered irrelevant as a composer and marginalized as an educator.[4] After suffering from a stroke in December 1933, he died on March 21, two days before his 56th birthday. His children, Haidy and Imanuel Schreker, emigrated to Argentina. Imanuel Schreker died in Australia, Aug. 9, 1971. Later that year, Maria Schreker donated most of Schreker's estate to the Austrian National Library, Vienna. The Franz Schreker-Fonds was established. Maria Schreker died in 1979. Haidy Schreker-Bures died in Buenos Aires on Dec. 15, 1993.

Schreker was the subject of a lithograph portrait by Heinrich Gottselig, ca. 1922. A copy always hung in the home of his student E. Kanitz and is owned by heirs today.

Musical style. Although Schreker was influenced by a number of composers such as Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, his mature style shows a very individual harmonic language, characterized by a combination of tonal with chromatic and polytonal passages.

Selected works:

Operas

• Flammen, Op. 10 (1901/02)
• Der ferne Klang (1903–1910)
• Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin (1908; 1909–1912); revised as Das Spielwerk (1915)
• Die Gezeichneten (1911; 1913–1915)
• Der Schatzgräber (1915–1918)
• Irrelohe (1919–1922)
• Der singende Teufel (1924; 1927–1928)
• Christophorus (oder Die Vision einer Oper) (1925–1929)
• Der Schmied von Gent (1929–1932)

Orchestral works

• 1896: Love Song for string orchestra and harp (lost)
• 1899: Scherzo (unpublished)
• 1899: Symphony in A minor, Op. 1 (unpublished, final movement lost)
• 1900: Intermezzo for string orchestra, Op. 8
• 1900: Scherzo for string orchestra
• 1902-1903: Ekkehard: Symphonic Overture, Op. 12
• 1903: Romantische Suite, Op. 14
• 1904: Phantastische Ouvertüre, Op. 15
• 1906-1907: Nachtstück (from the opera Der ferne Klang)
• 1908-1910: Der Geburtstag der Infantin: Dance-pantomime after Oscar Wilde's The Birthday of the Infanta for chamber orchestra
• 1908: Festwalzer und Walzerintermezzo
• 1908: Valse lente
• 1908-1909: Ein Tanzspiel (Rokoko)
• 1913: Vorspiel zu einem Drama
• 1916: Chamber Symphony
• 1909/1922: Fünf Gesänge for low voice and orchestra
• 1922: Symphonic Interlude (from the opera Der Schatzgräber)
• 1923: Der Geburtstag der Infantin: Suite for large orchestra
• 1923/1927: Vom ewigen Leben: Two songs after Walt Whitman for soprano and orchestra
• 1928: Kleine Suite for small orchestra
• 1929-1930: Vier kleine Stücke for large orchestra
• 1932-1933: Das Weib des Intaphernes - Melodrama for speaker and orchestra
• 1933: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 (Liszt) - transcribed for orchestra
• 1933: Vorspiel zu einer großen Oper

Choral works

• 1900: Psalm 116 for 3-part women's chorus, orchestra and organ, Op. 6
• 1902: Schwanensang for mixed choir and orchestra, Op. 11

Chamber works

• 1898: Sonata for violin and piano
• 1909: Der Wind for clarinet, horn, violin, cello and piano

Principal publisher: Universal Edition

Notes

1. "OREL Foundation. Franz Schreker. (2008) Aaron J. Johnson.".
2. "Programme notes for a concert of Schreker".
3. "Sonances article about Schreker".
4. "OREL Foundation. Franz Schreker. (2008) Aaron J. Johnson."

Above information adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Schreker and http://www.schreker.org/neu/engl/biogra/chrono/chrono.html.

External links:

• Franz Schreker, 1878-1934: A Cultural Biography, by Christopher Hailey
• Franz Schreker Foundation
• Schreker recollections from Haidy Schreker-Bures [Schreker's daughter], H. H. Stuckenschmidt, Werner Oehlmann, Franz Schreker, Lafite [u.a.], Vienna 1970.
• Photographs of Franz Schreker are here
• Discussion of Schreker's operas in "All About Schreker: A Forgotten Fin-de-Siècle Composer," by Alex Ross, The New Yorker of August 22, 2005, online.