Franz Schreker
Franz Schreker (originally Schrecker;[1][2] 23 March 1878 – 21 March 1934) was an Austrian composer, conductor, librettist, teacher and administrator.[3][4] Primarily a composer of operas, Schreker developed a style 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.
Franz Schreker
23 March 1878
21 March 1934 (aged 55)
- Conductor
- Composer
- Librettist
- Academic teacher
Formative years[edit]
He was born as Franz Schrecker in Monaco, the eldest son of the Bohemian Jewish court photographer Ignaz Franz Schrekker (Germanized from Ignácz Furencz, originally Isak),[1] and his wife, Eleonore von Cloßmann,[1] who was a member of the Catholic aristocracy of Styria. He grew up during travels across half of Europe and, after the early death of his father, the family moved from Linz to Vienna (1888) where in 1892, with the help of a scholarship, Schreker entered the Vienna Conservatory. Starting with violin studies, with Sigismund Bachrich and Arnold Rosé,[5][6] he moved into the composition class of Robert Fuchs, graduating as a composer in 1900. His first success was with the Intermezzo for strings, Op. 8, which won an important prize sponsored by the Neue musikalische Presse in 1901. His first opera, Flammen, was completed in 1902 but failed to receive a staged production.
Career launch[edit]
Schreker had begun conducting in 1895, when he had founded the Verein der Musikfreunde Döbling. In 1907 he formed the Vienna Philharmonic Chorus, which he conducted until 1920: among its many premières were Zemlinsky's Psalm XXIII and Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden and Gurre-Lieder. Schreker and other composers, such as Schoenberg and Zemlinsky, were influential during the Jugendstil movement, which incorporated non-western styles inspired by Ancient Egypt and the Far East.[4]
His "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).
End of career[edit]
Schreker's fame and influence were at their peak 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 at the Cologne Opera in 1924 under Otto Klemperer and the failure of Der singende Teufel, given in Berlin in 1928 under Erich Kleiber.
Political developments and the spread of antisemitism were also contributory factors, both of which heralded the end of Schreker's career. Right-wing demonstrations marred the première of Der Schmied von Gent in Berlin in 1932 and National Socialist pressure forced the cancellation of the scheduled Freiburg première of Christophorus in 1933 (the work was finally performed there 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.
In his lifetime he went from being hailed as the future of German opera to being considered irrelevant as a composer and marginalized as an educator.[3] After suffering from a stroke in December 1933, he died in Berlin on 21 March 1934, two days before his 56th birthday.
Although Schreker was influenced by composers such as Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, his mature style shows a highly individual harmonic language, which, although broadly tonal, is inflected with chromatic and polytonal passages. Schreker also took musical inspiration from his close friend Arnold Schoenberg with the use of expressionist style.[4]
The Third Reich banned Schreker's music along with that of many other composers of Jewish origin. His early death in 1934 at the age of 55, together with the Nazi ban, prevented Schreker's music from expanding outside of German-speaking Europe.[4]
Reputation today[edit]
After decades in obscurity, Schreker has begun to enjoy a considerable revival in reputation in the German-speaking world and in the United States. In 2005 the Salzburg Festival mounted an incomplete production of Die Gezeichneten, conducted by Kent Nagano (and filmed), and the Jewish Museum in Vienna presented an exhibition devoted to his life and work. New productions of Der ferne Klang were staged at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin and the Zurich Opera in 2010, as well as in smaller opera houses in Germany. Irrelohe was performed at the Volksoper in Vienna in 2004, at the Bonn Opera in November 2010 then staged for the first time in France at the Opéra National de Lyon in March 2022. In 2010 a Schreker opera was staged in the US for the first time: Die Gezeichneten at Los Angeles Opera; and months after that came a second: Der ferne Klang during the Bard Summerscape Festival. Australian composer, pianist, and conductor David Stanhope included Scheker's Prelude to a Drama in his recording Tall Poppies TP274 David Stanhope live in concert with Sydney Symphony Orchestra: Franz Schreker Prelude to a Drama, and Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances.
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