( b Schöneberg or Mulhouse, 30 Jan 1861; d Medfield ma , 19 May 1935). American composer. He studied in Berlin and Paris and emigrated to the USA in 1881. He was assistant leader of the Boston SO (1882-1903) and a proponent of contemporary music; in 1910 he retired to the country. He was a skilled, self-critical composer. His works, in all genres, are in a Romantic impressionist style that drew on medieval and later jazz elements: they include A Pagan Poem for orchestra with piano obbligato (1906) and Music for Four Stringed Instruments (1919).
Loeffler, Charles Martin (lĕf'lər), 1861-1935, American composer and violinist, b. Alsace, France; he studied in Kiev, Berlin, and Paris. In 1881 he emigrated to the United States, and from 1882 until 1903 he shared with Franz Kneisel the position of first violinist and soloist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His Pagan Poem (1906) for orchestra shows the influence of French impressionism, but it also reflects an attempt to evoke the style of ars antiqua. Other works include Memories of My Childhood (1925), for orchestra, inspired by Russian folk music. He also wrote chamber music and choral works.
The young Loeffler learned violin from a German musician in the small town of Smjela near Kiev. The family moved to Hungary and then to Switzerland in 1873. At 14, Loeffler decided to become a musician and went to Berlin to study violin with Eduard Rappoldi, theory with Friedrich Kiel, and also to study with Joachim. He left for Paris in order to work with Joseph Massart and assimilate the pure, elegant style of the French school. He joined the Pasdeloup Orchestra and then the private orchestra of Baron Paul von Derwies. Loeffler identified closely with French culture and was embittered against Germany after his father had been imprisoned in the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein "for having told the truth about certain things concerning the Prussian government."
When the Russian Baron died, Loeffler sailed to New York in June of 1881 and played in orchestral concerts conducted by Leopold Damrosch. In 1882, he was appointed assistant conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and remained there until 1903. He also taught and composed the Berceuse for violin and piano (1884), Night in the Ukraine for violin and orchestra (1891), and the lovely Harmonie du soir for low voice, viola, and piano (1897). The astonishing La mort de Tintagiles for viola d'amore and orchestra (1900) fully reveals Loeffler's deep sensibilities with its advanced harmonics and macabre, sinister impressionism.
Loeffler exclusively devoted himself to teaching and composition after 1903. In many of the works of this time, Loeffler shows his love for unusual timbres and instrumental combinations; for example, in L'archet for female voices, viola d'amore, and piano (1901); Ballade carnavalesque for flute, oboe, saxophone, bassoon, and piano (1904); the Two Rhapsodies for oboe, viola, and piano (1905); A Pagan Poem for orchestra, piano, English horn, and three trumpets obbligato (1906); and the elegantly lyrical and moving setting of Psalm CXXVII (By the Rivers of Babylon) for female chorus, cello obbligato, two flutes, organ, and harp (1907).
In 1910, Loeffler settled in Medfield where he bought a house, bred horses, read classic and contemporary literature, and enjoyed epicurian cooking. His later works reflect many influences; for example, the Gershwin and dance band-like rhythms of Clowns for expanded jazz orchestra (1928), Memories of My Childhood (1925) with its Greek Orthodox church bells and folk-like harmonica melodies, and the Five Irish Fantasies (composed variously between 1906 and 1920, with the orchestration publication in 1935) with its texts by Yeats and William Heffernan the Blind, which moves with enthralling, heroic, and rhythmic energy and creates eerie and brooding moods. Loeffler's exquisite and moving Music for Four Stringed Instruments (1917) was composed in memory of the American aviator Victor Chapman, who died in France that same year. ~ "Blue" Gene Tyranny, All Music Guide
Throughout his career Loeffler claimed to have been born in Mulhouse, Alsace and almost all music encyclopedias give this fabricated information. In his lifetime articles were published dissecting his "typically Alsatian" temperament. In fact, as his biographer Ellen Knight has established, he was German—indeed a Prussian, and a Berliner on both sides of his family, born Martin Karl Löffler in Schöneberg near Berlin. He turned against Germany when the Prussian authorities imprisoned his father, an agricultural chemist and author of Republican ideals. (Loeffler senior wrote journalism under the name 'Tornov' or 'Tornow', and his son sometimes used this as one of his middle names.) Loeffler was only about 12 when his father was imprisoned; he spent the rest of his life in prison, dying of a stroke before he was due to be released. Before his father's arrest the family had moved around a good deal, including a period in Alsace, and then to Smiela near Kiev, while Loeffler was still a small child. Later they lived in Hungary and Switzerland.
He first appeared as a violinist-composer with the orchestra in 1891 with the performance of his suite Les Vieilles d'Ukraine, and his works were performed regularly by the Boston Symphony (and by other American orchestra) for the rest of his life.
Loeffler became a U.S. citizen in 1887 and eventually resigned from the orchestra to devote himself to composition. He was a friend of Eugène Ysaÿe and John Singer Sargent (who painted his portrait), also of Gabriel Fauré and Ferruccio Busoni (both of whom dedicated works to him), and later of George Gershwin. A man of wide culture and refined taste, he developed an idiom deeply influenced by contemporary French and Russian music, in the traditions of César Franck, Ernest Chausson and Claude Debussy, and also by Symbolist and "decadent" literature. Loeffler often cultivated unusual combinations of instruments, and was one of the earliest modern enthusiasts for the viola d'amore, which he discovered in 1894 and wrote parts for in several scores as well as arranging much music for it. In his later years he also, unexpectedly, became deeply interested in jazz, and wrote some works for jazz band.
His notable students include Kay Swift and Francis Judd Cooke, who studied with him for two years in Medfield, Massachusetts. Loeffler died in Medfield the age of 74.
Works
Loeffler was a fastidious composer who composed carefully, frequently revising his compositions. Some of his works are lost. His best-known works include the symphonic poems La Mort de Tintagiles (after Maeterlinck), La Bonne Chanson (after Verlaine), A Pagan Poem (after Virgil), and Memories of My Childhood (Life in a Russian Village), as well as the song-cycle Five Irish Fantasies (to words by W. B. Yeats and Heffernan), and the chamber works Music for Four String Instruments and Two Rhapsodies for oboe, viola and piano.
His Divertissement for violin and orchestra was premiered in Berlin in 1905 by Karel Halíř, under the baton of Richard Strauss, at the same concert at which Halíř premiered the revised version of Sibelius's Violin Concerto. Fritz Kreisler and Eugène Ysaÿe had declined to play the Divertissement because of its technical demands.[1]
