Josef Matthias Hauer

Josef Matthias Hauer

Josef Matthais Hauer's "athematic" dodecaphony in Nomos Op. 19^[1]( Play (help·info))

Josef Mattias Hauer (March 19, 1883 – September 22, 1959) was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is most famous for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.

Hauer "detested all art that expressed ideas, programmes or feelings,"^[2] instead believing that it was "essential...to raise music to its highest...level," ^[3] a, "purely spiritual, supersensual music composed according to impersonal rules,"^[4] and many of his compositions reflect this in their direct, often athematic, 'cerebral' approach.

His twelve-tone music was balanced between the "obligatory rule" that each composition follow an arrangement of the total chromatic: "the 'Constellation' or "Grundgestalt' ('basic shape')," and his often emphasized concept of tropes, or unordered arrangement of a pair of hexachords^[5]

Life

Hauer was born in Wiener Neustadt and died in Vienna. He had an early musical training in cello, choral conducting, and organ, and claimed to have been self-taught in theory and composition.^[5] In 1918 he published his first work on music theory (a tone-color theory based on Goethe's). In August 1919 he published his "law of the twelve tones", requiring that all twelve chromatic notes sound before any is repeated. This he developed and first articulated theoretically in Vom Wesen der Musikalischen (1920), before Schoenberg’s earliest writings on twelve-tone technique.^[5]

Hauer wrote prolifically, both music and prose, until 1938, when his music was added to the touring Nazi "degenerate art" (Entartete Kunst) exhibit.^[5] He stayed in Austria through the war, and, in fear, publishing nothing. Even after the war, however, he published little more, although it is thought that several hundred pieces remain in manuscript.^{[citation needed]}

Musical Style

Hauer's compositional techniques are extraordinarily various, often change from one piece to the next. These range from building-block techniques to methods using a chord series that is generated out of the twelve-tone row ("Melos"). The so-called 44 "tropes" and their compositional usage ("trope-technique") are essential to Hauer's twelve-tone techniques. In contrast to a twelve-tone row that contains a fixed succession of twelve tones, a trope consists of two complementary hexachords in which there is no fixed tone sequence. The tropes are used for structural and intervallic views on the twelve-tone system. Every trope offers certain symmetries that can be used by the composer.

After 1940, Hauer wrote exclusively Zwölftonspiele ("Twelve-tone Games" or "Twelve-tone Playing"), designated sometimes by number, sometimes by date. He wrote about one thousand such pieces, most of them lost.^[2]

References in Literature

Since the 1920s Hauer has been a model for literature, e.g., in Otto Stoessl's "Die Sonnenmelodie", Franz Werfel's "Verdi" (Matthias Fischboeck). Late in life Hauer spoke about Mann, as well as Theodor W. Adorno, with great bitterness, for he felt that both men had misunderstood him. Adorno had written about Hauer, but only disparagingly. Because of his later achievements and developments it has also been assumed by many scholars that Hauer is also a model for the "Joculator Basiliensis" in Hermann Hesse's "Glass-bead Game".

Musical Works

• 577 Works are known (Lafite index)

• Apokalyptische Fantasie, op. 5 (1913)
• Nomos, op. 19 (1919)
• Cantata Wandlungen, op. 53 (1927) - Premiere conducted by Hermann Scherchen
• Violinkonzert mit Orchester in einem Satz, op. 54 (1928) - Premiere conducted by Hermann Scherchen
• Klavierkonzert mit Orchester in einem Satz, op. 55 (1928)
• Opera Salambo, op. 60 (1929) - Premiere conducted by Otto Klemperer
• Opera Die Schwarze Spinne, op. 62 (1932) - Premiere conducted by Michael Gielen
• Cantata Der Menschen Weg, op. 67 (1934)
• Various Hölderlin-Kantaten, Der Frühling pg. 21/3; Emilie vor ihrem Brauttag pg. 58 (1928)
• Fantasie für Klavier, literally, Fantasy for a piano 39 (1925)
• Charakterstücke für Salonorchester
• Zwölftonmusik für neun Soloinstrumente op. 73 (twelve-tone music for nine solo instruments) (1937)
• Zwölftonmusik für Orchester (twelve-tone music for orchestra) (1939)
• Zwölftonmusik für Orchester mit einer Zwölftonreihe, die in sechs verschiedenen Tropen steht, lit. with a twelve-tone row, in six different tropes (1945)
• Zwölftonspiel für fünf Violinen (Hermann Heiß gewidmet), lit. twelve-tone piece for five violins, dedicated to Hermann Heiß (1949)
• Zwölftonspiel für Klavier zu vier Händen. lit. twelve-tone piece for piano four hands (1956)

Theoretical Writings

• 17 Theoretical Writings (1918-1926), 33 Essays and Articles (1919-1948)

The most important writings:

• Über die Klangfarbe ("About Tone-Color", 1918)
• Vom Wesen des Musikalischen ("On the Essence of Music", 1920)
• Deutung des Melos ("Interpretation of the Melos", 1923)
• Atonale Melodienlehre ("Teachings on Atonal Melodies", manuscript, 1923)
• Vom Melos zur Pauke ("From the Melos to the Kettledrum", 1925)
• Zwölftontechnik. Die Lehre von den Tropen ("Twelve-Tone Technique: Teachings on the Tropes", 1926)
• Der Goldene Schnitt. Eine Rechtfertigung der Zwölftonmusik ("The Golden Ratio", manuscript, 1926)
• Kosmisches Testament (three "Cosmic Testaments", manuscripts, 1937, 1941, 1945)

Notes

Sources

• Hauer, Josef Matthias.^{[citation needed]}
• Lichtenfeld, Monika. 2001. "Hauer, Josef Matthias". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, 29 vols., edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 11:134–37. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaires.
• Whittall, Arnold. 2008. The Cambridge Introduction to Serialism. Cambridge Introductions to Music. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521863414 (cloth) ISBN 9780521682008 (pbk.)

Further reading

• Henck, Herbert. Fürsprache für Hauer: Hermann Heiß und die Hintergründe eines Briefes von Thomas Mann an Ellie Bommersheim im Jahre 1949 ["Speech for the Defence of Hauer: Hermann Heiß and the Background of a Letter from Thomas Mann to Ellie Bommersheim in 1949"]. Deinstedt: Kompost-Verlag, 1998. ISBN 3-9802341-3-4.
• Fheodoroff, Nikolaus. Josef Matthias Hauer: Schriften, Manifeste, Dokumente ["Josef Matthias Hauer: Writings, Manifestos, Documents"]. Vienna: Edition Österreichische Musikzeit, 2003.
• Lansky, Paul, George Perle, and Dave Headlam. "Twelve-note Composition". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001.
• Sengstschmid, Johann. Zwischen Trope und Zwölftonspiel: J. M. Hauers Zwölftontechnik in ausgewählten Beispielen ["Between Trope and Twelve-tone Game: J. M. Hauer's Twelve-tone Technique in Selected Examples"]. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1980. ISBN 3764922192
• Shaw-Miller, Simon. Visible Deeds of Music: Art and Music from Wagner to Cage. Chapter 5, 'Out of Tune' Hauer's Legacy and the Aesthetics of Minimalism in Art and Music', pp. 163–207. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002.
• Dominik Sedivy: Serial Composition and Tonality. An Introduction to the Music of Hauer and Steinbauer, edited by Guenther Friesinger, Helmut Neumann, Dominik Sedivy, edition mono / monochrom, Vienna 2011

External links

• Josef Matthias Hauer page (German)
• Josef Matthias Hauer (1883-1959) (in German, with photos of Hauer)
• John Covach. "Josef Matthias Hauer" (biography).