Karl Amadeus Hartmann (August 2, 1905 – December 5, 1963) was a German composer. Some have lauded him as the greatest German symphonist of the 20th century, although he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries.
Life
Born in Munich, the son of Friedrich Richard Hartmann, well known there for his flower paintings, and the youngest of four brothers of whom the elder three also became painters, Hartmann was himself torn, early in his career, between music and the visual arts. He was much affected in his early political development by the events of the unsuccessful Workers’ Revolution in Bavaria that followed the collapse of the German monarchy at the end of World War I (see Bavarian Soviet Republic), and he remained an idealistic socialist all his life. He studied composition at the Munich Academy in the 1920s with Joseph Haas, a pupil of Max Reger, and later he received enormous intellectual stimulus and encouragement from the conductor Hermann Scherchen, an ally of the Schoenberg school, with whom he had a nearly lifelong mentor-protegé relationship. He voluntarily withdrew completely from musical life in Germany during the Nazi era, while remaining in Germany, and refused to allow his works to be played there. An early symphonic poem, Miserae (1933–1934, first performed in Prague, 1935) was condemned by the Nazi regime; but his work continued to be performed, and his fame grew, abroad.
During World War II, though already an experienced composer, Hartmann submitted to a course of private tuition in Vienna by Schoenberg’s pupil Anton Webern (with whom he often disagreed on a personal and political level). Although stylistically their music had little in common, he clearly felt that he needed, and benefitted from, Webern’s acute perfectionism.
After the fall of Hitler, Hartmann was one of the few prominent surviving anti-fascists in Bavaria whom the postwar Allied administration could appoint to a position of responsibility. In 1945, he became a Dramaturg at the Bavarian State Opera and there, as one of the few internationally-recognized figures who had survived untainted by any collaboration with the Nazi regime, he became a vital figure in the rebuilding of (West) German musical life. Perhaps his most notable achievement was the Musica Viva concert series which he founded and ran for the rest of his life in Munich. Beginning in November 1945, the concerts reintroduced the German public to 20th-century repertoire which had been banned since 1933 under National Socialist aesthetic policy. Hartmann also provided a platform for the music of the young composers who came to the fore in the late 1940s and early 1950s, helping to establish such figures as Hans Werner Henze, Luigi Nono, Luigi Dallapiccola, Carl Orff, Iannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Luciano Berio, Bernd Alois Zimmermann and many others. Hartmann also involved sculptors and artists such as Jean Cocteau, Le Corbusier, and Joan Miró in exhibitions at Musica Viva. He continued to base his activities in Munich for the remainder of his life, and his administrative duties came to absorb much of his time and energy. This reduced his opportunities for composition, and his last years were dogged by serious illness. In 1963, he died from stomach cancer at the age of 58, leaving his last work – an extended symphonic Gesangsszene for voice and orchestra on words from Jean Giraudoux’s apocalyptic drama Sodom and Gomorrah – unfinished.
Output and Style
Hartmann completed a number of fine works, most notably eight symphonies. The first of these, and perhaps emblematic of the difficult genesis of many of his works, is Symphony No. 1, titled "Essay for a requiem" (Versuch eines Requiems). This work began in 1936 as a cantata for alto solo and orchestra, loosely based on a few select poems by Walt Whitman. It soon became known as "Our Life: Symphonic Fragment" (Unser Leben: Symphonisches Fragment) and was intended as a comment on the generally miserable conditions for artists and liberal minded individuals under the early Nazi regime. After the defeat of the Third Reich in World War II, the real victims of the regime had become clear, and the cantata's title was changed to "Symphonic Fragment: Attempt at a Requiem" to honor the millions killed in the Holocaust. Hartmann revised the work in 1954-1955 as his Symphony No. 1, and finally published it in 1956. As this example indicates, Hartmann was a highly self-critical composer and many of his works went through successive stages of revision. He also suppressed most of his substantial orchestral works of the late 1930s and the war years, either allowing them to remain unpublished or, in several cases, reworking them - or portions of them - into the series of numbered symphonies that he produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Perhaps the most frequently-performed of his symphonies are No. 4, for strings, and No. 6; probably his most widely-known work, through performances and recordings, is his Concerto funebre for violin and strings, composed at the beginning of World War II and making use of a Hussite chorale and a Russian revolutionary song of 1905.
As a composer, Hartmann attempted a difficult synthesis of many different idioms, including musical Expressionism and jazz stylization, into organic symphonic forms in the tradition of Bruckner and Mahler. His early works contain music that is both satirical and politically engaged. But he admired the polyphonic mastery of J.S. Bach, the profound expressive irony of Mahler, the neoclassicism of Igor Stravinsky and Paul Hindemith. He, also in the 1930s, developed close ties with Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály in Hungary, and this is reflected in his own music to some extent. In the 1940s, he began to take an interest in Schoenbergian Twelve-tone technique; though he studied with Webern his own idiom was closer to Alban Berg. In the 1950s, started to explore the metrical techniques pioneered by Boris Blacher and Elliott Carter. He especially makes use of the forms of three-part Adagio slow movements, Fugue, Variations and Toccata.
Tributes
The English composer John McCabe wrote his Variations on a Theme of Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1964) in tribute. It uses the opening of Hartmann's Fourth Symphony as its theme. Hans Werner Henze has made a verson of Hartmann's Piano Sonata No. 2 for full orchestra.
List of Works
Operas
- Wachsfigurenkabinett, five short operas (1929-30; three not completed), libretti by Erich Bormann
- Das Leben und Sterben des heiligen Teufels
- Der Mann, der vom Tode auferstand (unfinished; completed by Günter Bialas and Hans Werner Henze)
- Chaplin-Ford-Trott, 'scenic jazz cantata' (unfinished; completed by Wilfried Hiller)
- Fürwahr? (unfinished; completed by Henze)
- Die Witwe von Ephesus
- Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend (1934-35; revised 1956-57 as Simplicius Simplicissimus), libretto by Hermann Scherchen, Wolfgang Petzer and Hartmann after Jakob von Grimmelhausen
Symphonic Works
(i) Up to 1945 – mostly later suppressed
- Miserae, Symphonic Poem (1933-4)
- Symphony L’Oeuvre (1937-8; material re-used in Symphony No.6)
- Symphonic Concerto for string orchestra and soprano (1938; later partly used in Symphony No.4)
- Sinfonia Tragica (1940, rev. 1943; first movement re-used in Symphony No.3)
- Symphoniae Drammaticae (1941-43), consisting of:
- Overture China kampft (1942, rev. 1962 as Symphonische Ouvertüre)
- Symphonische Hymnen (1941-3)
- Symphonic Suite Vita Nova for reciter and orchestra (1941-2, unfinished)
- Adagio for large orchestra (1940-44, revised as Symphony No.2)
- Symphony Klagegesang (1944; portions re-used in Symphony No.3)
(ii) After 1945
- Symphony No.1, Versuch eines Requiem for alto and orchestra (1950) – revised version of Symphonisches Fragment
- Symphony No.2 (1946) – revised version of Adagio
- Symphony No.3 (1948-9) – adapted from portions of Symphony Klagegesang and Sinfonia Tragica
- Symphony No.4 for string orchestra (1947-8) – adapted from Symphonic Concerto for strings
- Symphony No.5, Symphonie concertante (1950) – adapted from Concerto for wind and double basses
- Symphony No.6 (1951-3) – adapted from Symphony L’Oeuvre
- Symphony No.7 (1957-8)
- Symphony No.8 (1960-62)
Concertos
- Lied for trumpet and wind instruments (1932)
- Concerto for wind instruments and solo trumpet (1933); recomposed as Concerto for wind instruments and double basses (1948-9), whence Symphony No.5
- Cello Concerto (1933, lost, probably unfinished)
- Symphonie-Divertissement for bassoon, tenor trombone, double bass and chamber orchestra (c. 1934, unfinished)
- Kammerkonzert for clarinet, string quartet and string orchestra (1930-35)
- Concerto funebre for violin and string orchestra (1939, rev. 1959) (originally entitled Musik der Trauer)
- Concerto for piano, wind instruments and percussion (1953)
- Concerto for viola, piano, wind instruments and percussion (1954-6)
Vocal Works
- Cantata (1929) for 6-part a cappella choir on texts by Johannes R. Becher and Karl Marx
- Profane Messe (1929) for a cappella chorus on a text by Max See
- Kantate for soprano and orchestra on texts by Walt Whitman (1936); later retitled Lamento and in 1938 revised as Symphonisches Fragment, whence Symphony No.1
- Friede Anno '48 (1936-37) for soprano solo, mixed chorus and piano; revised 1955 as Lamento for soprano and piano
- Gesangsszene (1962-63) for baritone and orchestra on a text from Sodom and Gomorrah by Jean Giraudoux
Chamber and Instrumental
- 2 Kleine Suites for piano (c. 1924-6)
- 2 Sonatas for unaccompanied violin (1927)
- 2 Suites for Unaccompanied violin (1927)
- Jazz Toccata and Fugue for piano (1927-8)
- Tanzsuite for clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet and trombone (1931)
- Kleines Konzert for string quartet and percussion (1932)
- Burleske Musik for wind instruments, percussion and piano (1931)
- Sonatina for piano (1931)
- Toccata variata for wind instruments, piano and percussion (1931-2)
- Piano Sonata No.1 (1932)
- String Quartet No.1, Carillon (1933)
- Piano Sonata No.2, 24.IV.45 (1945)
- String Quartet No.2 (1945-6)
Sources
External links
