Felix Mottl

Felix Mottl
Background information
Born	1856 Unter Sankt Veit, Austria
Died	2 July 1911 (age 54) Munich, Germany
Genres	Classical
Occupations	Conductor, pedagogue
Associated acts	Bayerisches Staatsorchester

Felix Josef von Mottl (1856 – 2 July 1911) was an Austrian conductor and composer. He was regarded as one of the most brilliant conductors of his day.^[1] He composed three operas, of which Agnes Bernauer (Weimar, 1880) was the most successful, as well as a string quartet and numerous songs and other music. His orchestration of Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder is still the most commonly performed version. He was also a teacher, counting among his pupils Ernest van Dyck and Wilhelm Petersen.

Born in Unter Sankt Veit, today Hietzing, Vienna, Mottl's birth date has been reported variously as 29 July,^[1] 24 August,^[2] and 29 August.^[3] After early voice training at the Löwenburg Konvikt, a training school for the Imperial Court Chapel, Mottl had a successful career at the Vienna Conservatoire.^[1] He became known as a gifted conductor of Wagner's music, and assisted Hans Richter in the preparations for the first complete Ring Cycle at Bayreuth; in 1886 he directed the performance of Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festival. From 1881 to 1903 he was conductor at the Karlsruhe Opera, and made a wide reputation for his activity there, particularly in producing the works of Wagner, Hector Berlioz and Emmanuel Chabrier, whose operas he championed; Mottl also orchestrated Chabrier's Bourrée fantasque and Trois valses romantiques. In later years, as a conductor of Wagner especially, he visited London and New York, where he was guest conductor for the Metropolitan Opera in 1903. In 1904 he was made a director of the Akademie der Künste at Berlin.

In June 1907 he cut some player piano rolls with Welte-Mignon, including his own piano transcription of the Prelude, the Love Duet and Brangäne's Warning from Tristan. He suffered a heart attack on 21 June 1911, while conducting his 100th performance of Tristan in Munich. He was taken to hospital, where he died 11 days later, on 2 July, but not before marrying his longtime mistress, the soprano Zdenka Fassbender.^[4]

References

• Frithjof Haas: Der Magier am Dirigentenpult. Felix Mottl. Karlsruhe: Hoepfner-Bibliothek. Info Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-88190-424-7

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Recordings

• Felix Mottl today playing his 1907 interpretations. Selected works by Richard Wagner, The Welte-Mignon Mystery Vol. II

External links

• Free scores by Felix Mottl at the International Music Score Library Project