Hermann Zilcher

Biography

Hermann Zilcher (18 August 1881 – 1 January 1948) was a German composer, pianist and conductor, and also a music teacher. His compositional oeuvre includes orchestral and choral works, two operas, chamber music and songs, études, piano works, and numerous works for accordion.
As a music teacher, Zilcher also enjoyed an outstanding reputation. His students included, among others, Norbert Glanzberg, Karl Höller, Winfried Zillig, Kurt Eichhorn, Maria Landes-Hindemith, and Carl Orff.
After the seizure of power by the Nazis, Zilcher became a member of the party, a fact for which he would later be criticized.

Early life and education

Zilcher received early piano lessons from his father, Paul Zilcher, who was known as a composer of didactic piano and chamber music.
He studied from 1897 at the Dr. Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, piano with James Kwast, counterpoint and morphology with Iwan Knorr, and composition with Bernhard Scholz. At graduation, he was awarded the Mozart Prize.

Career

In 1901, Zilcher moved to Berlin, where he quickly established himself mainly as a pianist for singers and instrumentalists, with concert tours, which made him internationally known in the United States and in Europe. In 1905, he returned to Frankfurt as a piano teacher at the Dr. Hoch Conservatory. In 1908, he was appointed by Felix Mottl as a piano professor and in 1916 as a composition professor at the Academy of Music in Munich. In Munich, he worked closely with the head of the Munich Kammerspiele, Otto Falckenberg, for whom he wrote incidental music. In 1920, Zilcher became director of the Bavarian State Conservatory of Music in Würzburg and founded the Würzburg Mozart Festival in 1922, which soon became internationally famous. For these accomplishments, Zilcher was appointed in 1924 Privy Councillor by the Bavarian government and the University of Würzburg awarded him an honorary doctorate.
In the late 1920s, Zilcher founded the Würzburg Chamber Orchestra, which achieved nationwide renown. As a result, he became increasingly engaged as guest conductor of other orchestras; for example, he conducted the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, at the invitation of Wilhelm Furtwängler. At this time, Zilcher conducted works of Arnold Schoenberg, Ernst Krenek, and Paul Hindemith. In 1933, Hindemith joined in a concert in Würzburg under Zilcher conducting as a soloist of his viola concerto, Op. 36., as the pianist of the Zilcher Trio with violinist Adolf Schiering and cellist Ernst Chanbley. Zilcher performed works of Mendelssohn in 1932.
In 1941, his violin concerto, Op. 92. was premiered in a concert by the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Wilhelm Furtwängler. Due to a long-standing dispute, Zilcher was deprived of the management of the Mozart Festival and the directorship of the music school in 1943. In the final phase of World War II, Zilcher was approved to not serving on the front line, but was involved in the preparations for the Mozart Festival.
Zilcher, after an anonymous complaint, was deposed as director of the Würzburg Conservatory due to his activities in the Nazi era. The US military administration sentenced him to logging operations, where he injured his hands. Due to a medical certificate, he was exempted from this work. Zilcher composed a fifth symphony in 1947.
He had long suffered from a weak heart and died suddenly on 1 January 1948 at the age of 66 in Würzburg.

Music and influences

Zilcher is counted among the traditionalists of the 20th century and stands somewhere between late Romanticism and Modernity. Alfred Einstein characterized Zilcher as follows: "one of the greatest German composers in the semi-Brahms tradition, with a neo-romantic and semi-impressionistic tonal direction." Musicologist Barbara Haas commented: "Hermann Zilcher [...] can be seen as a composer of the middle; between old and new; He was a composer of moderate modernism, whose musical language evolved from the music of the 19th century, which was enriched with original personality traits. These personality traits are reflected in a tendency to simplicity and clarity of form, in a tendency to elaborate polyphony as well, and, especially in his late work - to monothematic concentration and uniform sentiment." There is also a preference for the "Volkston" (in the style of folk music), similar to his models of Schumann and Brahms, but which is also to be found in more modern composers like Bartok or Hindemith.
Zilcher had special success in his lifetime with the oratorio Die Liebesmesse ("The Love Fair") premiere 1913 in Strasbourg, France, with his "Deutschen Volksliederspiel" for four mixed voices and piano in 1915, and with the première of his violin concerto No. 2 in 1942 by Furtwängler and the Berlin Philharmonic. In addition to the posthumous premiere of his last symphony. 5 the led by Eugen Jochum (... "und dennoch ...) which was well received in Hamburg in 1948. In Germany, his works were rarely performed until the 1990s. Zilcher music again regained broader interest, with CD releases, and an increasing number of performances.

Personal life

Zilcher was the father of actress Eva Zilcher and conductor Heinz Reinhart Zilcher.

Literature

Barbara Haas, Komponisten in Bayern (1999), ISBN 978-3-7952-0992-6
Barbara Haas andothers;a. Hermann Zilcher (Monographie mit zahlreichen Notenbeispielen und Fotos), Verlag Dr. Hans Schneider, Tutzing 1999 ISBN 978-3-7952-0992-6.
Michael Klubertanz: Hermann Zilcher in MGG, Kassel 2006.
Matthias Wagner: Geheimrat Professor Dr. h. c. Hermann Zilcher. Aspekte seiner Würzburger Jahre im Spiegel neuer Aktenfunde, in Mainfränkisches Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Kunst, Band 50, S. 114–135, Würzburg 1998.
Hermann Zilcher – Ein Leben für die Musik, Ausstellungskatalog der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek 1981.
Theodor Hlouschek: Hermann Zilcher, sein Leben, sein Werk, Weimar 1952.
Hans Schneider: Hermann Zilcher 1881–1948. Heiteres aus einem Würzburger Künstlerleben. Erlebt, gesammelt und niedergeschrieben von Hans Schneider. Ein Liebhaberdruck aus dem Echterhaus, Würzburg 1980.
Peter Cahn: Das Hoch'sche Konservatorium in Frankfurt am Main 1878–1978 Frankfurt/M. 1979.
Hans Oppenheim: Hermann Zilcher, sein Leben, sein Werk. In: Zeitgenössische Komponisten, München 1921.
Alfred Einstein: Artikel Hermann Zilcher. In: Das neue Musik-Lexikon, Berlin 1926 S. 726.