Charles Martin Loeffler

Charles Martin Loeffler, after the pseudonym of his father also Charles Martin Loeffler Tornov ( born January 30, 1861, Charles Martin Loeffler in Schöneberg in Berlin, † May 19 1935 in Medfield (Massachusetts ) ) was a German-born American composer, violinist and violist.

Life

Loeffler was, as his biographer Ellen Knight proved, the son of parents in Berlin Schöneberg in Berlin. During his childhood, the family moved with his father, an engineer and (under the name Tornow ) writers frequently in Europe by, among staging to Paris, Alsace, the place Smila in the Russian province Kiev, Hungary and Switzerland are. The father was imprisoned in the Prussian state because of its republicanism and apparently tortured when Loeffler was 12 years old. Shortly before his release, his father died in prison. So already an aversion to his German origin was in the teens. Loeffler strongly turned to the French culture and language, and later claimed to have been born in Mulhouse in Alsace, which was incorporated into almost all music encyclopedias. The trade press attested to him during his lifetime even a typical Alsatian temperament.

Loeffler, who was nine years old started in the Ukraine to play the violin, chose the age of 13 for a career as a musician. He studied violin in Berlin with Joseph Joachim and composition with Friedrich Kiel and Woldemar Bargiel, then at Lambert Joseph Massart (violin) and Ernest Guiraud (composition) in Paris. He first played in some Parisian orchestras, but then emigrated in June 1881 in the United States, where he became a member of the orchestra by Leopold Damrosch in New York City and finally the Boston Symphony Orchestra, where he was from 1882 to 1903 Second concertmaster. He initially joined as a violin composer in appearance by a suite Les Vieilles you Ukraine premiered with his orchestra in 1891. Later, his works have been performed regularly by the Boston Symphony Orchestra as well as other American orchestras. In 1887 Loeffler U.S. citizen. In 1903 he retired from the orchestra and worked as a freelance composer, from 1910 retired to his country home in Medfield, Massachusetts. He used friendship to the painter John Singer Sargent, the composer Eugène Ysaÿe and George Gershwin as well as Gabriel Fauré and Ferruccio Busoni, who dedicated works to him. Among his pupils was the American composer Francis Judd Cooke. Bequeathed his estate to Loeffler the Paris Conservatory and the Académie Française.

Work

Loeffler was a meticulous, self-critical and slowly working composer. Some of his works ( including a cello concerto ) are lost. His musical style was mainly influenced by the contemporary French music of the fin de siècle (Franck, Chausson, Debussy ), but also with hints of Ukrainian folklore. A certain lyrical elegance with impressionistic structures combined with often dark, moody content: Many of the texts set to music by him originate from the symbolism, among the authors are set to music, along with Paul Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. Loeffler used in his chamber music often unusual instrumental ensembles, he was one of the first modern followers of the viola d' amore, which he discovered for himself in 1894 and for which he composed several works and arranged. Later, he was enthusiastic for the emerging jazz music and wrote some works for jazz band.

In addition to several symphonic poems Loeffler left a broad piece of chamber music of various occupations and about 40 song compositions.

Selected works ( in chronological order )

• String Quartet in A Minor ( 1889)
• Les Vieilles de l' Ukraine, Suite for Violin and Orchestra ( 1891)
• Four Songs, Op 5 (1893, publ. 1904)
• Nine Songs with Viola and Piano ( 1893-94, publ. 1903)
• String Quintet for Three Violins, Viola and Violoncello (ca. 1894)
• Octet for two clarinets, two violins, viola, cello, double bass and harp (ca. 1896)
• La Mort de Tintagiles op 6, Symphonic Poem after Maeterlinck for two viole d' amore and orchestra ( 1896-7; amended in 1901 for viola d'amore and orchestra)
• Three Rhapsodies for voice, clarinet, viola and piano (1898), edited them as Deux Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola and Piano ( 1901)
• La Villanelle du Diable op 9 for orchestra ( 1901)

• A Pagan Poem (after Virgil ) for orchestra with obbligato piano, English horn and three trumpets (1907 )