Gustave Kerker
Gustave Adolph Kerker ( born February 28, 1857 in Herford, † June 29, 1923 in New York ) was a German American composer.
Career
Gustave Kerker is a son of Westphalia, on 28 February 1857, he was born in Herford. Born into a musical family, he enjoys early musical education and learned at the age of seven years to play the cello. 1867, he is ten years old, his parents emigrated with him to America, more specifically in the Middle East, the United States, to Louisville, Kentucky, a fast-growing industrial city, which had been briefly fought fiercely before nor during the American Civil War. The young Gustav gets a amerikanisierendes "e" appended to its name and makes in Louisville with his musical talent soon attracted attention. As a cellist he was soon playing in an orchestra and in the local " Deutsche Oper ", conducted with 16 years of Weber's " Freischütz" and begins to compose. He is 22 years old when in 1879 his comic opera debut " Cadets " ("The Cadets " ) comes to performance and - albeit with modest success - touring the southern United States.
In various stations as a conductor learns dungeon know the repertoire and eventually ends up in New York, where he is on Broadway conductor of the newly opened Bijou Theatre. Here he adapted and arranged works by other authors, especially European success pieces that are subject to any copyright in the United States. Dungeon brings it - according to the custom of the time - even your own music numbers below. However, even wrote "musical comedies " he can now perform.
1888 we find him then as Music Director of the Casino Theatres, one of the major Broadway theaters of the time. His name now appears here and elsewhere on Broadway frequently as a composer on the play-bills on. " Castles in the Air", an Offenbach- adaptation of 1890, "Venus", 1893 written for Boston, which also inspired by Offenbach " Kismet " (1895 ), the revue -like " In Gay New York " (1895 ), "An American Beauty " (1896 ), " the Telephone Girl "( 1897) and" The Man in the Moon " (1899 ) are some of the fashionable title this time.
In New York, he composed 1888-1912 a total of 29 musicals, most of which were premiered on Broadway. Many of these works were quite successful with over one hundred performances. His musical "The Belle of New York" ( to a libretto by Hugh Morton ), premiered on September 28, 1897 at the Casino theater could win with 64 performances only a moderate success on Broadway, it brought the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, however, to 697 ideas. Dungeon international breakthrough was made, many European and American theaters played the work, partly in arrangements, in the following years. The "Belle" was the epitome of the American "musical comedy".
Gustave Kerker also wrote operettas in Vienna ( " The Ice Maiden ", 1904 and " Snowdrop ", 1910), had with "The Tourists " (1906 ) is still a significant international success and suffered in later years under the " Mach works of the Viennese operetta " as he called them, which his own work displaced in the wake of Franz Lehar's "Merry Widow ," who had come in 1907 as the "Merry widow" to Broadway in the U.S. in public. He died on 29 June 1923 in his New York home on the effects of a stroke.
Gustave Kerker was one of nine founding members of ASCAP in 1914, and like the other two founders Jacob Witt Mark and Silvio Hein Freemasons.
Stylistics
Gustave Kerker developed in his "light operas " or "musical comedies " a style that takes up the musical fashions of the time. Best contemporary popular music, with characteristic numbers, based on the successes of Europe, to Jacques Offenbach and the Paris Charles Lecocqs about successes or the Victorian "comic operas " of the writing staff Gilbert & Sullivan.
Dungeon recognizes important principles by which he creates his works: catchy, nachsingbare musical numbers performed as possible dance-like rhythmic. " It's an original and individual rhythm to have ," he says in an interview in 1913, " is as natural as an individual rhythm to have breathing. " In addition, the must comes from imaginative texts and topics that humor arises from local or daily topical issues out. A look at the title shows exactly this principle. The hardest thing when writing a " musical comedy ", so coquettish in the dungeon already cited interview, is to meet with an appropriate title, to write the simplest of all, the music was. Gustave Kerker placed with these principles in the music market, with vocal numbers, the instrumental in the domestic piano sound as well as to the dance hall or at concerts. Arrangements for piano, created with and without vocals, dance and concert orchestra of his works, increase its brand awareness and provide additional income.