Hans von Koessler
Hans Koessler ( born January 1, 1853 in Waldeck ( today part of Kemnath in the Upper Palatinate ), † May 23 1926 in Ansbach; ennobled by Hans Koessler, Hans Kößler and Hungary János Koessler ) was a German composer, who as a high school teacher worked mainly in Budapest.
Life
Koessler studied from 1874 to 1877 organ with Joseph Rheinberger and attended the choir class of Franz Wüllner in Munich. After that, he was a teacher of theory and choral singing at the Dresden Conservatory and Conductor of the Dresden Liedertafel.
From 1882 to 1908, he first taught organ and choir singing at the State Music Academy in Budapest, and later he was also raised a professor of composition and also in the personal nobility. Among his pupils were the greatest Hungarian composers of the time: Zoltán Kodály, Béla Bartók, Emmerich Kálmán, Ernst von Dohnányi and Leó Weiner; and other musicians, such as Fritz Reiner.
After his retirement in 1908 he returned to Germany, but was set to mediation by Kálmán and Dohnányi again to secure him a modest income. In an obituary in the literary journal Nyugat ( 'West' ) are listed by name from a period of 43 years as a teacher of composition in Budapest 48 students, such as the later high school teacher Albert Siklos, composer Árpád Szendy and the operetta composer Jenő Huszka and Viktor Jacobi, or also fallen in Belgrade composer Aladar Radó ( 1882-1914 ).
Koessler composed over one hundred and thirty works, including an opera, two symphonies, symphonic variations for orchestra, a violin concerto, a Mass for female choir and organ, psalm settings, and chamber works. Due to his erratic lifestyle many of his compositions have been lost or are possibly still privately owned.
An influence on his twenty years younger, also grown in the Upper Palatinate cousin Max Reger has not been determined.
Bartók as a student of Hans Koessler
Béla Bartók was also studied composition with Koessler, who used to give his lessons in German, which the national conscious and youthful firebrand Bartók annoyed, though he himself was drafting his letters to his mother in German. Bartók cited 1902 Koesslers admonition in a letter to his mother: " An Adagio must express love. In this [ slow ] sentence is no trace of love. " Bartók, however, do not believe " that experiences have all these affect the quality of a composition. " But, there are also similarities between students and teachers: "Besides, Koessler does not hold Dohnányi's Adagio for outstanding. ( I do not! ) ".
Koessler was for Bartók too " didactic and strictly bound by tradition, and also to professor -stick pompous ", and Bartók sought and found in the same year his inspiration when recorded in Budapest with general horror first performance of Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra. In later years, Bartók shared the pride of his Hungarian fellow musicians to have been studied composition with Koessler.