Karl Amadeus Hartmann
Encyclopedia
Karl Amadeus Hartmann was a German
composer
. Some have lauded him as the greatest German symphonist
of the 20th century, although he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries.
, the son of Friedrich Richard Hartmann, well known there for his flower paintings, and the youngest of four brothers of whom the elder three also became painters, Hartmann was himself torn, early in his career, between music and the visual arts. He was much affected in his early political development by the events of the unsuccessful Workers’ Revolution in Bavaria
that followed the collapse of the German monarchy at the end of World War I
(see Bavarian Soviet Republic
), and he remained an idealistic socialist
all his life. He studied composition at the Munich Academy in the 1920s with Joseph Haas
, a pupil of Max Reger
, and later he received enormous intellectual stimulus and encouragement from the conductor Hermann Scherchen
, an ally of the Schoenberg school
, with whom he had a nearly lifelong mentor-protégé relationship. He voluntarily withdrew completely from musical life in Germany during the Nazi
era, while remaining in Germany, and refused to allow his works to be played there. An early symphonic poem
, Miserae
(1933–1934, first performed in Prague, 1935) was condemned by the Nazi regime; but his work continued to be performed, and his fame grew, abroad.
During World War II
, though already an experienced composer, Hartmann submitted to a course of private tuition in Vienna
by Schoenberg
’s pupil Anton Webern
(with whom he often disagreed on a personal and political level). Although stylistically their music had little in common, he clearly felt that he needed, and benefitted from, Webern’s acute perfectionism.
After the fall of Hitler, Hartmann was one of the few prominent surviving anti-fascists
in Bavaria whom the postwar Allied administration could appoint to a position of responsibility. In 1945, he became a Dramaturg at the Bavarian State Opera
and there, as one of the few internationally-recognized figures who had survived untainted by any collaboration with the Nazi regime, he became a vital figure in the rebuilding of (West) German musical life. Perhaps his most notable achievement was the Musica Viva concert series which he founded and ran for the rest of his life in Munich. Beginning in November 1945, the concerts reintroduced the German public to 20th-century repertoire which had been banned since 1933 under National Socialist aesthetic policy. Hartmann also provided a platform for the music of the young composers who came to the fore in the late 1940s and early 1950s, helping to establish such figures as Hans Werner Henze
, Luigi Nono
, Luigi Dallapiccola
, Carl Orff
, Iannis Xenakis
, Olivier Messiaen
, Luciano Berio
, Bernd Alois Zimmermann
and many others. Hartmann also involved sculptors and artists such as Jean Cocteau
, Le Corbusier
, and Joan Miró
in exhibitions at Musica Viva.
He was accorded numerous honours after the war, including the Musikpreis of the city of Munich in March 1949. This was followed by the Kunstpreis of the Bayrische Akademie der Schönen Künste (1950), the Arnold Schönberg Medal of the IGNM (1954), the Große Kunstpreis of the Land Nordrhein-Westfalen (1957), as well as the Ludwig Spohr Award of the city of Braunschweig
, the Schwabing Kunstpreis (1961) and the Bavarian Medal of Merit (1959). In addition, Hartmann became a member of the Academy of Arts in Munich (1952) and Berlin (1955) and received an honorary doctorate from Spokane Conservatory, Washington (1962).
He continued to base his activities in Munich for the remainder of his life, and his administrative duties came to absorb much of his time and energy. This reduced his opportunities for composition, and his last years were dogged by serious illness. In 1963, he died from stomach cancer
at the age of 58, leaving his last work – an extended symphonic Gesangsszene
for voice and orchestra on words from Jean Giraudoux
’s apocalyptic drama Sodom and Gomorrah – unfinished.
Significantly, no major German conductor championed his music following his death: Scherchen, his most noted advocate, died in 1966. Some have suggested that this accelerated the disappearance of Hartmann's music from public view in the years following his death. The Czech Rafael Kubelik
was one notable figure who regularly performed Hartmann's music, and in recent years conductors such as Ingo Metzmacher
and Mariss Jansons
have brought many works back into the concert hall.
for alto solo and orchestra, loosely based on a few select poems by Walt Whitman
. It soon became known as "Our Life: Symphonic Fragment" (Unser Leben: Symphonisches Fragment) and was intended as a comment on the generally miserable conditions for artists and liberal minded individuals under the early Nazi regime. After the defeat of the Third Reich in World War II, the real victims of the regime had become clear, and the cantata's title was changed to "Symphonic Fragment: Attempt at a Requiem" to honor the millions killed in the Holocaust. Hartmann revised the work in 1954-1955 as his Symphony No. 1, and finally published it in 1956. As this example indicates, Hartmann was a highly self-critical composer and many of his works went through successive stages of revision. He also suppressed most of his substantial orchestral works of the late 1930s and the war years, either allowing them to remain unpublished or, in several cases, reworking them - or portions of them - into the series of numbered symphonies that he produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Perhaps the most frequently-performed of his symphonies are No. 4, for strings, and No. 6; probably his most widely-known work, through performances and recordings, is his Concerto funebre for violin and strings, composed at the beginning of World War II and making use of a Hussite
chorale and a Russian revolutionary song of 1905.
As a composer, Hartmann attempted a difficult synthesis of many different idioms, including musical Expressionism
and jazz
stylization, into organic symphonic forms in the tradition of Bruckner and Mahler. His early works contain music that is both satirical and politically engaged. But he admired the polyphonic mastery of J.S. Bach
, the profound expressive irony of Mahler, the neoclassicism
of Igor Stravinsky
and Paul Hindemith
. He, also in the 1930s, developed close ties with Béla Bartók
and Zoltán Kodály
in Hungary
, and this is reflected in his own music to some extent. In the 1940s, he began to take an interest in Schoenbergian Twelve-tone technique
; though he studied with Webern his own idiom was closer to Alban Berg
. In the 1950s, started to explore the metrical techniques pioneered by Boris Blacher and Elliott Carter
. He especially makes use of the forms of three-part Adagio slow movements, Fugue
, Variations and Toccata
.
wrote his Variations on a Theme of Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1964) in tribute. It uses the opening of Hartmann's Fourth Symphony as its theme. Hans Werner Henze has made a version of Hartmann's Piano Sonata No. 2 for full orchestra.
Henze said of Hartmann's music:
(ii) After 1945
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
. Some have lauded him as the greatest German symphonist
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
of the 20th century, although he is now largely overlooked, particularly in English-speaking countries.
Life
Born in MunichMunich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, the son of Friedrich Richard Hartmann, well known there for his flower paintings, and the youngest of four brothers of whom the elder three also became painters, Hartmann was himself torn, early in his career, between music and the visual arts. He was much affected in his early political development by the events of the unsuccessful Workers’ Revolution in Bavaria
Bavaria
Bavaria, formally the Free State of Bavaria is a state of Germany, located in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the largest state by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
that followed the collapse of the German monarchy at the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
(see Bavarian Soviet Republic
Bavarian Soviet Republic
The Bavarian Soviet Republic, also known as the Munich Soviet Republic was, as part of the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the short-lived attempt to establish a socialist state in form of a council republic in the Free State of Bavaria. It sought independence from the also recently proclaimed...
), and he remained an idealistic socialist
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
all his life. He studied composition at the Munich Academy in the 1920s with Joseph Haas
Joseph Haas
Joseph Haas was a German late romantic composer and music teacher.-Biography:He was born in Maihingen, near Nördlingen to teacher Alban Haas from his second marriage, being half-brother to the theologist and historian Alban Haas. At an early age he came into contact with music...
, a pupil of Max Reger
Max Reger
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian Reger was a German composer, conductor, pianist, organist, and academic teacher.-Life:...
, and later he received enormous intellectual stimulus and encouragement from the conductor Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen
Hermann Scherchen was a German conductor.-Life:Scherchen was originally a violist and played among the violas of the Bluthner Orchestra of Berlin while still in his teens...
, an ally of the Schoenberg school
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
, with whom he had a nearly lifelong mentor-protégé relationship. He voluntarily withdrew completely from musical life in Germany during the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
era, while remaining in Germany, and refused to allow his works to be played there. An early symphonic poem
Symphonic poem
A symphonic poem or tone poem is a piece of orchestral music in a single continuous section in which the content of a poem, a story or novel, a painting, a landscape or another source is illustrated or evoked. The term was first applied by Hungarian composer Franz Liszt to his 13 works in this vein...
, Miserae
Miserae
Miserae is a symphonic poem by the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann.Composed in 1933-34, it was written in response to the plight of those who died in the first Nazi internment camps...
(1933–1934, first performed in Prague, 1935) was condemned by the Nazi regime; but his work continued to be performed, and his fame grew, abroad.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, though already an experienced composer, Hartmann submitted to a course of private tuition in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
by Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
’s pupil Anton Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
(with whom he often disagreed on a personal and political level). Although stylistically their music had little in common, he clearly felt that he needed, and benefitted from, Webern’s acute perfectionism.
After the fall of Hitler, Hartmann was one of the few prominent surviving anti-fascists
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
in Bavaria whom the postwar Allied administration could appoint to a position of responsibility. In 1945, he became a Dramaturg at the Bavarian State Opera
Bavarian State Opera
The Bavarian State Opera is an opera company based in Munich, Germany.Its orchestra is the Bavarian State Orchestra.- History:The opera company which was founded under Princess Henriette Adelaide of Savoy has been in existence since 1653...
and there, as one of the few internationally-recognized figures who had survived untainted by any collaboration with the Nazi regime, he became a vital figure in the rebuilding of (West) German musical life. Perhaps his most notable achievement was the Musica Viva concert series which he founded and ran for the rest of his life in Munich. Beginning in November 1945, the concerts reintroduced the German public to 20th-century repertoire which had been banned since 1933 under National Socialist aesthetic policy. Hartmann also provided a platform for the music of the young composers who came to the fore in the late 1940s and early 1950s, helping to establish such figures as Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze
Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...
, Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, Luigi Dallapiccola
Luigi Dallapiccola
Luigi Dallapiccola was an Italian composer known for his lyrical twelve-tone compositions.-Biography:Dallapiccola was born at Pisino d'Istria , to Italian parents....
, Carl Orff
Carl Orff
Carl Orff was a 20th-century German composer, best known for his cantata Carmina Burana . In addition to his career as a composer, Orff developed an influential method of music education for children.-Early life:...
, Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis
Iannis Xenakis was a Romanian-born Greek ethnic, naturalized French composer, music theorist, and architect-engineer. He is commonly recognized as one of the most important post-war avant-garde composers...
, Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen
Olivier Messiaen was a French composer, organist and ornithologist, one of the major composers of the 20th century. His music is rhythmically complex ; harmonically and melodically it is based on modes of limited transposition, which he abstracted from his early compositions and improvisations...
, Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio
Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.-Biography:Berio was born at Oneglia Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (October 24, 1925 – May 27, 2003) was an Italian...
, Bernd Alois Zimmermann
Bernd Alois Zimmermann
Bernd Alois Zimmermann was a post-WWII West German composer. He is perhaps best known for his opera Die Soldaten which is regarded as one of the most important operas of the 20th century...
and many others. Hartmann also involved sculptors and artists such as Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier , was a Swiss-born French architect, designer, urbanist, writer and painter, famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930...
, and Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
in exhibitions at Musica Viva.
He was accorded numerous honours after the war, including the Musikpreis of the city of Munich in March 1949. This was followed by the Kunstpreis of the Bayrische Akademie der Schönen Künste (1950), the Arnold Schönberg Medal of the IGNM (1954), the Große Kunstpreis of the Land Nordrhein-Westfalen (1957), as well as the Ludwig Spohr Award of the city of Braunschweig
Braunschweig
Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....
, the Schwabing Kunstpreis (1961) and the Bavarian Medal of Merit (1959). In addition, Hartmann became a member of the Academy of Arts in Munich (1952) and Berlin (1955) and received an honorary doctorate from Spokane Conservatory, Washington (1962).
He continued to base his activities in Munich for the remainder of his life, and his administrative duties came to absorb much of his time and energy. This reduced his opportunities for composition, and his last years were dogged by serious illness. In 1963, he died from stomach cancer
Stomach cancer
Gastric cancer, commonly referred to as stomach cancer, can develop in any part of the stomach and may spread throughout the stomach and to other organs; particularly the esophagus, lungs, lymph nodes, and the liver...
at the age of 58, leaving his last work – an extended symphonic Gesangsszene
Gesangsszene
Gesangsszene is the final composition of the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann....
for voice and orchestra on words from Jean Giraudoux
Jean Giraudoux
Hippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
’s apocalyptic drama Sodom and Gomorrah – unfinished.
Significantly, no major German conductor championed his music following his death: Scherchen, his most noted advocate, died in 1966. Some have suggested that this accelerated the disappearance of Hartmann's music from public view in the years following his death. The Czech Rafael Kubelik
Rafael Kubelík
Rafael Jeroným Kubelík was a Czech conductor and composer.-Early life:Kubelík was born in Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, today's Czech Republic. He was the sixth child of the Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelík, whom the younger Kubelík described as "a kind of god to me." His mother was a Hungarian...
was one notable figure who regularly performed Hartmann's music, and in recent years conductors such as Ingo Metzmacher
Ingo Metzmacher
Ingo Metzmacher is a German conductor. He is the son of the cellist Rudolf Metzmacher. His musical education in piano, music theory and conducting was in Hanover, Salzburg and Cologne...
and Mariss Jansons
Mariss Jansons
Mariss Ivars Georgs Jansons is a Latvian conductor, the son of conductor Arvīds Jansons. His mother, the singer Iraida Jansons, who was Jewish, gave birth to him in hiding in Riga, Latvia, after her father and brother were killed in the Riga Ghetto...
have brought many works back into the concert hall.
Output and Style
Hartmann completed a number of fine works, most notably eight symphonies. The first of these, and perhaps emblematic of the difficult genesis of many of his works, is Symphony No. 1, titled "Essay for a requiem" (Versuch eines Requiems). This work began in 1936 as a cantataCantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
for alto solo and orchestra, loosely based on a few select poems by Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
. It soon became known as "Our Life: Symphonic Fragment" (Unser Leben: Symphonisches Fragment) and was intended as a comment on the generally miserable conditions for artists and liberal minded individuals under the early Nazi regime. After the defeat of the Third Reich in World War II, the real victims of the regime had become clear, and the cantata's title was changed to "Symphonic Fragment: Attempt at a Requiem" to honor the millions killed in the Holocaust. Hartmann revised the work in 1954-1955 as his Symphony No. 1, and finally published it in 1956. As this example indicates, Hartmann was a highly self-critical composer and many of his works went through successive stages of revision. He also suppressed most of his substantial orchestral works of the late 1930s and the war years, either allowing them to remain unpublished or, in several cases, reworking them - or portions of them - into the series of numbered symphonies that he produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Perhaps the most frequently-performed of his symphonies are No. 4, for strings, and No. 6; probably his most widely-known work, through performances and recordings, is his Concerto funebre for violin and strings, composed at the beginning of World War II and making use of a Hussite
Hussite
The Hussites were a Christian movement following the teachings of Czech reformer Jan Hus , who became one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation...
chorale and a Russian revolutionary song of 1905.
As a composer, Hartmann attempted a difficult synthesis of many different idioms, including musical Expressionism
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
stylization, into organic symphonic forms in the tradition of Bruckner and Mahler. His early works contain music that is both satirical and politically engaged. But he admired the polyphonic mastery of J.S. Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
, the profound expressive irony of Mahler, the neoclassicism
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
of Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
and Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...
. He, also in the 1930s, developed close ties with Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
and Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály
Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, pedagogue, linguist, and philosopher. He is best known internationally as the creator of the Kodály Method.-Life:Born in Kecskemét, Kodály learned to play the violin as a child....
in Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, and this is reflected in his own music to some extent. In the 1940s, he began to take an interest in Schoenbergian Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
; though he studied with Webern his own idiom was closer to Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
. In the 1950s, started to explore the metrical techniques pioneered by Boris Blacher and Elliott Carter
Elliott Carter
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
. He especially makes use of the forms of three-part Adagio slow movements, Fugue
Fugue
In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....
, Variations and Toccata
Toccata
Toccata is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers...
.
Tributes
The English composer John McCabeJohn McCabe (composer)
John McCabe CBE is an English composer and pianist.- Biography :John McCabe was born in Huyton, Liverpool, Merseyside. A prolific composer from an early age, he had written thirteen symphonies by the time he was eleven...
wrote his Variations on a Theme of Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1964) in tribute. It uses the opening of Hartmann's Fourth Symphony as its theme. Hans Werner Henze has made a version of Hartmann's Piano Sonata No. 2 for full orchestra.
Henze said of Hartmann's music:
Symphonic architecture was essential for him... as a suitable medium for reflecting the world as he experienced and understood it – as an agonizingly dramatic battle, as contradiction and conflict – in order to be able to achieve self-realization in its dialectic and to portray himself as a man among men, a man of this world, and not out of this world.
Operas
- Wachsfigurenkabinett, five short operas (1929–30; three not completed), libretti by Erich Bormann
- Das Leben und Sterben des heiligen Teufels
- Der Mann, der vom Tode auferstand (unfinished; completed by Günter BialasGünter Bialas-Life:Bialas was born in Bielschowitz in Prussian Silesia. The adolescent Bialas received lessons in piano and music theory from Fritz Lubrich, a former student of Max Reger, in Kattowitz between 1922 and 1925...
and Hans Werner Henze) - Chaplin-Ford-Trott, 'scenic jazz cantata' (unfinished; completed by Wilfried Hiller)
- Fürwahr? (unfinished; completed by Henze)
- Die Witwe von Ephesus
- Des Simplicius Simplicissimus Jugend (1934–35; revised 1956-57 as Simplicius Simplicissimus), libretto by Hermann Scherchen, Wolfgang Petzer and Hartmann after Jakob von Grimmelhausen
Symphonic Works
(i) Up to 1945 – mostly later suppressed- MiseraeMiseraeMiserae is a symphonic poem by the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann.Composed in 1933-34, it was written in response to the plight of those who died in the first Nazi internment camps...
, Symphonic Poem (1933-4) - Symphony L’Oeuvre (1937-8; material re-used in Symphony No.6)
- Symphonic Concerto for string orchestra and soprano (1938; later partly used in Symphony No.4)
- Sinfonia Tragica (1940, rev. 1943; first movement re-used in Symphony No.3)
- Symphoniae Drammaticae (1941–43), consisting of:
- Overture China kampft (1942, rev. 1962 as Symphonische Ouvertüre)
- Symphonische Hymnen (1941-3)
- Symphonic Suite Vita Nova for reciter and orchestra (1941-2, unfinished)
- Adagio for large orchestra (1940–44, revised as Symphony No.2)
- Symphony Klagegesang (1944; portions re-used in Symphony No.3)
(ii) After 1945
- Symphony No. 1Symphony No.1 (Hartmann)The First Symphony of the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann was completed in 1955.Subtitled Versuch eines Requiem , the piece began life in 1936 as a cantata for alto solo and orchestra, setting translations of poetry by Walt Whitman...
, Versuch eines Requiem for alto and orchestra (1950) – revised version of Symphonisches Fragment (on texts by Walt WhitmanWalt WhitmanWalter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
) - Symphony No.2 (1946) – revised version of Adagio
- Symphony No.3 (1948-9) – adapted from portions of Symphony Klagegesang and Sinfonia Tragica
- Symphony No.4Symphony No. 4 (Hartmann)The Fourth Symphony of the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann is a work for string orchestra. It was completed in 1946-7.It was derived in part from an earlier Concerto for strings and soprano written in 1938. Hartmann revised the work to include a new purely instrumental third and closing...
for string orchestra (1947-8) – adapted from Symphonic Concerto for strings - Symphony No.5, Symphonie concertante (1950) – adapted from Concerto for wind and double basses
- Symphony No.6 (1951-3) – adapted from Symphony L’Oeuvre
- Symphony No.7 (1957-8)
- Symphony No.8 (1960–62)
Concertos
- Lied for trumpet and wind instruments (1932)
- Concerto for wind instruments and solo trumpet (1933); recomposed as Concerto for wind instruments and double basses (1948-9), whence Symphony No.5
- Cello Concerto (1933, lost, probably unfinished)
- Symphonie-Divertissement for bassoon, tenor trombone, double bass and chamber orchestra (c. 1934, unfinished)
- Kammerkonzert for clarinet, string quartet and string orchestra (1930–35)
- Concerto funebreConcerto funebreConcerto funèbre is a violin concerto by the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann. Written in 1939 and substantially revised in 1959, it is by far Hartmann's best known work, especially noted for its lyrical final movement...
for violin and string orchestra (1939, rev. 1959) (originally entitled Musik der Trauer) - Concerto for piano, wind instruments and percussion (1953)
- Concerto for viola, piano, wind instruments and percussion (1954-6)
Vocal Works
- Cantata (1929) for 6-part a cappella choir on texts by Johannes R. BecherJohannes R. BecherJohannes Robert Becher was a German politician, novelist, and poet.-Early life:Johannes R. Becher was the son of Judge Heinrich Becher. In 1910 he tried to commit suicide with a friend; only Becher survived. From 1911 he studied medicine and philosophy in Munich and Jena...
and Karl MarxKarl MarxKarl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement... - Profane Messe (1929) for a cappella chorus on a text by Max See
- Kantate for soprano and orchestra on texts by Walt Whitman (1936); later retitled Lamento and in 1938 revised as Symphonisches Fragment, whence Symphony No.1
- Friede Anno '48 (1936–37) for soprano solo, mixed chorus and piano; revised 1955 as Lamento for soprano and piano
- GesangsszeneGesangsszeneGesangsszene is the final composition of the German composer Karl Amadeus Hartmann....
(1962–63) for baritone and orchestra on a text from Sodom and Gomorrah by Jean GiraudouxJean GiraudouxHippolyte Jean Giraudoux was a French novelist, essayist, diplomat and playwright. He is considered among the most important French dramatists of the period between World War I and World War II. His work is noted for its stylistic elegance and poetic fantasy...
Chamber and Instrumental
- 2 Kleine Suites for piano (c. 1924-6)
- 2 Sonatas for unaccompanied violin (1927)
- 2 Suites for Unaccompanied violin (1927)
- Jazz Toccata and Fugue for piano (1927-8)
- Tanzsuite for clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet and trombone (1931)
- Kleines Konzert for string quartet and percussion (1932)
- Burleske Musik for wind instruments, percussion and piano (1931)
- Sonatina for piano (1931)
- Toccata variata for wind instruments, piano and percussion (1931-2)
- Piano Sonata No.1 (1932)
- String Quartet No.1, Carillon (1933)
- Piano Sonata No.2, 27.IV.45 (1945)
- String Quartet No.2 (1945-6)
External links and references
- Comprehensive website with biography, chronology and works
- Text about K. A. Hartmann
- Biography at Schott Music