Hans Stieber

Hans Albert Oskar Stieber (1 March 1886 – 18 October 1969) was a German conductor, composer and violinist. He was the founding director of the Hochschule für Theater und Musik in Halle an der Saale.

Life Origin and family Stieber was born in Naumburg an der Saale in the Prussian Province of Saxony as the eldest of four sons of the lawyer Paul Stieber (1856–1944) and his wife Elsbeth (Else) (1861–1940), née Biermann. His maternal great-grandmother Friederike Komitsch, née Schaffner, was an actress at the Schauspielhaus Berlin and married the actor Ludwig Devrient in her first marriage. Stieber's brother Paul Devrient (1890–1973) was an opera and concert singer (tenor), especially a sought-after Mozart and Verdi-interpreter.

He was of Lutheran confession and in 1920 married to Gretel Elisabeth, née Runge, who came from East Frisia.

Stages as conductor From 1908 he was first violinist in the Loh-Orchester Sondershausen. In 1910 he became 2nd violinist of the in Anhalt. After one year, he also became assistant to the court kapellmeister and worked until 1915 as répétiteur and choir director at the court theatre. In the summer months he was a violinist at the (Bavaria) and Bad Elster (Saxony).

Afterwards, he worked at various German houses: He was opera conductor and concert conductor at the Theater Koblenz (1916) and at the Munich Chamber Opera (1917). At the Opernhaus Kiel, where he worked from 1917 to 1920, he was responsible for the new production of Cherubini's opera Der Wasserträger with recitatives composed by himself. In 1920 he became symphony concert conductor of the Staatskapelle Halle orchestra. He opened the dress rehearsals of the orchestra for the free attendance of school classes. In the 1920s and 1930s he composed numerous stage and choral works which were premiered in Hanover, Essen, Bremen, Vienna, Leipzig and Breslau.

From 1922 he worked as a freelancer in Hanover for 15 years: Until 1938 he led the Hannoverschen Männer-Gesangs-Verein. 1923 he made his debut in the cupola hall of the . As a concert conductor he interpreted a.o. Liszts' Faust Symphony, Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 and Mahler's Symphony No. 2 ("Resurrection Symphony"). In 1924 In 1924 with the Männerchor and the Hannoversche Konzertchor founded by him, the later Singakademie, he performed Pfitzner's romantic cantata to the Hanover premiere.

During his Leipzig years he also composed symphonic works and cantatas, which were performed under the direction of Hermann Abendroth and at the Gewandhaus. The world premiere of his opera Der Dombaumeister took place in 1942 at the Wrocław Opera. He saw himself as a late Romantic. According to Gert Richter (1986), "bourgeois Christian-humanistic traditions" shaped his activity. Stieber's works are "supported by high moral norms". He "did not allow himself to be corrupted by the National Socialist idea or to be pressured into his ethos". In Nazi Germany, Stieber set jubilant National Socialist texts to music .

Founding director of the Musikhochschule Halle

In June 1946, commissioned by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany, gründete er 1947 among others together with Max Schneider, Walther Davisson, Bronisław von Poźniak and Sigfrid Grundeis the Hochschule für Theater und Musik in Halle, which he headed until 1938. From 1948 to 1955 he was professor and director of the master classes for musical composition, conducting and opera dramaturgy. After the transformation of the school into a music institute in 1955, he became emeritus, but continued to work at the institute as a member of the senate and head of department for composition and theory.

He was also a fruitful composer. He dedicated his Zwiegespräch for violin and viola (1965) to the Soviet violin virtuoso David Oistrakh, who received the score personally during a concert in Halle. He composed his Violin Concerto in D Major for Saschko Gawriloff. He also dealt musically with the works of the sculptor Ernst Barlach. So he became a member of the and of the Barlach-Arbeitskreis of the Cultural Association of the GDR.

Stieber died in 1969 of pneumonia in Halle at the age of 83. in the library of the foundation Handel House of the city of Halle.

To his body of compositions belong music-dramaturgical works such as operas, chamber operas und Singspiele, vocal music, including choral music, as well as orchestral and instrumental chamber music pieces. He was also the author of several stage plays.

Prizes 1961: Art Prize of the City of Halle (on the occasion of his 1000-year anniversary). 1965: Handel Prize presented by the city of Halle.

Hans Stieber Prize Within the framework of the Hallische Musiktage, the "Hans Stieber Prize" was awarded posthumously from 1977 onwards at the suggestion of the Association of Composers and Musicologists of the GDR.