Richard Wetz

Richard Wetz (26 February 1875 – 16 January 1935) was a German late Romantic composer best known for his three symphonies. In these works, he "seems to have aimed to be an immediate continuation of Bruckner, as a result of which he actually ended up on the margin of music history".

Biography

1875–1906: Youth Richard Wetz was born to a merchant family in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia (now Poland).

During the following years, Wetz devoted himself to the music profession. He gave lessons in the Erfurt city conservatoire (in 1911–1921, composition and history of music), and honed his skills in conducting various choirs

During Wetz's lifetime, his works remained little known outside the circle of his devotees and music-lovers in his home region, to the point that he became nearly unknown after his death. Since that time, his compositions have continued to draw few fans despite the eagerness of his enthusiasts and his reputation as a great music pedagogue. Politically, Wetz made decisions towards the end of his life that may have had an effect on his standing after his death: after the end of the First World War, he became a confessed nationalist who saw the position of his vanquished Germany as a humiliation and longed for resurgence of national greatness, which seemed possible to him in 1933 with the seizure of power by the National Socialists (the Nazis). In May of that same year he enrolled into the Nazi Party and took over the leadership of the music department of the Erfurt branch of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, where he hoped he could thereby gain the goodwill and the support of the Nazi rulers. This, however, had little influence on his ability to spread his work, leaving him the role of composing primarily propaganda pieces.

His most significant interpreter was the conductor Peter Raabe, who performed for the first time all of the Wetz symphonies, His stature was less than other composers of the time and the new achievements of contemporaries such as Arnold Schoenberg, Maurice Ravel or Franz Schreker left him behind. Increasingly, the accepted cultural pessimism violently railed against the kind of music that Wetz was writing. Wetz was more related in attitude with such keepers of 19th century tradition such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Hans Pfitzner and Franz Schmidt, than his contemporaries.

According to his own statements, he depended on familiar surroundings for his composition: "I can compose only with myself at home. Neither on a summer holiday nor during longer vacations I have ever created anything". Statements like this explain why Wetz began to devote himself increasingly to the composition of symphonies and larger choral works only when he settled in Erfurt, but also why he later refused all offers for more lucrative positions and commissions. The seclusion – bordering on isolation – from the mainstream of the German music scene of the past allowed Wetz to concentrate completely upon the development of his own personal style.

Wetz wrote only vocal works in his early days. He often returned to this style until his dying days, which explains why this is the largest part of his output. Wetz counts as one of the most important song composers of his generation. The authorities in this field that Wetz looked to were Franz Schubert, Franz Liszt, Peter Cornelius and Hugo Wolf. Liszt, especially, strongly influenced the tonal patterns of Wetz's early work, although even then Wetz was already forging his own path. This creative period culminates in two operas and Kleist-Ouvertüre, an orchestral work inspired by the tragic destiny of the poet.

From the beginning of Wetz's Erfurt years, his choral works moved away from Liszt's influence bit by bit and Anton Bruckner began to influence the composer. His striving to imitate Bruckner's tonal language shows in the fact that no stylistic break arises between these compositions and earlier works. Wetz learned even more from Bruckner, his clear form structures and the sense of an organic growth of the music without it being overwhelming. Nevertheless, a large measure due to Bruckner, he typically composed powerful and ceremonious effects without stylistic peculiarities.

Wetz's three symphonies are powerful, introverted works in the style of late romantic symphonic music being cultivated at the time, yet his works show their own distinct personalities separating them from the tradition. For Wetz, the subdued nature of the closing passages of his works confirm the integrity of these works. The first symphony's end, for instance, begins in the key of C minor (as Bruckner did also) and almost dissolves in a bright major key before, after a recall of earlier music, an austere and minor-mode conclusion not heard in any Bruckner finale (closer to the mood of the conclusions to some Bruckner opening movements) comes around. This was certainly influenced by the spirit of the times in which he lived, which were certainly not typical. His quartets follow the same techniques in form and gesture as his symphonies, but these were invested with substantially more intense feeling than the more public symphonies.

In his later works, Richard Wetz increasingly refined his style. He began to use chromatic harmonies in even stronger measure in his tonal language. A change to a more polyphonic style already apparent in the string quartets becomes apparent in other works, most notably in the organ piece Passacaglia and Fugue (Op. 55) of 1930). After that point, the influence of Bruckner drops away. In his masterpieces, the requiem and the Christmas oratorio, Wetz discovers a synthesis of symphonic and vocal music in which he summarizes his accumulated musical experience. The violin concerto shows what is probably the most daring formal arrangement in the whole output of the composer and is comparable to the similar violin concerto by Pfitzner, written in the same key (B minor). Although illness and death took Wetz prematurely, he remains nevertheless "One of the great and unmistakable talents of German late romanticism".

Works

The list of works of Richard Wetz contains 58 Opuses, in addition there are a small number of compositions which were published without numbering. Op. 1–4 and Op. 6 are not considered discoverable any longer, and the composer declared some other early works provided with opus figures as invalid.

Opera Judith, Op. 13 (3 acts; libretto: Richard Wetz) Das ewige Feuer (The eternal fire), Op. 19 (1 act; libretto: Richard Wetz. 1904; published 1905, premiered 1907 )

Choir works Traumsommernacht (Summernight's dream), Op. 14, for women's choir and orchestra (pub. Kistner, 1912) (recording: Augsburg college of music chamber choir, Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, 2004) Gesang des Lebens (Song of Life), Op. 29, for boys' choir and orchestra (pub. Kistner, 1910) (recording: Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic and State Youth Choir, Werner Andreas Albert, 2001) Chorlied aus Oedipus auf Colonos "Nicht geboren ist das Beste" (Choral song from Oedipus on Colonos: "Not born is the best"), Op. 31, for mixed choir and orchestra (after Sophocles) (pub. Kistner, 1912) Hyperion, Op. 32, for baritone, mixed choir and orchestra (after Hölderlin), vocal score published by Kistner, 1912 (recording: Markus Köhler, Augsburg college of music chamber choir, Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, 2004) Der dritte Psalm (Psalm 3), Op. 37, for baritone, mixed choir and orchestra Four sacred songs (Kyrie, Et incarnatus est, Crucifixus, Agnus Dei), Op. 44, for choir a cappella Kreuzfahrerlied (Crusader song), Op. 46, for mixed choir (after Hartmann von Aue) (published 1910) Requiem in B minor, Op. 50, for soprano, baritone, mixed choir and orchestra (pub. 1925) (recording: Marietta Zumbült, Mario Hoff, Erfurt Cathedral Choir, Weimar Philharmonic Choir, Thuringian Weimar State Orchestra, George Alexander Albrecht, CPO 2003.) Ein Weihnachts-Oratorium auf alt-deutsche Gedichte (A Christmas oratorio on old-German poems), Op. 53, for soprano, baritone, mixed choir and orchestra Drei Weihnachtsmotetten, Op. 58, for mixed choir a cappella Liebe, Leben, Ewigkeit (Love, life, eternity), oratorio fragment (after Goethe), lost

Orchestral works Kleist-Ouvertüre in D minor, Op. 16 (Kistner, 1908) (Recording: Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, CPO 1999) Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 40 (pub. Simrock, 1924) (Recording: Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra, Roland Bader, CPO 1994) Symphony No. 2 in A major, Op. 47 (pub. 1921) (Recording: Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, CPO 1999) Symphony No. 3 in B minor, Op. 48 (Recordings: Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, CPO 2001) (Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Erich Peter, 1981, Sterling) Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 57 (pub. 1933) (Recording: Ulf Wallin (Violin), Rhineland-Palatinate State Philharmonic, Werner Andreas Albert, CPO 2003)

Chamber music Sonata for solo violin in G major, Op. 33 (Kistner, 1913) String Quartet No. 1 in F minor, Op. 43 (Kistner, 1918) String Quartet No. 2 in E minor, Op. 49 (Simrock, 1924)

Organ music Passacaglia and Fugue in D minor, Op. 55 (pub. 1930) (recording: "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme", Silvius von Kessel, 2000, Motette) (recording: "Orgelland Niederlausitz Vol. 1", Lothar Knappe, 2003, H'ART) Kleine Toccata in E minor

Piano music Romantische Variationen über ein Originalthema (Romantic variations on an original theme), Op. 42 (published 1917)

Songs

over 100 songs for voice and piano, including: Op. 5, 6 Lieder für eine mittlere Singstimme mit Begleitung des Klaviers., a set published in 1901, including "Wiegenlied" (Cradle song), No. 3 Die Muschel (The shell), Op. 9/2 (poem by Richard Schaukal. Published 1904) Op. 10, Five songs for soprano and piano Op. 15. Six songs for mezzo-soprano and piano Op. 20. Five songs for baritone or mezzo-soprano and piano Op. 21. Five songs for mezzo-soprano and piano Op. 22. Five songs for soprano or mezzo-soprano and piano

also some songs with orchestral accompaniment, including Op. 51. Two songs for voice and small orchestra (published 1929 by Greiner & Pfeiffer).

Writings Anton Bruckner. Sein Leben und Schaffen (Anton Bruckner. His life and work), 1922 Franz Liszt, pub. Leipzig: Reclam, 1925 Beethoven. Die geistigen Grundlagen seines Schaffens (Beethoven. The spiritual foundation of his work), 1927