Ernst Krenek - Sonata for Violin and Organ Op.231

Ernst Kovacic (vl)/ Martin Haselböck (org) Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) was an Austrian, later American, composer of Czech origin. He was the son of a Czech soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army. He studied in Vienna and later in Berlin with Franz Schreker before working in a number of German opera houses as conductor. During World War I, Krenek was drafted into the Austrian army, but he was stationed in Vienna, allowing him to go on with his musical studies. In 1922 he met Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler, and her daughter, Anna, to whom he dedicated his Symphony No. 2, and whom he married in March 1924. That marriage ended in divorce before its first anniversary. The jazz-influenced score of Jonny spielt auf and its central character of a black jazz musician brought Krenek the opprobrium of the nascent Nazi Party; the image of Jonny was distorted to form the centrepiece of the poster advertising the Entartete Musik exhibition of so-calle d 'degenerate' music in 1938. Krenek was frequently named as a Jewish composer during the Third Reich, although he was not, and was intimidated by the regime until his emigration. He became an American citizen in 1945. He later moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where he taught at The Royal Conservatory of Music during the 1950s. His students included Milton Barnes, Lorne Betts, Roque Cordero, Samuel Dolin, Robert Erickson, Halim El-Dabh, Richard Maxfield, Will Ogdon, George Perle, and Hsiung-Zee Wong. Krenek's music encompassed a variety of styles and reflects many of the principal musical influences of the 20th century. His early work is in a late-Romantic idiom, showing the influence of his teacher Franz Schreker, but around 1920 he turned to atonality, under the influence of Ernst Kurth's textbook, Grundlagen des linearen Kontrapunkts, and the tenets of Busoni, Schnabel, Erdmann, and Scherchen, amongst others. A visit to Paris, during which he became familiar with the work of Igor Stravinsky (Pulcinella was especially influential) and Les Six, led him to adopt a neo-classical style around 1924. Krenek abandoned the neoromantic style in the late 1920s to embrace Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, the method exclusively employed in Krenek's opera Karl V (1931–33) and most of his later pieces. His most uncompromising use of the twelve-tone technique was in his Sixth String Quartet (1936) and his Piano Variations (1937).[17] In the Lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae (1941–42) Krenek combined twelve-tone writing with techniques of modal counterpoint of the Renaissance. In 1955 he was invited to work in the Electronic Music Studio at WDR in Cologne, and this experience motivated him to develop a total serial idiom. Beginning around 1960 he added to his serial vocabulary some principles of aleatoric music, in works such as Horizon Circled (1967), From Three Make Seven (1960–61), and Fibonacci-Mobile (1964). In his later years his compositional style became more relaxed, though he continued to use elements of both twelve-tone and total serial techniques.