Alexander Zemlinsky

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Alexander Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer, conductor and teacher, born in Vienna in 1871 into a family of mixed origins. He studied piano and entered the Vienna Conservatory in 1884. There he was taught by Anton Bruckner, among others. Johannes Brahms supported him, attended a performance of his work in 1892 and recommended his Klarinettrio to a publisher. In 1895 Zemlinsky founded the amateur orchestra Polyhymnia. There he met Arnold Schoenberg, who later became his brother-in-law. He taught Schoenberg counterpoint, the only formal music lessons Schoenberg ever received.

Music and breakthrough

Gustav Mahler conducted the premiere of his opera Es war einmal in 1900. Zemlinsky was a conductor in Vienna, in Prague from 1911 to 1927, and then in Berlin. In Prague he conducted the premiere of Schoenberg's Erwartung in 1924. His best-known work is the Lyrische Symphonie of 1923, for soprano, baritone and orchestra, on poems by Tagore. He also wrote the symphonic work Die Seejungfrau, after Hans Christian Andersen. With the rise of the Nazis he fled to Vienna in 1933, and in 1938 to New York via Prague.

Influence

In the United States he was barely noticed, while Schoenberg was celebrated in Los Angeles. He died in 1942. His music begins with Brahms and takes in the expanded harmonies of Wagner and Mahler. He became an important link between late Romanticism and the Second Viennese School, and taught Erich Wolfgang Korngold, among others.

Listening

In School of Rock

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