See also http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/music/mlsc/toch/index.htm

Toch, Ernst

(b Vienna, 7 Dec 1887; d Santa Monica, CA, 1 Oct 1964). Austrian composer, pianist and teacher, naturalized American from 1940. He began to compose at an early age and in 1905, shortly after he had commenced studies at the Vienna Conservatory, his Sixth Quartet op.12 was given its first performance by the celebrated Rose Quartet in the Vienna Musikverein. It was received with general acclaim and Toch turned his attention fully to music. On receiving the Mozart Prize in 1909, Toch moved to Frankfurt to study composition with Iwan Knorr and piano with Willy Rehberg at the Hoch Conservatory. He joined the staff of the Mannheim Hochschule fur Musik in 1913. After serving with the Austrian army in the southern Tirol throughout World War I, he returned to Mannheim where he taught and composed for another ten years. His experiences in the war left a mark on him, and his first composition after it, the Ninth String Quartet op.26 (1919), signals a new stylistic direction. Where the prewar works, for all their originality, are audibly indebted to Brahms, the Ninth Quartet is more radical, employing an extended tonality and an uncompromising emphasis on the linear dimension. It and the works that followed earned Toch a prominent place in the musical avant garde. His music was regularly heard at the Donaueschingen festivals from 1922 onwards and his Drei Originalstucke fur das Welte-Mignon klavier were commissioned for the 1926 festival. His Fuge aus der Geographie for speaking chorus (1930) was a contribution to the contemporary cause of Gebrauchsmusik, and his chamber-ensemble score for the Paramount film Die Kinderfabrik (1928) to that of film music.

The two short operas Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse op.43 (1927) and Egon und Emilie op.46 (1928) were not only examples of contemporary Zeitoper but also way-stations in the composer's search for a libretto for a full-length opera. The search occupied him intensively during the 1920s and was documented in an interesting correspondence between him and his publishers at the time, Ludwig and Willy Strecker. The outcome, in 1930, was Der Facher op.51, an opera-capriccio in three acts with text by Ferdinand Lion.

The 1920s were a highly successful decade for Toch: other major works of this period include his Concerto for Cello and Chamber Orchestra op.35 (1925) and the Bunte Suite op.48 (1928). The former work was notable for securing Toch a ten-year contract with the publishers Schott, which allowed him from then on to compose without depending on teaching for a living. The Piano Concerto op.38 took him in 1932 to America for the first time, where he toured playing the solo part with great success. Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 put an abrupt halt to Toch's creative career for a time, as it made him feel compelled to leave Germany. He was in Florence attending the Maggio Musicale, an official representative of his country with Richard Strauss, when he decided to flee. From Paris he sent his wife a telegram in a pre-arranged code: 'I have my pencil'. But like so many other refugees, he could not stay long in Paris, where there was no work for him. He moved on to London, where the intervention of Berthold Viertel and Elisabeth Bergner gave him the chance to work for the cinema. He wrote the music for Catherine the Great (dir. P. Czinner, 1934) and for two further films in the same year: Little Friend (dir. B. Viertel) and The Private Life of Don Juan (dir. A. Korda). An invitation from Alvin Johnson to the New School for Social Research -- the 'University in Exile', as it was called by the many emigrants it sheltered -- took Toch to New York in 1935. During the voyage across the Atlantic he composed one of his most popular works, Big Ben, a variation fantasy on the Westminster chimes, in commemoration of his time in London. In 1936 commissions from the film industry in Hollywood took him to California, which became his long-term home in exile. He approached the work for the studios with optimism at first, hoping to combine his ideas about opera and the spread and popularization of avant-garde music with the means of modern sound-films, but he was soon disillusioned by the reality of Hollywood, which made it impossible for him to put his ideals into practice. Although he wrote 16 film scores altogether and gained three Academy Award nominations -- for Peter Ibbetsen (dir. H. Hathaway, 1935), Ladies in Retirement (dir. C. Vidor, 1941) and Address Unknown (dir. W. Cameron, 1944) -- his success could not console him for the difficulty he had in finding an audience in America for his serious music, which was far more important to him. He was too modern for the American public, but he had become too old-fashioned in European terms to be able to build from a position of exile on the great successes of the pre-war years. Attempts to recover a foothold in Europe failed, and in the last phase of his career Toch concentrated on his teaching at the University of Southern California and on the composition of symphonies. He wrote seven of these, between 1950 and 1964, in a traditional, largely late-Romantic style that harks back to his beginnings. A series of guest lectures at Harvard led to his most important book, The Shaping Forces in Music (New York, 1948/R). Toch always thought of himself as a universalist, in music and in philosophy, aligned and in harmony with a tradition that he did not disown but wanted to help evolve.

WORKS
(selective list)
Stage: Die Prinzessen auf der Erbse (Marchenoper, 1, B. Elkan after H.C. Andersen), op.43, 1927; Egon und Emilie ('kein Familiendrama', 1, after C. Morgenstern), op.46, 1928; Der Facher (Opera-Capriccio, 3, F. Lion), op.51, 1930; The Last Tale (Marchenoper, 1, M. Lengyel), 1965 [orig. entitled Scheherazade]
Orch: Conc., op.35, vc, chbr orch, 1925; Pf Conc., op.38, 1926; Spiel, wind orch, op.39, 1926; Bunte Suite, op.48, 1928; Das Kirschblutenfest, 1928 [after Klabund]; Miniatur Ouverture, 1932; Big Ben, variations, op.62, 1935; Hyperion, dramatic prelude, op.71, 1947; Sym. no.1, op.72, 1951--2; Sym. no.2, op.73, 1953; Sym no.3, op.75, 1954--5; Sym. no.4, op.80, 1957; Sym. no.5, op.89, 1961--2; Sym. no.6, op.93, 1963; Sym. no.7, op.95, 1964
Vocal: Die chinesische Flote (after H. Bethge), chbr sym., op.29, S, 14 solo insts, 1922, rev. 1949; 9 Lieder (R.M. Rilke, W. Busch, Morgenstern and others), op.41, S, pf, 1926; Das Wasser (after A. Doblin), cant, op.53, 1930; Fuge aus der Geographie, speaking chorus, 1930; Cant of Bitter Herbs, op.65, 1938; Valse, speaking chorus, 1961
Chbr: Str Qt no.6, a, op.12, 1905; Str Qt no.7, G, op.15, 1905; Str Qt no.8, D, op.18, 1911; Str Qt no.9, C, op.26, 1919; Str Qt no.10, on B--A--S--S, op.28, 1921; Tanz-Suite, op.30, fl, cl, vn, va, db, perc, 1924; Str Qt no.11, op.34, 1924; Pf Qnt, op.64, 1947; Str Qt no.12, op.70, 1949; 5 Pieces, op.83, wind, perc, 1959; Str Qt no.13, op.74, 1961
Pf solo: Stammbuch Verse, op.13, 1905; Burlesken, op.31, 1923; 3 Klavierstucke, op.32, 1925; 5 Capricetti, op.36, 1925; Tanz- und Spielstucke, op.47, 1927
Principal publishers: Belwin Mills, Schott

WRITINGS
Beitrage zur Stilkunde der Melodie (diss., U. of Heidelberg, 1921; Berlin, 1923, as Melodielehre)
'Unklarheiten im Schriftbild des cis-moll-Fuge des Wohltemperierten Klaviers', BJb, xxxvii (1940--48), 122--5
The Shaping Forces in Music (New York, 1948/R), ed. M. Hood: Placed as a Link in this Chain: a Medley of Observations by Ernst Toch (Los Angeles, 1971)
 

BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Rosenzweig: 'Ernst Toch', Die Musik, xviii/1 (1925--7), 245--58
E. Beninger: 'Pianistische Probleme: im Anschluss an die Klavierwerke von Ernst Toch', Melos, vii (1928), 63--8
K. Laux: 'Ernst Toch: a Musician of our Time', Pro Musica Quarterly, vii/1 (1929), 22--39
E. Beninger: 'Das Klavieretudenwerk von Ernst Toch', Der Weihergarten, ii (1932), 23--4
P. Pisk: 'Ernst Toch', MQ, xxiv (1938), 438--50
W. Mason: 'The Piano Music of Ernst Toch', The Piano Quarterly (1962), aut., 22--5
C.A. Johnson: The Unpublished Works of Ernst Toch (diss., UCLA, 1973)
L. Weschler: Ernst Toch 1887--1964: a Biographical Essay Ten Years after his Passing (Los Angeles, 1973)
A. Maul: 'Die Idee einer mechanischen Musik', NZM, no.9 (1984), 4--7
C. Erwin: 'Ernst Toch in Amerika', Verdrangte Musik: Berliner Komponisten im Exil, ed. H. Traber and E. Weingarten (Berlin, 1987), 109--21
B. Laugwitz: 'Zum 100. Geburtstag von Ernst Toch', Sonderdruck der Zeitschrift Mannheimer Hefte, 2 (1987)
A. Oechsler: 'Ernst Toch', Komponisten der Gegenwart (Berlin, 1987), 906 only
G. Schubert: 'Kein Einfall ist, wo keine Erfindung ist! Briefe von Ernst Toch an seinen Verleger', NZM (1987), 9--13
D. Jezic: The Musical Migration and Ernst Toch (Ames, 1989)
J.W. Strickler: Ernst Toch: Grundgestalt and Developing Variation (diss., UCLA, 1989)
M.S. Zach: The Operas of Ernst Toch (diss., U. of Florida, 1990)
Transcr. of interviews at Toch Archive, UCLA
 

ANJA OECHSLER