Wellesz, Egon (Joseph)

(b Vienna, 21 Oct 1885; d Oxford, 9 Nov 1974). Austrian composer, musicologist and teacher. His importance as a composer rests chiefly on his stage works and symphonies. While his creative career was divided between Vienna and Oxford, his musical style was unpredictable, showing his affection for beautiful melody often with wide leaps and angular in profile. As a musicologist, he did pioneer work on Byzantine chant.

1. Vienna: 1885­1938.

Wellesz was born into comfortable circumstances in the Schottengasse. His father Samú Wellesz was in the textile business; his mother Ilona Lovenyi met and married her husband in Vienna after they had each come from the Hungarian part of the empire. Wellesz inherited his musical inclinations from his mother, who had once studied the piano with Carl Frühling, to whom she sent her son. Even so, his parents had expected him to study law and follow in his father's business; however, on his 13th birthday he heard Mahler conduct Der Freischütz at the Hofoper, and his decision to become a composer was galvanized.

In 1905 he registered for instruction in harmony and counterpoint under Schoenberg at Eugenie Schwarzwald's school, which became an important focus for him in his young years. He conducted a small choir there and gained acquaintance with a progressive circle that included Rilke, Adolf Loos, Kokoschka (who painted the 1911 portrait of him) and Emmy Stross, a student whom he married in 1908. Rigorous training in the fundamentals of music took place at Schoenberg's Liechtensteinstrasse apartment and left him with a lifetime of respect for his master's teaching ability. His compositional heritage was so grounded in Viennese tonality that only on occasion did he adopt 12-note technique, principally in his later symphonies. But his Drei Skizzen for piano (1911) strikingly reflect the atonality of Schoenberg's Drei Klavierstücke, and he was an active member of Schoenberg's Verein für Musikalische Privataufführungen after World War I. He also wrote enthusiastically about Schoenberg, and devoted himself in the summer of 1920 to the first Schoenberg biography.

He left off private study with Schoenberg after beginning serious work with Guido Adler at the University of Vienna. With Giuseppe Bonno the subject of his dissertation, he made Baroque opera the centre of his earliest musicological studies; he earned his degree summa cum laude in 1908, and his dissertation was published the next year. He also edited Fux's opera Costanza e fortezza for Adler's Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich. Fux was to him the epitome of the Austrian Baroque, and thus a forerunner of Viennese Classicism; he published a Fux monograph in English in 1965. Meanwhile, in 1913, he was appointed lecturer in music history at the university.

His interests now turned to the common elements in Eastern and Western chant. In part he was reacting against the tradition in Western music history of ignoring the Eastern church, but he was prompted to do so by the presence in Imperial Vienna of Armenians and other ethnic groups, and by his wife's study of art history at the university under Josef Strzygowski, whose lectures identified Syria as a source for both Eastern and Western culture and were keenly debated by young Viennese scholars. There was, however, the problem of deciphering Byzantine notation. With encouragement from his Cambridge colleague H.J.W. Tillyard, who had worked out the melodies, he began tackling Byzantine rhythm in 1913, and by 1918 had made his solution public. The lengthy process of collecting photographs of Byzantine manuscripts and transcribing them eventually became the work of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, founded in Copenhagen under the auspices of the Royal Danish Academy in 1932 by Tillyard, Wellesz and Carster Høeg. The same year Wellesz established the Byzantine Research Institute at the Austrian National Library and began training students.

From Wellesz's youth onwards there was an international breadth to his thinking, despite the strength of his Viennese background. In the summer of 1906 he had made a trip to Cambridge to study 18th-century English culture and renew his friendship with Edward J. Dent, a friendship begun when both had attended Mahler's performances of Mozart operas. After World War I he and Dent joined Rudolf Réti to found the ISCM, and through Wellesz's efforts Vaughan Williams, Bliss, Holst and other English composers were heard for the first time on the Continent. His friendship with Dorothy Moulton led to her singing much English music for the Viennese, and later she sang Wellesz's songs in England. He was, too, a leader in the musical cross-pollination with France. He encouraged performances of Milhaud, Poulenc and Ravel in Vienna and led the applause for the 1921 performance of Pierrot lunaire in Milhaud's French version. He also wrote numerous articles for Der Merker and the Musikblätter des Anbruch between 1911 and 1935 on Ravel and Dukas, as well as on composers closer to Vienna: Bartók, Mahler, Schoenberg and Strauss. Paris and Vienna were, he felt, the ëbirthplaces of this "Ars Nova" of our timeí. Many French and English musicians were guests at his and Emmyís Kaasgraben home in the 1920s.

As a composer he had begun chiefly with songs and piano music. His first publication was Der Abend, a set of four piano pieces crucially influenced by the music of Debussy, which a friend had brought from Paris, and issued in 1911, thanks to Bartók's introduction, by Rózsavölgyi. He then went on to write five operas and four ballets in Vienna, and these enjoyed great success in Weimar Germany. The conservatism of his home city, and his reputation there as a university scholar, however, kept his work from the Viennese stage until 1931, when Die Bakchantinnen was produced at the Staatsoper, conducted by Clemens Krauss after 60 rehearsals with the chorus and 20 with the orchestra.
 

Important to these works was not only Wellesz's admiration of Greek myth but also his study of Baroque opera, his love of Gluck and his collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, who sketched the beginning of the Alkestis libretto. Hofmannsthal based his work on his 1909 version of the Euripides and left the composer to complete the text. Alkestis is an energetic, powerful score, marked by long melodic lines, pantonality, extensive choral passages that are often in unison, solo timpani, and dance as an essential element of the drama. After its 1924 Mannheim première, Alkestis was produced by eight other German theatres by 1930. Die Bakchantinnen, for which Wellesz wrote his own libretto after discussions with Hofmannsthal, is a complicated piece that requires a large chorus and features a crazed, ritualistic dance scene.

The arrival of the Nazis, and the subsequent closing of Germany's stage to Wellesz's work, roughly coincided with a spiritual change. Though part Jewish by birth and Protestant by upbringing, he converted to Catholicism, influenced by his friendship with Father Thomas Michels in Salzburg and by his readings in the mystics. An outward reflection came in the cantata Mitte des Lebens (1931), which he dedicated to Oxford University in thanks for the honorary doctorate he received in May 1932: Oxford was celebrating the bicentenary of a previous honorary doctor, Haydn, and wanted to acclaim another Austrian composer; Wellesz was gratified to be singled out for his creative work, which frequently got ignored in favour of his scholarly achievements.

His major work after this was Prosperos Beschwörungen (1934­6), a Straussian set of five motivically unified pieces descriptive of characters from The Tempest, which he had originally intended to make into an opera. The score became one of his favourites, thanks in part to the role it played in his life. He was in Amsterdam to hear Bruno Walter conduct a performance ­ a late substitution ­ in March 1938, just when Hitler was annexing Austria. English friends warned him by telegram not to return to Vienna, and he proceeded immediately to England. A decade was to pass before he set foot on Austrian soil again.

2. Oxford: 1938­74.

With help from his English friends he settled into life in Oxford, where he became a fellow of Lincoln College in 1939, a university lecturer in 1943 and Reader in Byzantine Music ­ a post created for him ­ in 1947. He was a revered teacher. His pupils in Byzantine studies included Dimitrije Stefanovic´, while Wilfrid Mellers in 1945 was among those who first sought him out for composition lessons.

Separation from Austria, though, was far from easy. He had to endure several months of internment on the Isle of Man before Vaughan Williams succeeded in bringing about his release in the autumn of 1940. More alarming still was his inability to compose, even if this made possible the concentration on Byzantine research that resulted in his Eastern Elements in Western Chant and A History of Byzantine Chant and Hymnography, completed in spring 1942 and August 1946 respectively. By the time of the latter book he had broken his creative silence with his important Fifth Quartet (1943­4), and in 1944 a new era had opened with his setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins's The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo, one of the loveliest and most often performed of his English compositions, remarkable not only for its fine handling of a complex text but also as a metaphor for the struggles of the composer's bifurcated career.

The seal was set on this new period with his First Symphony (1945), which continues the Austrian tradition of Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler, and which had its first performance by the Berlin PO under Sergiu Celibidache in 1948. Wellesz's nine symphonies earned him the compliment he most cherished, that of being Bruckner's heir, and it may be that in exile his sense of his musical heritage was intensified. The symphonies, along with the symphonic Prosperos Beschwörungen, have been well received in Austria, Germany and England, though ignored in the USA. The first four are principally diatonic; the others include both tonal and atonal elements. Important too among Wellesz's English works are the Octet ­ a divertimento-style companion piece to Schubert's ­ and his last opera, Incognita, which he wrote for the Oxford University Opera Club with the Oxford poet Elizabeth Mackenzie, and which was his second comic essay, after Scherz, List und Rache (1927).

Besides his other activities, he also wrote for the BBC, served the New Oxford History of Music as editorial board member and contributor, helped revive the IMS, and took part in symposia and research projects at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington DC. Though grateful to England, he remained loyal to his home country, and in 1962 began a warm relationship with the Viennese publishing house of Doblinger. He had officially retired from his Oxford readership in 1956, but did not stop composing until after the stroke he suffered in 1972. He was buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna, and his widow returned to the city; she died in 1987.

WORKS

operas
op.
27 Die Prinzessin Girnara (Weltspiel und Legende, 2, J. Wassermann), 1919­20, Hanover, 15 May 1921, vs (Vienna and Leipzig, 1921), rev. version, Mannheim, 2 Sept 1928
35 Alkestis (Drama, 1, H. von Hofmannsthal, Wellesz, after Euripides), 1922­3 Mannheim, National, 20 March 1924 (Vienna and New York, 1924)
40 Die Opferung des Gefangenen (kultisches Drama, 1, E. Stucken, after Aztec legend), 1924­5, Cologne, Neues, April 1926, vs (Vienna and New York, 1925)
41 Scherz, List und Rache (Spl, 1, after J.W. von Goethe), 1927, Stuttgart, 1 March 1928, vs (Vienna and Leipzig, 1927)
44 Die Bakchantinnen (2, Wellesz, after Euripides), 1929­30, Vienna, Staatsoper, 20 June 1931, vs (Berlin, 1930)
69 Incognita (E. Mackenzie, after W. Congreve), 1950, Oxford, 5 Dec 1951

ballets
18 Das Wunder der Diana (1, B. Balász), 1914­17, Mannheim, 20 March 1924
30 Persisches Ballett (1, E. Tels), 1920, Donaueschingen, 1924
33 Achilles auf Skyros (1, Hofmannsthal), 1921, Stuttgart, 4 March 1926
37 Die Nächtlichen (Tanzsymphonie, 1, M. Terpis), 1923, Berlin, 20 Nov 1924

orchestral
Sinfonischer Prolog, op.2, 1905, unpubd; Vorfrühling, op.12, 1912; Suite, op.16, 1914, unpubd; Satz, chbr orch, 1920; Festlicher Marsch, 1929, unpubd [arr. of pf work]; Suite, vn, chbr orch, op.38, 1924; Pf Conc., op.49, 1931; Prosperos Beschwörungen, op.53, 1934­6; Sym. no.1, op.62, 1945; Sym. no.2, op.65, 1947; Sym. no.3, op.68, 1949­50, unpubd; Sym. no.4 (Symphonia austriaca), op.70, 1952; Sym. no.5, op.75, 1956; Vn Conc., op.84, 1961; Musik für Streichorchester, op.91, 1964; Sym. no.6, op.95, 1965; Sym. no.7, ëContra torrentemí, op.102, 1967­8; Divertimento, chbr orch, op.107, 1969; Symphonischer Epilogue, op.108, 1969; Sym. no.8, op.110, 1970; Sym. no.9, op.111, 1971

choral
With orch: Gebet der Mädchen zu Maria (R.M. Rilke), op.5, S, female vv, orch, 1910; Mitte des Lebens (medieval, R.A. Schröder, Angelus Silesius, Pss), op.45, S, vv, orch, 1931; Duineser Elegie (Rilke), op.90, S, vv, orch, 1963; Mirabile mysterium (cant., Sophronius of Jerusalem), op.101, 5 solo vv, vv, orch, 1967; Canticum sapientiae (Vulgate), op.104, Bar, vv, orch, 1968
With kbd: Mass, f, op.51, 4 solo vv, vv, org, 1934; Proprium missae ëLaetareí, op.71, vv, org, 1953, unpubd; Kleine Messe, G, op.80a, female vv, pf, 1958; Festliches Praeludium, op.100, chorus, org, 1966 [after Byzantine Magnificat]
Unacc.: 3 Chöre (Angelus Silesius), op.43, 1930; 5 kleine Männerchöre (L. Derleth), op.46, 1932; 3 geistliche Männerchöre (Schröder), op.47, 1932; Quant' è bella giovinezza (frottola, L. de'Medici), female vv, op.59, 1937; I Sing of a Maiden (Eng. carol), female vv, 1944; Laus noctuna, op.88, 1962; Missa brevis, op.89, 1963; In ascensione Domini (gradual, offertory), 1965, unpubd; To Sleep (J. Keats), op.94, 1965

solo vocal
Solo vv, small orch: Schönbuheler Messe, C, op.58, 1937, unpubd
1v, orch/ens: 3 Lieder der Mädchen (Rilke), op.7, 1911, unpubd; Geistliches Lied (F. Jammes), op.23, 1v, vn, va, pf, 1919; Amor timido (P. Metastasio), op.50, S, chbr orch, 1933; Sonnette der Elisabeth Barrett-Browning (trans. Rilke), op.52, S, str qt, 1934; Lied der Welt (Hofmannsthal), op.54, S, orch, 1936­8, unpubd; Leben, Traum und Tod (Hofmannsthal), op.55, A, orch, 1936; The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (G.M. Hopkins), op.61, S, cl, pf trio, 1944; 4 Songs of Return (Mackenzie), op.85, S, fl, cl, hp, pf, str qt, 1961; Ode an die Musik (Pindar), op.92, A/Bar, chbr orch, 1965; Vision (G. Trakl), op.99, S, orch, 1966
1v, pf: Lieder, op.1, c1905, unpubd; Wie ein Bild (P. Altenberg), op.3, 1909; Kirschblütenlieder (H. Bethge, after Jap.), op.8, 1911; Lieder aus der Fremde (Bethge, after Chin.), op.15, 1913; Deutches Lied (R. Dehmel), 1915; Ein österreichisches Reiterlied (H. Zuckermann), 1915; 6 Lieder (S. George), op.22, 1917; 3 Lieder (E. Stadler), op.24, 1917, unpubd; Aurora, op.32, 1921; Erinna (George), 1924; 2 Lieder (Schröder), op.48, 1932, unpubd; On Time (J. Dryden, Mackenzie, J. Milton), op.63, 1946­50; Lieder aus Wien (H.C. Artmann), op.82, 1959
Unacc.: Alleluia, S/T, op.80b, 1958

chamber and solo instrumental
For 5­8 insts: Pastorale, fl, ob, bar sax, 2 vn, vc, db, perc, before 1935; Octet, cl, bn, hn, str qt, db, op.67, 1948­9; Suite, wind qnt, op.73, 1954; Cl Qnt, op.81, 1959; Pf Qnt, 1969­70, unpubd; 4 Stücke, str qnt, op.109, 1970
Str qt: Str Qt no.1, op.14, 1911­12; no.2, op.20, 1915­16; no.3, op.25, 1918, unpubd; no.4, op.28, 1920; no.5, op.60, 1943­4; no.6, op.64, 1947; no.7, op.66, 1949; no.8, op.79, 1957; no.9, op.97, 1966; 4 Stücke, op.103, 1968
Str trio: Str Trio, op.86, 1962; 4 Stücke, op.105, 1969
Solo str: Sonata, op.31, vc, 1920; Sonata, op.36, vn, 1923; Suite, op.39, vc, 1924; Suite, op.56, vn, pf, 1937, unpubd; Sonata, op.72, vn, 1953; Rhapsodie, op.87, va, 1959, rev. 1962; 5 Miniaturen, op.93, vn, pf, 1965; Präludium, op.112, va, 1971
Solo wind: 2 Stücke, op.34, a cl, pf, 1922; Suite, op.57, fl, 1937; Suite, op.74, cl, 1954; Suite, op.76, ob, 1956; Suite, op.77, bn, 1957; Fanfares, op.78, hn, 1957

keyboard
Pf: Der Abend, op.4, 1909­10; 3 Skizzen, op.6, 1911; 3 Klavierstücke, op.9, 1911; 3 Tänze, op.10, 1912, unpubd; Eklogen, op.11, 1912; 3 Studien, op.13, 1912­13, unpubd; Epigramme, op.17, 1914; Idyllen, op.21, 1917; 6 Klavierstücke, op.26, 1917­20, nos.3­6 unpubd;. Festlicher Marsch, 1919; 2 Studien, op.29, 1921; 5 Tanzstücke, op.42, 1927; 5 Klavierstücke, op.83, 1960; Triptychon, op.98, 1966; Studien in Grau, op.106, 1969
Org: Partita in honorem J.S. Bach, op.96, 1965

editions
J.J. Fux: Costanza e fortezza, DTÖ, xxxiv­xxxv, Jg.xvii (1910)
Trésor de musique byzantine (Paris, 1934)
with C. Høeg and H.J.W. Tillyard: Sticherarium edendum: Codex vindobonensis, MMB, i/1 (1935)
with C. Høeg and H.J.W. Tillyard: Die Hymnen des Sticherarium für September, MMB, iii/1 (1936)
The Akathistos Hymn, MMB, iii/9 (1947)
Music of the Troubadours: Six Songs in Provençal by Bernart de Ventadorn (London, 1947)
The Music of the Byzantine Church (Cologne, 1959)
Principal publishers: Doblinger, Lengnick, Universal
MSS in A-Wn

WRITINGS
ëGiuseppe Bonno (1710­1788): sein Leben und seine dramatischen Werkeí, SIMG, xi (1909­10), 395­442
ëMaurice Ravels "Miroirs"í,Der Merker, ii (Vienna, 1911), 742
ëSchönberg et la jeune école viennoiseí, BSIM, viii/3 (1912), 21­6
ëCavalli und der Stil der venetianischen Oper von 1640­1660í, SMw, i (1913), 1­103
Die Ballett-Suiten von Johann Heinrich und Anton Andreas Schmelzer (Vienna, 1914)
ëDie Opern und Oratorien in Wien von 1660­1708í, SMw, vi (1919), 5­138
Arnold Schönberg (Vienna, 1921; Eng. trans., 1924)
ëDer Stil der letzen Werke Debussysí, Musikblätter des Anbruch, iii (1921), 50­54
ëDie Streichquartette von Béla Bartókí, Musikblätter des Anbruch, iii (1921), 98­100
ëDer Beginn des musikalischen Barock und die Anfänge der Oper in Wiení, Wiener literarische Anstalt, vi (Vienna, 1922)
ëAufgaben und Probleme auf dem Gebiete der byzantinischen und orientalischen Kirchenmusikí, Liturgiegeschichtliche Forschungen, vi (Munster, 1923)
Byzantinische Kirchenmusik (Breslau, 1927)
Die neue Instrumentation (Berlin, 1928­9)
ëAnton Bruckner and the Process of Musical Creationí, MQ, xxiv (1938), 265­90
ëThe Symphonies of Mahlerí, MR, i (1940), 2­23
ëMelito's Homily on the Passion: an Investigation into the Sources of Byzantine Hymnographyí, Journal of Theological Studies, xliv (1943), 41­52
Eastern Elements in Western Chant: Studies in the Early History of Ecclesiastical Music, MMB, Subsidia, ii (1947, 2/1967)
ëWords and Music in Byzantine Liturgyí, MQ, xxxiii (1947), 297­310
A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford, 1949, enlarged 2/1961)
ëBruckner and his Early Symphoniesí, The Listener (24 Feb 1949), 333
ëBruckner's Last Symphoniesí,The Listener (21 April 1949), 689
Essays on Opera (London, 1950/R)
ëRichard Strauss, 1864­1949í,MR, xi (1950), 23­33
ëEarly Byzantine Neumesí, MQ, xxxviii (1952), 68­79
ëHofmannsthal and Straussí, ML, xxxiii (1952), 239­42
ëEarly Christian Musicí, Early Medieval Music up to 1300, NOHM, ii (1954), 1­13
ëMusic of the Eastern Churchesí,Early Medieval Music up to 1300, NOHM, ii, (1954), 14­52
ed.: Ancient and Oriental Music, NOHM, i (1957)
The Origins of Schönbergís Twelve-Tone System (Washington DC, 1958)
Die Hymnen der Ostkirche, Basiliensis de musica orationes, i (Kassel, 1962)
Fux (London, 1965; repr. in R. Flotzinger and E. Wellesz: Johann Joseph Fux (Graz, 1991)
ed., with M. Velimirovic´: Studies in Eastern Chant, i­iii (London, 1966­73)
ëAnfänge der "Neuen Musik" in Wiení, OMz, xxv (1970), 312­15
ëErinnerungen an Gustav Mahler und Arnold Schönbergí,Orbis musicae, i (1971­2), 72­82
ed., with F. Sternfeld: The Age of Enlightenment, 1745­1790, NOHM, vii (1973)
with Emmy Wellesz: Egon Wellesz: Leben und Werk, ed. Franz Endler (Vienna, 1981) [autobiography]

BIBLIOGRAPHY
H.F. Redlich: ëEgon Welleszí, MQ, xxvi (1940), 65­ 75
H.F. Redlich: ëEgon Wellesz: an Austrian Composer in Britainí, MR, vii (1946), 69­79
W. Mellers: ëEgon Wellesz and the Austrian Traditioní, Studies in Contemporary Music (London, 1947/R), 120­35
W. Mellers: ëThe Music of Welleszí, The Listener (31 Aug 1950), 321
H.F. Redlich: ëWellesz and the Austrian Traditioní, The Listener (29 Nov 1951), 945
R. Réti: ëEgon Wellesz: Musician and Scholarí, MQ, xlii (1956), 1­13
R. Schollum: Egon Wellesz, ëÖsterreichische Komponisten des xx. Jarhundertsí, ii (Vienna, 1964)
W. Mellers: ëWellesz at Eightyí, The Listener (18 March 1965), 429
M. Dawney: ëConversation with Egon Welleszí, Composer, no.37 (1970), 11­15
D. Symons: ëEgon Wellesz and Early Twentieth-Century Tonalityí, SMA, vi (1972), 42­54
R. Stephan: ëEgon Welleszí, Mf, xxviii (1975), 153­6
F.W. Sternfeld: ëE. Wellesz (1885­1974)í, ML, lvi (1975), 147­9
M. Velimirovic´: ëE. Wellesz and the Study of Byzantine Chantí, MQ, lxii (1976), 265­77
G. Schneider: Egon Wellesz: Studien zur Theorie und Praxis seiner Musik (diss., Innsbruck U.,1980)
C. Benser: Egon Wellesz: (1885­1974): Chronicle of a Twentieth-Century Musician (New York, 1985)
G. Brosche, ed.: Zum 100. Geburtstag von Egon Wellesz (Vienna, 1985)
P. Ward Jones, ed.: Musical Anniversaries 1985: Thirteen Composers from Tallis to Berg (Oxford, 1985)
O. Kolleritsch, ed.: Egon Wellesz (Vienna, 1986)
D. Symons: ëTonal Organization in Egon Wellesz's Fifth Symphonyí, SMA, xx (1986), 91­113
H. Vogg, ed.: Am Beispiel Egon Wellesz: Briefwechsel mit Doblinger (Vienna, 1996)