Hermann Goetz | |
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| Born | (1840-12-07)7 December 1840 |
| Died | (1876-12-03)3 December 1876 Hottingen, Switzerland |
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Hermann Gustav Goetz (7 December 1840 – 3 December 1876) was a Germancomposer who spent much of his career in Switzerland. He is best known for his 1872 operaDer Widerspänstigen Zähmung, based on Shakespeare'sThe Taming of the Shrew.
Goetz was born inKönigsberg in theProvince of Prussia. The son of a salesman, he came into contact with music early in his life. However, he did not receive his first serious piano lesson until 1857 – although he already had begun to compose some years before. At the end of the 1850s, he began to study for adegree inmathematics, but broke this off after three terms to study at theStern Conservatory in Berlin, where he studied piano and composition withHans von Bülow. In 1862, he graduated from the conservatory. He then moved to Switzerland in 1863. The following year, Goetz was appointed as city organist ofWinterthur in Switzerland (thanks to the assistance ofCarl Reinecke), where he taught the piano and began to make his name as a composer. In 1868, he married, and two years later moved to the village ofHottingen, today a suburb ofZürich, but remained employed in Winterthur until 1872. Between 1870 and 1874, he wrote reviews for a music magazine.
After ten years spent as a critic, pianist and conductor, he spent the last three years of his life composing. Due to the increasing seriousness of histuberculosis, from which he had suffered from the 1850s, Goetz had to withdraw from teaching and concert performance.
The conductorFelix Weingartner found it "incomprehensible that his delightful opera comique,Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung, should have entirely disappeared from the repertoire."[1] Another great admirer of Goetz's compositions wasGeorge Bernard Shaw, who praised Goetz's Symphony in F above anything in the genre byMendelssohn,Schumann, andBrahms.[2]
Goetz died aged 35, at Hottingen, of tuberculosis.
Although Goetz showed active interest in the important artistic trends of his own time (on the one handLiszt andWagner, on the otherBrahms), his own compositional style was more influenced byMozart andMendelssohn, and to a lesser degree bySchumann. Goetz's music is defined by lyricism and great clarity, and in general terms can be defined as quiet andintroverted. Goetz almost completely avoided spectacular effects. Great mastery of compositional technique is characteristic of Goetz's style, which is particularly apparent in the connectedness of motifs and the technical depth of movements.
Goetz was no radical forger of new musical paths, but rather a composer in total control of his compositional technique. For a long time, he was almost forgotten, althoughGustav Mahler performed a number of his works; only since the 1990s have his works been revived.
Goetz's compositions include asymphony, twopiano concertos, aviolin concerto in one movement, much piano music, apiano trio,piano quartet,piano quintet, andsonata for piano four-hands (two players). There are also two operas,Der Widerspänstigen Zähmung (based on Shakespeare'sThe Taming of the Shrew) and, much less successful, the three-act operaFrancesca von Rimini, to a libretto by the composer and Joseph Victor Wildmann, based on Dante'sInferno (premiered at Mannheim, 30 September 1877).[3][4]
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