Werner Egk (German pronunciation:[ˈɛk], 17 May 1901 – 10 July 1983), bornWerner Joseph Mayer, was a Germancomposer.
He was born in theSwabian town of Auchsesheim, today part ofDonauwörth, Germany.[1] His family, of Catholic peasant stock, moved toAugsburg when Egk was six. He studied at aBenedictineGymnasium (academic high school) and entered the municipalconservatory. Egk demonstrated talents as a composer, graphic artist, and writer, and he moved first to Frankfurt to improve his piano talents and then, in 1921, to Munich. There, working as a theater composer and playing in thepit, he married Elizabeth Karl, a violinist. He derived hispen name "Egk" from his wife's initials:Elisabeth, geborne Karl (Elisabeth,née Karl).[2] His only son, Titus, was born in 1924.[3]
Egk moved to Berlin in 1928, meeting composersArnold Schoenberg andHanns Eisler. He intended to become a cinema composer and accompanied silent films. When radio broadcasting became available to the public, Egk immediately realised its importance as a mass medium and developedoperas andradio plays. He was introduced to Hans Fleisch, an important radio executive (alsoPaul Hindemith's brother-in-law and a Jew), by composerKurt Weill. He received his first commission for broadcasting from Fleisch's company.
He returned to Munich in 1929 to work for the local radio station and settled inLochham, a suburb. He became associated with musiciansFritz Büchtger,Karl Marx, and especially,Carl Orff, whom he had met in 1921. His music of the period shows a debt to the compositional style ofIgor Stravinsky. He also became friends with new-music conductorHermann Scherchen and the owners of the music publisher,Schott Music in Mainz. His career as a composer took off with the premiere of hisradio opera,Columbus, in July 1933 (staged in April 1934).
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Any composer working in Germany at the time had to deal with theNazi regime coming to power in 1933.Michael H. Kater, professor of German studies atYork University labels Egk "The Enigmatic Opportunist" in his portrait ofEight German Composers of the Nazi Era, and by far the most extensive evaluation of the composer's wartime connections in English.[4] As a German of Catholic heritage, Egk was in no danger of falling into disfavor with the regime's racial policies; rather, the professional hardships for Jewish composers and others created opportunities for him. Egk's contact with Scherchen soon lapsed, and the composer developed a complicated relationship as well as a professional rivalry with Orff, whose works ultimately found more lasting success.
Initially, Munich's cultural administrators had doubts about the compatibility of Egk's Stravinskian style with a Nazi audience, and he encountered difficulty with Munich's representative forAlfred Rosenberg'sKampfbund für deutsche Kultur (Militant League for German Culture), Paul Ehlers.
In 1935, he premiered his first operaDie Zaubergeige (The Magic Violin) in Frankfurt am Main. The work channeled Bavarian folksong and adiatonic idiom far lessmodernist than his earlier, more angularColumbus. This opera therefore matched Nazi artistic guidelines prescribing folk elements as being close to the people. Swiss composerHeinrich Sutermeister saw the stylistic change as "opportunistic." The success of the work led to a commission for ballet music related to the1936 Summer Olympics (for which he received a gold medal in theArt Competition)[5][6] and his appointment as conductor of theBerlin State Opera – a position he held until 1941. Egk's protector in Berlin wasHeinz Tietjen, director of the Prussian state theaters and artistic director of theBayreuth Festival.
November 1938 saw the première of his operaPeer Gynt based onHenrik Ibsen'splay. Propaganda ministerJoseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on 1 February 1939: "I am very enthusiastic and so is the Führer. A new discovery for the both of us". Oddly enough, Egk had returned to his more Stravinskian style in the work. More conservative critics found elements in the plot threatening to Nazi ideals of martial grandeur, and they also had difficulties with the reworking of the Nordic plot. One possible interpretation of the event lies in an argument Hitler had with his lieutenant Göring, who had warned Hitler not to go to the opera, "because none of your favorite singers were in it." It has been credibly suggested that Hitler and Goebbels decided to "like" the opera as a "taunt" to Göring for having the audacity to tell Hitler what he could and could not see.[7]
As the thirties wore on, Egk was asked, or perhaps commanded, to make official pronouncements about German music, and he received a large commission (never fulfilled) for a large scale opera on Nazi themes. His next major work was the balletJoan von Zarissa in 1940. In the following decade, it was common to pair the work with Orff'sCarmina Burana. In general, Egk's music found much more success in Berlin, and Orff lost to Egk in the prize surrounding the Olympic games composition. Unlike Egk, who enjoyed regular income from his artistic directorship, Orff was also self-employed and much impoverished. This exposed Egk to attack from Orff's partisans, though Egk and his wife continued to see Orff socially. These rivalries impinged on the credibility of witnesses in Egk's trial after the war. From 1941 to 1945 Egk was the leader of the Composer division ("Leiter der Fachschaft Komponisten") in the State-Approved Society for the Exploitation of Musical Performing Rights (German:Staatlich genehmigte Gesellschaft zur Verwertung musikalischer Aufführungsrechte;STAGMA) which was then under the control of the NaziReichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber).
Egk never joined the Nazi party and was exonerated indenazification tribunals held in 1947, but the trials were fraught with inaccuracies, including accounts of involvement with the Austrian resistance movement that were highly dubious. Among Egk's defenders wereGottfried von Einem and composerBoris Blacher. Initially his Nazi affiliations were held against him, though only briefly. There are various interpretations regarding the extent of his collaboration:
According to historianMichael Hans Kater, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.[8]
His major career began after the war. In Germany, Egk has been dubbed "Komponist des Wiederaufbaus" ("composer of the reconstruction", which followed World War II). Besides being a conductor and composer, he was head of the Berlin Musikhochschule (1950–1952) and important figure of theGEMA since 1950; he was also the first German president of theConfédération Internationale des Sociétés d'Auteurs et Compositeurs (CISAC). In 1954 he became conductor of theBavarian State Opera with a 20-year contract.
His later years saw a constant string of premieres at major European festivals, beginning withIrische Legende in 1955, conducted byGeorge Szell and featuringDietrich Fischer-Dieskau. His operaDie Verlobung in San Domingo opened theNational Theatre Munich in 1963 and features alibretto byHeinrich von Kleist, pleading for racial tolerance. His late works, however, were almost exclusively instrumental. Exceptional among them are works for winds, including the Divertissement for Ten Wind Instruments (1974) and the Five Pieces for Wind Quintet (1975).
Egk died on 10 July 1983 inInning am Ammersee and is buried inDonauwörth.
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