Heinrich Zöllner (4 July 1854 – 8 May 1941) was a German composer and conductor.

Biography

The son of composer Carl Friedrich Zöllner, Heinrich Zöllner was born in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...

. From 1875 to 1877 he attended the

Leipzig Conservatory The University of Music and Theatre "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig (german: Hochschule für Musik und Theater "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig) is a public university in Leipzig (Saxony, Germany). Founded in 1843 by Felix Mendelssohn ...

where he studied music under Carl Reinecke,

Salomon Jadassohn Salomon Jadassohn (13 August 1831 – 1 February 1902) was a German pianist, composer and a renowned teacher of piano and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory. Life Jadassohn was born to a Jewish family living in Breslau, the capital of the ...

, and Ernst Friedrich Richter. In 1878, Zöllner became the director of music at the

University of Dorpat The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

(now Tartu) in

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...

where he stayed for almost seven years. In 1885, he joined the faculty at the

Cologne Conservatory Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...

and while there he conducted the Cologne Male Voice Choir.Deane L. Root: "Heinrich Zöllner", ''Grove Music Online'' ed. L. Macy (accessed 23 January 2009)
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. Zöllner moved to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

in 1890 to become the conductor and director of the Deutscher Liederkranz in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. He remained in that position for eight years and achieved considerable success. His cantata, ''Die neue Welt'' (The New World), won a prize at the 1892 Cleveland Sängerfest. Zöllner returned to Leipzig in 1898 to replace Hermann Kretzschmar as director of music at

Leipzig University Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December ...

, taking over the Paulus male choir. Four years later he was appointed professor of

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

at the university as a replacement for his mentor, Carl Reinecke. From 1903 to 1906, he was the editor of the ''Leipziger Tageblatt''. He was conductor of the

Flemish Opera The Vlaamse Opera (Flemish Opera) is an opera company in Belgium directed by Jan Vandenhouwe which operates in two different opera houses in two Flemish cities, the Vlaamse Opera Antwerp at Van Ertbornstraat 8 and the Vlaamse Opera Ghent at Schouwbu ...

in Antwerp from 1907 until his retirement in 1914. He retired to

Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...

and worked part-time as an opera critic for the ''Breisgauer Zeitung''. He died in Freiburg aged 86.

Works

Zöllner's compositions include ten operas, five symphonies, several large-scale works for chorus and orchestra, five string quartets, overtures, works for solo and four-hand piano,

choral music A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which s ...

, '' lieder'', and numerous smaller vocal pieces. Like his father, Zöllner composed a significant number of pieces for

men's chorus A men's chorus or male voice choir (MVC) (German: ''Männerchor''), is a choir consisting of men who sing with either a tenor or bass voice, and whose music is typically arranged into high and low tenors (1st and 2nd tenor), and high and low bass ...

. However, unlike his father, he showed a preference for large-scale works with full orchestral accompaniment. He is probably best remembered for his 1899 opera ''Die versunkene Glocke'', which enjoyed frequent revivals up until the outbreak of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Operas

* ''Die lustigen Chinesinnen'' (1885 Cologne, Stadttheater) * ''Faust'' (19 October 1887, Munich, Hoftheater) * ''Matteo Falcone'' (18 December 1893, New York, Irving Place) * ''Bei Sedan'' (1 September 1895, Leipsig, Neues Theater) * ''Der Überfall'' (7 September 1895, Dresden, Hoftheater) * ''Das hölzerne Schwert'' (24 November 1897, Kassel, Hoftheater) * ''Die versunkene Glocke'' (8 July 1899, Berlin, Theater des Westens) * ''Frithjof'' (6 October 1910, Antwerp) * ''Zigeuner'' (15 March 1912, Stuttgart, Hoftheater) * ''Der Schützenkönig'' (18 December 1913, Elberfeld-Barmen, Stadttheater)

Choral works

* ''Hymnus der Liebe'' * ''Die neue Welt'' * ''König Sigurds Brautfahrt'' * ''Die Heerschau'' * ''Bonifazius'' * ''Luther'' (Oratorium)

Sources

References

Don Randel Don Michael Randel (born December 9, 1940) is an American musicologist, specializing in the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Spain and France. He is currently the Chair of the Board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a trustee ...

: ''The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music'' (Harvard, 1996), p. 1011.
Opera Glass

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Zollner, Heinrich 1854 births 1941 deaths 19th-century classical composers 19th-century German male musicians 20th-century classical composers 20th-century German male musicians German male classical composers German opera composers German Romantic composers Academic staff of the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln Academic staff of Leipzig University Male opera composers University of Tartu alumni