Otto Singer (July 26, 1833 – January 3, 1894) was a German musician also active in the USA.

Life

Singer was born in Sora,

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

. He was educated in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

, and later in Leipzig until 1865, and after a short residence in Weimar with Franz Liszt went to New York in 1869. In 1873 he went to Cincinnati as assistant musical director, under Theodore Thomas, of the first May Musical Festival, in that year. He composed the cantata ''The Pilgrim Fathers'' for the festival of 1876, and ''Festival Ode'' for the opening of the music-hall in 1878. He also wrote a ''Rhapsodie for Piano and Orchestra'' in C major (1881) dedicated to Hans von Bülow. He remained with the Cincinnati College of Music until 1892, when he returned to New York, where he died. He was an earnest and aggressive disciple of Liszt and Richard Wagner both in his compositions and piano performances. He conducted various singing societies, and in addition to the cantata mentioned he composed some piano sonatas and a piano concerto. Otto Singer Jr., his son (September 14, 1863 – January 8, 1931), composer and conductor, produced piano transcriptions of all nine of

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

's symphonies, at least 57 of Liszt's songs, all four of Brahms's symphonies, vocal-piano reductions (vocal parts plus solo piano) of 12 of Wagner's operas (as well as instrumental solo piano versions for some of them), as well as transcriptions of other works by Richard Strauss, Brahms, Beethoven, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Mahler, among others.Inside back cover of Otto Singer Jr.'s piano reduction of ''Das Liebesverbot''
Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, 1922 He as the teacher of the American composer, Wilson G. Smith.

References

External links

For Otto Singer * For Otto Singer Jr. * 1833 births 1894 deaths People from Bautzen (district) People from the Kingdom of Saxony German composers German conductors (music) German male conductors (music) American male composers American conductors (music) American male conductors (music) 19th-century conductors (music) 19th-century American composers 19th-century German musicians {{Germany-conductor-stub