Theodor Berger

Viennese composer Theodor Berger was at onetime within an auspicious and enviable position inside the pantheon of contemporary European composers. Students of Franz Schmidt, his early design was apparently post-romantic, employing a extremely expanded degree of chromaticism. Berger’s music discovered an advocate in renowned German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler and his Rondino giocoso (1941) was presented with in Berlin’s Philharmonie Hall shortly before bombing brought the building down. In the postwar period, Berger found significant prominence as Furtwängler continuing to premiere his functions, and other visible conductors such as for example Karl Böhm and Herbert von Karajan, rallied to Berger’s aspect, the latter delivering Berger’s Homeric Symphony in 1948 and his Symphonia parabolica (1957) on the Salzburg Celebration. In the postwar years, Berger customized his post-romantic idiom, keeping its harmonic and orchestral audio globe intact, but divesting it of a definite essential and using onomatopoeic suggestions — such as for example skiing, diving, race — as some sort of structural arranging principle. Best around 1965, Berger decreased from the operating among Europe’s modern composers; although his music stayed published, performances from it and recordings dwindled and Berger’s name was no more pointed out in the dialogue about modern music. Precisely what may possess happened is usually unclear: maybe his music just never captured on — and provided the visible names that backed it for such a long time, that might be a little amazing if it had been the only cause — or that it had been obvious that his particular make of formalized music had not been likely to make it, or simply actually some complicity in Country wide Socialism on his component was uncovered that could tend to doggie him, very much as occurred to his modern Henk Badings in holland. Berger did continue steadily to compose and experienced many years before him, but his loss of life in 1992 proceeded to go practically without point out or see. Theodor Berger is obviously a forgotten physique in contemporary music, and it would appear that not so many alert to his music would claim that he’s unjustly so.