- Ludwig Thuille
Ludwig Thuille (born
30 November 1861 in Bozen (Bolzano ),Tyrol (now in theprovince of Bolzano-Bozen ,Italy ), died5 February 1907 inMunich ) was a German composer and pedagogue who was for a short time numbered among the leading operatic composers of the 'Munich School ' whose most famous representative wasRichard Strauss . He lost both his parents in childhood, and moved to stay with an uncle in Austria. He studied inInnsbruck (where in 1877 he met the young Richard Strauss, who became a lifelong friend) and then withJosef Rheinberger , among others, in Munich. Thuille went on to become professor of theory and composition at the Akademie der Tonkunst in that city. His many pupils includedHermann Abendroth ,Ernest Bloch ,Ernst Boehe ,Richard Wetz ,Rudi Stephan ,Walter Braunfels andHenry Kimball Hadley .Thuille was a prolific composer who concentrated on chamber music - he is remembered principally for his Sextet for piano and wind instruments (1886-8), the only one of his works to have remained in the repertoire - and opera, though his early works include a Piano Concerto and a Symphony. In 1897 his opera "Theuerdank" gained the first prize and a prestigious staged premiere in an operatic competition sponsored by the Regent of
Bavaria , in whichAlexander von Zemlinsky was placed second. His second opera "Lobetanz" was premiered the following year inKarlsruhe and was a considerable success.Despite his friendship with Strauss, which extended to making a 2-piano arrangement of the latter's
tone poem Don Juan, and despite his devotion to music-drama, Thuille remained a fairly conservative composer. His posthumously-published "Harmonielehre" (written withRudolf Louis ) went through many editions and was highly influential.While Thuille's Sextet has never entirely departed from the repertoire, several of his other compositions have become commercially available on CD in recent years -- his two Piano Quintets, the Piano Concerto in D and his Symphony in F (1885) chief among them.
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