- Heinrich Schülz-Beuthen
Heinrich Donatien Wilhelm Schulz-Beuthen (
19 June 1838 inBeuthen , UpperSilesia (now Bytom, inPoland ) -12 March 1915 inDresden ) was a composer of the high Romantic era.Life
His original surname was Schulz: it was not unusual for people with such common surnames to add the name of their home town to distinguish themselves from others, as Schulz-Beuthen did at some point early in his career. He was intended for the profession of a chemist, and studied chemistry at the
University of Breslau , but his drive to write music was greater. From 1862 to 1865 he studied withIgnaz Moscheles andCarl Reinecke at theLeipzig Conservatory , where Grieg andJohan Svendsen were among his fellow students; he also studied privately withKarl Riedel . Finding Leipzig’s classicism uncongenial to his more romantic temperament, after his graduation Schulz-Beuthen left Germany for Switzerland, where he taught composition in Zurich from 1866 to 1880. In Switzerland he met Wagner, the novelistGottfried Keller , and was befriended byMathilde Wesendonck . He also became friends with the composerTheodor Kirchner , an important member of the Schumann-Brahms circle, and created an orchestral cycle out of arrangements of some of Kirchner’s piano pieces. Following a nervous breakdown (the details of which are not precisely known) Schulz-Beuthen returned to Germany; he was unable to compose for several years, but resumed his teaching activities in Dresden, where he lived – except for a short period spent inVienna , 1893-95 – from 1881 until his death on 12 March 1915. His last years were spent in an asylum.Works
Schulz-Beuthen was a copious composer: his works include five operas, of which the first, "Der Zauberschlaf", after a play by Mathilde Wesendonck, combined the stories of
Sleeping Beauty andCinderella and may well be the first example of the ‘fairy tale opera’ which became a popular genre in the late 19th century at the hands, most notably, of Humperdinck. Unfortunately the music is lost, as are many other of Schulz-Beuthen’s works. He wrote no less than ten symphonies (of which the first and last remained incomplete; No. 7 was inspired by Shakespeare’s "King Lear"), as well as symphonic poems founded on such subjects as Schiller’s "Wilhelm Tell", Grillparzer’s "Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen", and Böcklin’s painting ‘The Isle of the Dead’. (Schulz-Beuthen’s treatment, one of his last works, is almost exactly contemporary with Rachmaninov’s well-known tone-poem on the same subject.) Other compositions included a Requiem, scenes from Goethe’s "Faust", a piano concerto, a wind octet, string quintet and trio; choral works, numerous songs, piano pieces and so on. He had some distinguished admirers, includingFranz Liszt , and contemporary critics sometimes found his music daringly modern: however these judgements were passed mainly on works that are no longer available for examination. The bulk of Schulz-Beuthen’s music was never published, and it is believed that most of his manuscripts were destroyed in the fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945. Nevertheless enough was printed during his lifetime, or has come to light in recent years, to indicate a composer of considerable gifts.
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