Alexander von Zemlinsky

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Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky (14 October 1871 – 15 March 1942) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.

Zemlinsky was born in Vienna to a highly diverse family. Zemlinsky's grandfather, Anton Semlinski, emigrated from

In Johannes Brahms, Zemlinsky had a valuable supporter. In July 1892, on the invitation of Zemlinsky's teacher Johann Nepomuk Fuchs, Brahms attended a performance of the first movement of Zemlinsky's Symphony in D minor at the Conservatoire.^[6] In March 1896, Brahms attended a performance of Zemlinsky's String Quintet in D minor by the Hellmesberger Quartet.^[7] Impressed with Zemlinsky's music, Brahms recommended the younger composer's Clarinet Trio (1896) to the N. Simrock company for publication.^[8]

Zemlinsky also met Arnold Schoenberg when the latter joined the amateur orchestra Polyhymnia as a cellist;^[9] Zemlinsky had founded this group in 1895.^[10] The two became close friends and later mutual admirers and brothers-in-law when Schoenberg married Zemlinsky's sister, Mathilde. Zemlinsky gave Schoenberg lessons in counterpoint, thus becoming the only formal music teacher Schoenberg would have.

In 1897, Zemlinsky composed his Symphony No. 2 (chronologically the third he had written, and sometimes numbered as such) for submission to the Beethoven Prize, a competition inaugurated and sponsored by Brahms. Zemlinsky won joint first prize, sharing the honours with Robert Gound. His reputation as a composer was further helped when Gustav Mahler conducted the premiere of his opera Es war einmal (Once Upon a Time) at the Hofoper in 1900. In 1899 Zemlinsky secured the post of Kapellmeister at Vienna's Carltheater.

In 1899, Zemlinsky converted to Protestantism.^[11][12] He alluded to the Christian cross and to Jesus in the text of Turmwächterlied,^[13] and included verses from Psalms in several of his compositions.^[14]

In 1900, Zemlinsky met and fell in love with

In 1906 Zemlinsky was appointed first Kapellmeister of the new

With the rise of the Nazi Party, he fled to Vienna in 1933, where he held no official post, instead concentrating on composing and making the occasional appearance as guest conductor. In 1938, the Zemlinsky couple managed to escape via Prague to New York. Their property was confiscated to pay for the "Reich Flight Tax" imposed on Jews.^[18][19] Their collection, which included "a work by Schiele, various engravings, carpets" was, according to the German Lost Art Foundation, "released and presumably exported to the USA."^[20]

Although fellow émigré Schoenberg was celebrated and feted in the Los Angeles of the 1930s and 40s – teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California and gaining a new generation of acolytes – Zemlinsky was neglected and virtually unknown in his adopted country. He fell ill, suffering a series of strokes, and ceased composing. Zemlinsky died in Larchmont, New York, of pneumonia in 1942.

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Zemlinsky's best-known work is the Lyric Symphony (1923), a seven-movement piece for soprano, baritone and orchestra, set to poems by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (in German translation), which Zemlinsky compared in a letter to his publisher to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. The work in turn influenced Alban Berg's Lyric Suite, which quotes from it and is dedicated to Zemlinsky. Other orchestral works include the large-scale

Zemlinsky composed eight operas, including Eine florentinische Tragödie (1915–16) and the semi-autobiographical Der Zwerg (The Dwarf, 1919–21), both based on works by Oscar Wilde; chamber music, including four string quartets, and an unfinished ballet Der Triumph der Zeit (1901). He also composed works for chorus and orchestra including three psalm settings as well as numerous song cycles, both with piano and with orchestra, of which the Sechs Gesänge, Op. 13, to texts by Maurice Maeterlinck is the best-known.

While the influence of Brahms is evoked in Zemlinsky's early works (prompting encouragement from Brahms himself), an original voice is present from the first works on, handling dissonances in a much freer manner than Brahms. Later works adopt the kind of extended

As a conductor, Zemlinsky was admired by, among others, Kurt Weill and Stravinsky, not only for his notable interpretations of Mozart, but also for his advocacy of Mahler, Schoenberg and much other contemporary music. As a teacher, his pupils included Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Hans Krása and Karl Weigl.

• List of compositions by Alexander von Zemlinsky

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