Walter Braunfels

Walter Braunfels was born on December 19, 1882, in Frankfurt as the youngest child of lawyer and writer Ludwig (Lazarus) Braunfels (1810–1883) and his second wife Helene, née Spohr, who was 32 years his junior. After graduating from high school and training at the Hoch Conservatory, which he entered in 1895, he began studying economics in Kiel in 1901, but then decided to pursue music. In 1902, he moved to Vienna for a year to perfect his piano skills with Theodor Leschetitsky and studied theory with Karl Nawratil. From 1903, in Munich, where he received composition lessons from Ludwig Thuille, he met the most influential teacher of his life: conductor Felix Mottl. He worked as Mottl's assistant at the Nationaltheater München from 1903. Walter Braunfels also regularly performed publicly as a pianist from 1903 onwards. He achieved his first major successes as a composer from 1909 with the premiere of his Symphonic Variations Op. 15 under Hermann Abendroth in Lübeck and with his first opera, Prinzessin Brambilla Op. 12 (after E.T.H. Hoffmann) under Max von Schillings in Stuttgart. In the same year, he married Berta von Hildebrand, the youngest daughter of sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand. The First World War (conscription in 1915, front-line service in France, injury) marked a turning point in his life, not only musically. Traumatized by his experiences at the front and grateful to have survived the inferno, the Protestant Walter Braunfels converted to Catholicism. His opera "Die Vögel" (The Birds) (after Aristophanes), premiered by Bruno Walter at the Munich Nationaltheater in 1920, was a sensational success and marked his musical breakthrough. Braunfels' works, such as the "Phantastische Erscheinungen eines Themas von Hector Berlioz" (Fantastic Apparitions of a Theme by Hector Berlioz), the "Te Deum," "Don Gil von den grünen Hosen" (Don Gil of the Green Breeches), the Great Mass, and the "Don Juan Variations," were performed by renowned conductors such as Wilhelm Furtwängler, Otto Klemperer, and Schillings and were featured in the repertoires of almost all German stages and concert halls. They also received great international acclaim. In 1923, Braunfels became a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts, and in 1925, he was appointed founding director of the Cologne University of Music alongside Abendroth. With the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, all works by the so-called "half-Jew" Braunfels were banned; he was forced to withdraw from all public offices as undesirable. The Reichsmusikkammer explicitly forbade him any musical activity. Unable to emigrate, he moved with his family to Lake Constance, near the green border with Switzerland. Between 1933 and 1945, during his internal emigration, he composed, among other works, three operas, "Die Verkündigung" (The Annunciation) (after Paul Claudel), "Traum ein Leben" (A Dream is Life) (after Grillparzer), and "Jeanne d’Arc – Szenen aus dem Leben der heiligen Johanna" (Joan of Arc – Scenes from the Life of Saint Joan) (after the trial records), four cantatas, three string quartets, and a quintet. In 1945, after the war, Konrad Adenauer reinstated Walter Braunfels as director of the Cologne University of Music. During the period of reconstruction and even after his retirement in 1950, he continued to compose various works, including the Sinfonia Concertante Op. 68, the Sinfonia brevis Op. 69, the Hebridean Dances Op. 70, and a Passion Play Op. 72. He died on March 19, 1954, in Cologne. After 1945, his works struggled to compete with the favored serial music. Since the 1990s, his compositions, which independently stand between late Romanticism and Classical Modernism, have been performed frequently and with international success. Susanne Bruse