Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek

The Austrian composer Emil von Reznicek lived into his eighties and kept up with the times. His career was sidelined only by World War II, and his oeuvre reflects styles ranging from Wagnerian late Romanticism to neoclassicism and even jazz-influenced works. Largely forgotten except for the opera Donna Diana (1894), Reznicek's music has seen some revivals in the 21st century. Emil Nikolaus Joseph, Freiherr von Reznicek was born May 4, 1860 in Vienna. He was of noble Czech and Romanian background. His grandfather was a military trumpeter and an associate of Johann Strauss I and Joseph Lanner. Reznicek studied music in Graz and later in Leipzig with Carl Reinecke. He served an apprenticeship as a conductor at various German theaters and then moved to Prague in 1887, working as a military band conductor and writing the first of his 14 operas; the fourth one, Donna Diana, was his most popular work. Reznicek moved to the Berlin suburb of Charlottenburg in 1902, spending the rest of his life there. He wrote five symphonies; tone poems including a trilogy: Schlemihl (1912), Der Sieger (1913), and the lost Frieden (Eine Vision) of 1914; incidental music (including a set for Strindberg's A Dream Play) and other stage works; chamber music including six string quartets; piano music; songs with some leftist sympathies; choral music; and various other works. Much of Reznicek's early music was influenced by Wagner, but in later life he experimented with contemporary sounds from bi-tonality to jazz. His Karneval-Suite im alten Stil (1932) was a neo-Baroque work. Performances of Reznicek's music were discouraged, and some of his unpublished manuscripts were confiscated by the government and lost. To save himself, he began to associate with the circle surrounding Richard Strauss; this in turn hurt his reputation after the war, when he was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer. Reznicek died in Berlin on August 2, 1945.
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