LUDWIG THUILLE
(Partially adapted from the article on Thuille in Grove 5.)
Ludwig Thuille was born in Bozen on 30 November,
1861. He had his first music lessons from his father, and developed early
a remarkable talent for music. On his father's death he was sent to the Benedictine
Abbey in Kremsmuenster as a chorister, where he received thorough education
in church music and an excellent elementary education.
At the age of fifteen, he returned to his home and
became the pupil of Joseph Pembaur, the principal of the Innsbruck School
of Music. After three years, in which he completed his courses there, he
moved to Munich and joined the school of music there, where his teachers
were Karl Barmen, a Liszt pupil, for piano and Joseph Rheinberger for organ,
counterpoint and composition. From around this time come some early works
which have been recently published by Wollenweber-Verlag (Grafeling/Munich,)
including two string quartets, a piano trio, and a piano quintet (one of
two that he was to compose in his life.) He was to return to the genre of
chamber music often in his career.
He left Munich in 1881, obtaining a scholarship
on the Frankfort Mozart Foundation. The following year brought a meeting,
with Alexander Ritter, poet, composer, friend of Richard Strauss (as was
Thuille himself,) which affected his career substantially and materially.
He returned to Munich in 1883, obtaining a professorship, as did Ritter;
and in 1885, when Strauss was appointed successor to von Bulow in Meiningen,
Ritter and Thuille followed.
Under Ritter's influence Thuille turned his attentions
to opera. His first attempt used a libretto by Ritter himself, based on Herman
Schmid's comedy "Theuerdank." The music was completed in 1894, but the opera
was not premiered until 1897. It was favorably received, but did not hold
the stage. It remained unpublished, except for the prelude to Act I, which
was given the title "Romantic Overture." The second opera, "Lobetanz," libretto
by O.J. Bierbaum, was written in 1896. Some spoke of it as being superior
to Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel," and as being in the same style. (It
received its US premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in November of 1911. A
selection from Lobetanz can be heard on a still-available Marston CD, performed
by Johanna Gadski and the Victor Orchestra.)
His third opera, "Gugeline," libretto also by Bierbaum,
was finished in 1900, and was considered, particularly in its third act,
superior to the other two.
Other important works by Thuille include a still
occasionally performed (even today) four-movement sextet for piano and winds
(his op. 6; there are recordings of this on Erasmus CD WVH201 from 1997,
Summit DCD 198 also from 1997, a recording possibly nla on Ars Musici AM
1163 *also* from 1997 (!!), a 1996 CD from Caprice (CAP 21497, nla)), two
violin sonatas (op. 1 in d minor and op. 30, the former recorded on Telos
020 in 1999, the latter also recorded on Telos 030 apparently in the same
year, though www.jpc.de
lists 2001 as its release date) a violoncello sonata (op. 22 in d minor,
recorded on ASV CD DCA 913 in 1995,) an organ sonata (op. 2 in a minor, which
has been recorded, ) and a piano quintet in E-flat op. 20 (also recorded,
I believe,) among chamber works. For orchestra there is the op. 16 Romantic
overture aforementioned and an op. 38 Symphonic march. For choral groups
there are works such as the Rosenlied, op. 29, for three-part women's chorus
with piano, the Traumsommernacht, op. 25, for women's chorus with harp and
violin, and Weihnacht im Walde, op. 14 for men's chorus. At least three sets
of lieder (opp. 4, 5 and 7) might be mentioned, the last a song-cycle "Von
lieb und leid." One ought not to forget the womens' choruses op. 5 (available
at New York Public Library) or the piano pieces op. 3.
Thuille's pupils included Richard Wetz, Henry Hadley,
Walter Spalding (who became Leroy Anderson's teacher) and Paul von Klenau.
His published works include a Harmonielehre coauthored with Rudolf Louis
(himself infamous as the target of Max Reger's chamber-criticism!) Thuille's
own relations with Reger might be worth looking into, since it was a Thuille
violin sonata that shared the program with the C major (4th, op. 72) violin
sonata of that composer at the latter's premiere- a work which, one may not
remember now, was something of a critical scandal. Thuille might have felt
that his own work was lost in the screaming ...
Ludwig Wilhelm Andreas Maria Thuille died on 5 February, 1907.
This early string quartet in A major ohne Opuszahl,
one of two at least that the composer wrote and published from manuscript
in 2000 by Walter Wollenweber-Verlag, is a work of the composer's youth.
(The other quartet, in G, dates from 1880-1.) It is in four movements: a
common-time allegro moderato with exposition repeat, in A; a 3/4 adagio molto,
in a, which encloses a maggiore; a 3/4 scherzo, in E, with trio in e; and
a quasi presto common-time sonata-finale, in A. It is an uncharacteristic,
one might say anachronistic for its time, withal enjoyable and interesting
piece.
The quartet with its somewhat Schubertian-Haydnesque
(Mendelssohnian? it can be hard to place this piece stylistically at times...)
melodies is perhaps not what one first expects of a work from the last quarter
of the 19th century, though this does not surprise in a prentice work; in
this it reminds one of early works by Strauss and (_not_ prentice works)
late works by Ignaz Lachner. All the same it works well. The first movement
(A major, common time, 167 bars) follows a fairly standard design in its
exposition, with repeat; a basically two-theme first subject group in A -
both themes led by first violin, though the transition between them is initiated
by the cello - leads to a varied (here dolce, here scherzando) second main
theme, in which the first violin is initially tacet; to a more active section
in which no one instrument has prominence (bar 43-7); and then codetta.
The development begins typically enough, with a
minor-mode version of the closing bars of the codetta, then reinterpreted/modulated
to bring us from e minor to C major; the music then becomes contrapuntally
and tonally more involved as we move through F, Bb, after a pause and a change
of texture, a number of keys beginning in b-flat minor, and rather memorably
so; then landing on A major's dominant in time for the recapitulation at
bar 107, which is not -quite- regular (it starts diverging as soon as 16
bars later, and the diverging section lasts all the way until the second
theme group (which had been in E) reappears.) The second group is recapitulated
substantially exactly, until the end; there is a brief coda, beginning with
the main theme in F, then modulating via diminished chord and codetta theme
to A. This movement, though like the rest uncharacteristic of his mature
style, already shows fine capabilities of lyricism, and for effective and
memorable development within and without the middle section of a sonata-form.
The slow movement (a minor, 3/4 time, 80 bars) tells
a tale quietly, then more loudly then more loudly still before a brief transition
introduces a second major theme (bar 17) in F. At bar 37 we have a varied
return of the main material of the movement, briefly, before a maggiore section
(pickup to bar 45) provides a more telling contrast. This lasts until bar
68, at which the main material (now accompanied by triplet sixteenths) returns,
ending the material in a brief coda.
The scherzo (E major, 3/4 time, 60 bars) has much of Haydn about it.
The finale (A major, common time, 167 bars) opens
with a well-pleased seven-bar theme, the same somewhat changed followed by
a secondary theme (still in A major.) The transition to E uses mainly the
quieter second theme. The E major theme group begins with a dolce theme on
which is rung several changes; at one point its accompaniment- initially
all minims and crotchets - begins to include triplet quavers as well, with
the theme converted from minims and crotchets to quavers and rests (bar 48.)
The exposition ends at bar 71. The thematically-strict development immediately
modulates rapidly on the flat side of the spectrum, landing on F in bar 87,
and g minor in bar 91, for instance; and edging its way back to E through
E-flat in the ensuing bars after that, to spend some time on E as a sort
of tonal organ point... and after a dominant 7th in bar 109, the - scarcely
strict - recapitulation begins on the pickup to bar 111.
The second theme group, now in A major instead of
E, begins at bar 127 this time, and the recapitulation from this point on
is practically exact. The work as a whole, like the first movement, is imaginative,
formally thought-through but not uninventive- certainly a student work but
that, I think, of a student with clear ideas, ambition, and the goal, even
while copying earlier models, of surprising his audience.
Unlike such an early work as this, the overall style
of such a mature work as the piano sextet op. 6 or the cello sonata op. 22
might better be described as conservative (but not reactionary) late-Romantic,
and inventive; I think it is likely not for nothing that the sextet is often
revived...
Although I would give higher priority to revival
of such as-yet-unrecorded works of Thuille's maturity such as the three operas,
the works for chorus, the songs (an arrangement of one from op. 4 is on the
CD with the op. 1 violin sonata) among other things; and to record and perform
more often such works as the violin sonatas, E-flat piano quintet and the
cello sonata; nonetheless, this effort to publish Thuille's early works on
Wollenweber-Verlag's part has uncovered works of considerable interest, reflecting
on and suggestive of the influences and skills of an interesting 19th-century
minor master.
A book was published in Munich in 1923 by Friedrich Munter,
entitled "Ludwig Thuille" which might be worth the perusal of the interested.
Eric Schissel