You are bidding on one typewritten, signed letter of Musicologist, journalist and music critic Hans Schnoor (1893-1976).
Aimed at the pianist, composer, writer and music critic Erwin Kroll (1886-1976) in Berlin, head of the music department at NWDR.
Encloseda carbon copy of one testimony from Erwin Kroll about Hans Schnoor.
Dated Berlin-Charlottenburg, 11. May 1951.
Excerpts: "Dear Mr. Colleague! Yesterday I had a conversation with Professor Dovifat, which led to the need for this letter to you. We colleagues have no envy towards one another, as was recently discovered. In order to reap my Weber harvest, I want to work at the State Library during the next few weeks and months with few events. I had been trying to get a subsidy from the NWDR since the days when we met and had the Peter Schmoll idea. Now Professor Dovifat wants to do his best in Hamburg and he is quite confident. But he needs a short report from you about my standing as a musicologist and about the possibility of funding my weaving work."
Signed"Hans Schnoor."
Attached typescript carbon copy (one A4 page) the requested testimony from Kroll about Hans Schnoor, addressed to the important journalism scholar Emil Dovifat (1890-1969) and dated Berlin, 22. May 1951.
Kroll praises Schnoor's importance as a researcher on Carl Maria von Weber and cites his works. "Schnoor is currently working. in the former Berlin State Library to collect and republish Weber's letters. Since we do not yet have a complete edition of these letters (and also Weber's diaries), it would be urgent to provide Schnoor, who does not live in Berlin, with financial aid so that he can finish his work."
Condition: Sheets punched on the side. The punch is browned, with damage to the edges.bPlease also note the pictures!
Internal note: Kroll 2021-12-10 Autograph Autograph
About Hans Schnoor and Erwin Kroll (Source: wikipedia):
Hans Schnoor (*4. October 1893 in Neumünster; † 15. January 1976 in Bielefeld) was a German musicologist, journalist and music critic. In the late 1950s he attracted media attention for his criticism of Arnold Schönberg's Survivor from Warsaw.
Live and act
Career:Hans Schnoor was the son of a teacher. After studying musicology in Leipzig with Hugo Riemann and Karl Straube and earning his doctorate as Dr. phil. Under Arnold Schering, Schnoor was initially a music editor at the Leipziger Freie Presse. Since January 1922 he was head of the features section and music editor of the Dresdner Neuesten Nachrichten before moving to the Leipziger Tageblatt as editor. In 1926 Schnoor returned to Dresden and was music editor of the Dresdner Anzeiger until 1945 and also a lecturer at the Dresden University of Music. During this time he got to know Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner personally, among others.
In addition to his work as a music editor, Schnoor had been writing musicological books since 1919. In 1926, for example, he published Music of the Germanic Peoples in the XIX. and XX. Century.
Period of National Socialism: Already since 1. In May 1932, Schnoor was a member of the NSDAP (membership number 1,131,053). After the National Socialists “seized power,” he also belonged to the German Labor Front and the National Socialist People's Welfare Association and wrote music reviews in the spirit of National Socialist ideology. In April 1933, as chairman of the Dresden branch of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, he invited various music critics to a conference with presentations on opera in the Third Reich.
In the new edition of his concert guide Oratorios and secular choral works in 1939, he wrote: “The new spiritual Germany with its moving thoughts: people and leaders, homeland, blood and soil, race, myth, heroic history, ethos of work, community of all working people the old metaphysical longing for the artistic idealization of one’s highest ideas.”
The fact that Schnoor was not only a staunch National Socialist, but also an ardent anti-Semite is exemplified by a review of the new edition of the Riemann Music Lexicon by the National Socialist Joseph Müller-Blattau, which Schnoor did not go far enough:
“Einstein's new editions provided overwhelming evidence of how strongly Riemann's views had been bent with Jewish fixity since 1919, the year of his death; In many cases the lexicon resembled a Jewish temple of glory. Now that the last possible separation between non-Jewish and Jewish in the areas of cultural, intellectual and scientific life was achieved in Adolf Hitler's empire, one could have expected a correspondingly radical departure from the editorial practice of Einstein in the new Riemann. But what happened? The whole of Judaism, which has embedded itself in our culture in recent decades, is given detailed appreciation. […] This is how a Mr. Adolf But reads German Jew (!) as a 'DJ' in the new Riemann. This 'German' Jew, former Leipzig critic, current London big businessman in music, is listed with all his 'merits', although even the Jewish musicological guild of the system era had already noted the pitiful nature of his publications, for example his 'Handbook of Music Literature'; although this evil scientific impostor of Alfred Heuss was morally destroyed long before 1933 and was only kept by a stubborn newspaper publisher for 'prestige' reasons.
He wrote for the Nazi magazine Music in War.
Post-war period: After the Second World War, Schnoor stayed in the Soviet Zone until 1948 and was able to publish a book there on the 400th anniversary of the Saxon Staatskapelle Dresden. In 1949 he moved to Bielefeld, where he became a music critic at the Westfalenblatt. According to Fred K. Prieberg, Schnoor continued to write reviews “with anti-Semitic undertones and the vocabulary of the Nazi journalism of the past.” The same could also be said about several musicological books aimed at a broad audience, which Schnoor mostly published with C. Bertelsmann Verlag. In his reference work Opera Operetta Concert, first published in 1955, Schnoor wrote about the Jewish composer Giacomo Meyerbeer that the classical ideals of music and art were essentially alien to him and that he saw music primarily as a business. In doing so, he took up the anti-Semitic sentiments that Richard Wagner Meyerbeer and other Jewish composers had also encountered.
Schönberg scandal 1956: As a critic, Schnoor sparked a media scandal in June 1956 after he panned Arnold Schönberg's Holocaust melodrama A Survivor from Warsaw in the Westfalenblatt when announcing the program with the following words: “that disgusting piece that looks like a mockery to every decent German must work. To complete the measure of defiant indecency, the conductor of this program, Hermann Scherchen (who else?), placed Beethoven's music to Goethe's Egmont next to Schönberg's hate song. How long is this going to continue?”
A few days later, Schnoor took part as Winfried Zillig's co-speaker at a conference of the Evangelical Academy for Radio and Television in Arnoldshain im Taunus, at which the establishment of a cultural radio program ("Third Program") was on the agenda. In his presentation on the “Place of New Music,” Zillig presented the work of his teacher Schönberg and, at the end, quoted from his co-referee’s article. Zillig refused to discuss things with Schnoor and left the room. When confronted, Schnoor gave a half-hearted explanation. Just two days later, a four-column article by Walter Dirks about the conference appeared in the FAZ, “Report on a Shards Court,” which dealt exclusively with the Schnoor case. In the article, Dirks included another quote from Schnoor's column "We and the Funk" from December 29th. October 1955, where Schnoor denounced the alleged tyranny of the re-emigrants in the German radio stations and concluded: “We will soon be ready to talk more openly and precisely about all these things. There will be an uprising - not of the masses, but of the best." In his rejection of New Music, Dirks accused Schnoor of "anti-Semitic nationalism" and National Socialist ideas, coupled with the question of whether existing laws were being violated.
After Theodor W. Adorno also joined the debate, further details became known. Schnoor had described Adorno in several reviews as the cause of the “Frankfurt poisoning” of the WDR and called him by his discarded name “Wiesengrund”.
After the musicologist Fred K. Prieberg accused him of, among other things, “National Socialist music criticism” in a polemical broadcast by the SWF Baden-Baden, Schnoor, supported by his publisher Hermann Stumpf, filed a private lawsuit. This lawsuit was dismissed in the first instance on the grounds that Schnoor had to put up with “his gross attacks being reciprocated in kind.” Schnoor's complaint in the next instance was again rejected. In the court ruling, Prieberg was granted the right to freedom of expression according to Section 193 of the Criminal Code and the claim in Prieberg's Südwestfunk broadcast that Schnoor's style was reminiscent of the expression of the "Black Corps" was confirmed as a statement of fact.
In 1958 Schnoor retired as an editor, but continued to write works on music history. At the beginning of 1962 he published the partly autobiographical book Harmony and Chaos. Music of the Present, in which he made no secret of his dislike of new music and, among other things, criticized Stravinsky, but instead recognized Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner as the most important composers of the 20th century. Century turned out. He described the Schönberg scandal of 1956 as a “wave of character-assassinating actions” against himself.
Written legacy: Part of the legacy, presumably containing all the articles published in the Westfalen-Blatt, is located in the Bielefeld city archives under the call number 200.63. This includes a multi-part series of articles from 1955 about the bombing of Dresden on the night of the 13th, which Schnoor witnessed as an eyewitness. February 1945.
Publications (selection)
Fonts
1919 The Buxheimer Organ Book, a contribution to German organ history in the 15th century. century
1926 Music of the Germanic peoples in the 19th century and XX. Century, Ferdinand Hirt publishing house, Breslau
1932 Guide to the concert hall. Vocal music. Volume 2, oratorios and secular choral works 5. Edition, Breitkopf & Härtel Leipzig
1937 Barnabas of Géczy. Ascension e. Art. Rhapsody in 10 movements, drawings by Hugo Lange, Güntz-Verlag Dresden
1942 Weber at the World Theater. A Freischütz book, German Literature Publishers Dresden
1948 Dresden, four hundred years of German musical culture. On the anniversary of the Staatskapelle and the history of the Dresden Opera, Dresdener Verlagsgesellschaft
1951 Sounds and Shapes. A guide to lively music for concert fans and radio listeners, Schneekluth Darmstadt
1953 History of Music, Bertelsmann Gütersloh
1953 Weber. Shape and Creation, Verlag der Kunst Dresden
1955 Opera, operetta, concert. A practical reference book for theater and concert goers, radio listeners and record lovers
1960 World of Music. An introduction to music studies, Bertelsmann, Gütersloh
1962 Harmony and Chaos. Contemporary music, Lehmann-Verlag Munich
1968 The Hour of the Rosenkavalier. 300 years of Dresden Opera, Süddeutscher Verlag Munich
1969 Wiedenbrück district. Music and theater without its own roof, Westphalian Music Archive Hagen
1975 History of Music, 1. revised paperback edition, German literary publisher Melchert, Hamburg
Arrangements
1943 Carl Maria von Weber: Peter Schmoll, Singspiel in 2 acts. New text by Hans Hasse, musical arrangement by Hans Schnoor
Erwin Kroll (*3. February 1886 in Deutsch Eylau, East Prussia; † 7. March 1976 in West Berlin) was a German pianist, composer, writer and music critic. Like his friend Otto Besch, Kroll was an East Prussian composer.
Life:Around 1900 Kroll came to Königsberg i. Pr. and attended the Royal Hufengymnasium with Otto Besch. At the Albertus UniversityHe studied philology and music. With a doctoral thesis on ETA Hoffmann, who has always been revered in Königsberg, he received his Dr. phil. received his doctorate, he went into teaching. In 1919 he turned entirely to music and continued his studies in Munich, which he had begun with Otto Fiebach and Paul Scheinpflug. There he found an important teacher, especially in Hans Pfitzner. He later dedicated a highly acclaimed book to him. In addition to his studies, Kroll was an accompanist at the Munich State Opera and secretary of the Hans Pfitzner Association for German Music, which Thomas Mann had called for to be founded. In 1925 Kroll returned to East Prussia and became music critic for the Hartungsche Zeitung, and from 1930 onwards it was its features editor.Since 1934 he worked in Berlin as a critic and music writer. After the Second World War he headed the music department of the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk in Berlin until 1953. With his book, Kroll has created a monument to the (forgotten) importance of Königsberg as a music city.
factories
East Prussian homeland - orchestral work
Violin Sonata in B major
Sonatina in F major
East Prussian dances
The Adebar - fantasy about East Prussian folk tunes for large orchestra
Vocal works and song arrangements
Songs for solo voices and choir songs
Fonts
Music city Koenigsberg
Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1923.
Hans Pfitzner. Three Masks Verlag, Munich 1924 .
The theater. Festschrift for the 25th anniversary of the Dortmund Municipal Theater. The theater, Berlin 1930.
Carl Maria Weber. Athenaion, Potsdam 1934 .
Music city Königsberg. Atlantis, Freiburg i. Br. 1966.
Honors
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Cross of Merit on ribbon (27. January 1956)
Cultural Prize of the East Prussian State Team (1960)