They bid on two typewritten, signed letters ofComposer, conductor and music writer Gerhard von Keussler (1874-1949).
Each with a handwritten addition.
Dated Berlin, 27. July and 2nd September 1940.
Aimed at the pianist, composer, writer and music critic Erwin Kroll (1886-1976). He was with a Jewish woman (Lisbeth Kroll, née. Radok, 1890-1975) was married and therefore had problems getting new orders.
Erwin Kroll is not named as the recipient (salutation: “Dear and dear Doctor” & “Dear Signore”); However, the letters come from Erwin Kroll's estate.
About a cure and travel plans.
Signed"Your hearing. Keussler" & "G. Keussler."
Scope:one A4 page each; Owithout envelope.
Condition: Paper browned, slightly stained and wrinkled; the second letter with a small tear. bPlease also note the pictures!
Internal note: Kroll 2021-12-18 Autograph Autograph
About Gerhard von Keußler andErwin Kroll (source: wikipedia):
Gerhard von Keussler (* 5. July 1874 in Alt-Schwanenburg, Livonia; † 21. August 1949 in Niederwartha near Dresden) was a German composer, conductor and music writer.
Life:Gerhard von Keußler came from a Baltic German pastor's family and received his first music lessons in his parents' home. Since his father was called to Saint Petersburg in 1885, he completed his education at the St. Peter's School there and then worked as a private tutor. In 1894, Keußler began studying botany in Dorpat, before a successful concert with his own songs in 1899 persuaded him to become a musician professionally. In 1900 he enrolled at the Leipzig Conservatory and studied composition with Carl Reinecke, counterpoint with Salomon Jadassohn and cello with Julius Klengel. At the same time, he studied art science at the University of Leipzig, which he completed in 1902 with a doctoral thesis on The Limits of Aesthetics. In the same year he stopped studying music due to disagreements. In 1903 Keussler moved to Dresden.
At the beginning of 1906, Keußler was appointed choir director of the German Singing Society in Prague, where he remained until 1918. During this time he also led the music association's concerts and gave lectures on music history and music aesthetic topics. In 1904, Keußler became a member of the Freemasons, whose principles soon had a significant influence on his thoughts. He was a member of the Prague lodge "Hiram to the Three Stars", to which he later dedicated the vocal-symphonic work The Great Alliance.
From 1918 to 1922 Keußler worked as a conductor of the Sing-Akademie and, at times, of the Philharmonic Concerts in Hamburg. He then only worked as a guest conductor and accompanist and moved to Stuttgart. In the 1920s, Keußler was very committed to social security for musicians. In 1926, his followers founded a “Gerhard von Keußler Society” in Stuttgart and Prague to help the composer's music become more widespread.
In 1932 Keußler went to Australia, where over the next three years he made great contributions to improving musical life. In 1934 he was appointed music director at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne. The composer processed his time in Australia in the symphonic works Xenion and Australia, both of which were never premiered in Australia.
When he returned to Germany at the end of 1935, Keussler was confronted with National Socialism. He refused both to join the Reichsschrifttumskammer and to comply with the request to exclude Jewish members from the "Keußler Society". In 1939, the composer himself dissolved the company. Otherwise, Keußler remained largely unaffected by Nazi cultural policy because his friend, Reich Music Chamber President Peter Raabe, protected him. Raabe also arranged for him to direct a master class for composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1936, which Keußler held until 1945.
At the end of the 1930s, Keußler planned to stay in Australia again, but this was prevented by the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1939 he was expelled from the Reich Music Chamber and banned from performing, but towards the end of the war there were a few concerts with Keußler's compositions again.
In 1941 the composer moved to Niederwartha in Saxony and lived there in the house of his younger sister Lisbeth von Keußler (1879–1972), a painter. Gerhard von Keußler spent the last years of his life in seclusion here.
In 1944 he received the Goethe Medal for Art and Science.
Artistic work: Keußler's musical work consists predominantly of vocal works, for which he wrote the poems himself. Large-scale oratorios and operas, which the composer described as “symphonic dramas”, dominate here. The texts of the works mainly deal with philosophical topics. Among the instrumental works, two extensive, single-movement symphonies stand out. Keußler's music, which is often heavily contrapuntal, is characterized as “filled with a deep seriousness that lies beyond the musical and effective” (Helmut Scheunchen). In the MGG (1. Edition) Erwin Kroll calls Keußler a “lonely high-altitude hiker who writes in tones” and “a special phenomenon within the last German late romantic period” and puts his work stylistically close to Felix Draeseke, Hans Pfitzner, Richard Wetz and Heinrich Kaminski.
Gerhard von Keußler's works were hardly performed after his death, which is probably due to the fact that most of the compositions require a large cast and the composer's musical language is generally considered difficult to access. Only some of the works were published in print, mostly in small print runs.
Keußler published numerous essays on music in newspapers. He showed a lively interest in earlier eras of music history and adapted numerous pieces by old masters, e.g. B. Palestrinas. He was also the first to advocate playing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem without Franz Xaver Süßmayr's parts. He advocated supplementing the unfinished work with parts from other Mozart mass compositions.
Keussler's extensive estate, which, in addition to musical works, also contains writings on music and philosophy as well as poems, is kept in the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar.
Edited by Denis Lomtev, Keußler's previously unpublished orchestral works have been published by Laurentius-Musikverlag since 2020.
Works (selection)
Operas
(Libretto: Gerhard von Keußler)
Changes, symphonic drama in 7 pictures (partial performances: Coburg 1904, Dresden 1905; not performed as a whole)
Prisons, symphonic drama in 3 parts (premiere: Prague 22. April 1914)
The Geisselfahrt, symphonic drama in 2 parts (premiere: Hamburg 17. September 1923)
The Brother, symphonic drama in 3 acts (libretto completed, music only sketched out incoherently)
Oratorios
Jesus from Nazareth, biblical oratorio (text: Bible, G. v. Keußler; premiere: Prague 2. June 1917)
The Mother, a Marian oratorio (text: Bible, G. v. Keußler; premiere: Hamburg 25. November 1919)
Zebaoth, biblical oratorio (text: Bible, G. v. Keußler; premiere: Frankfurt am Main 13. June 1924)
In Young Days, a folk oratorio based on old German songs (premiere: Heidelberg 26. February 1926)
Songs
(Texts: Gerhard von Keußler)
In changing times, 6 songs with orchestra (individual songs later divided into other cycles)
To the Harvest, cycle for voice and orchestra
Songs based on your own poems for voice (tenor or alto) and piano:
Booklet 1: On the Road, 6 Songs (1903)
Booklet 2: Rhapsody, 7 songs (1903)
Issue 3: From the diary, 6 sketches (1902–1905)
Booklet 4: On Atonement, 6 scenes (1903, 1913)
Booklet 5: The Companion, monodramatic cycle, 6 songs (19??)
Booklet 6: The Grand Alliance, 3 songs (1912, later expanded into a symphonic poem)
Issue 7: The Song of Love (1913)
Issue 8: The old stove (1914)
Issue 9: Echoes, 4 songs (1917)
Booklet 10: To Loneliness, singing from the symphonic drama "Changes" (1901)
Symphonies and symphonic poems
(Texts of the vocal-symphonic works: Gerhard von Keußler)
June Night by the Sea, symphonic poem (19??, probably unperformed)
Resurrection and Last Judgment, symphonic fresco for recitation and orchestra (1904)
Oriental Fantasy for Orchestra (1909)
Death, symphonic poem for soprano, male choir and orchestra (before 1911, unperformed)
Symphony A major (1916, adaptation of Death, only 1. and 4. Sentence preserved, earlier version under the title "Visions of Death")
To Death, melodramatic symphony for recitation and orchestra (1922)
Symphony in D minor (1925)
The Grand Alliance, symphonic poem for alto and orchestra (1928, original version in 1912 as a song cycle)
Symphony in C major (1929)
The Castle, symphonic poem for alto, boys' choir and orchestra (1929)
Asma, symphonic poem for alto and orchestra (1931)
Xenion, symphonic scene for children's choir and orchestra (1933, unperformed)
Praeludium solemne for organ and orchestra (1934)
Australia, symphonic fantasy (1935, also under the title "On New Being")
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)