Background
Hans Pfitzner was born in Moscow on 5 May 1869, the son of a musician.
Hans Pfitzner was born in Moscow on 5 May 1869, the son of a musician.
Pfitzner became a music teacher and conductor in various German towns after 1892, including Strasbourg where from 1908 he was Director of the Conservatory and the Municipal Opera between 1910 and 1926.
Appointed a professor in 1913, he became Bavarian Generalmusikdirektor (General Music Director) in 1920 and taught the master class at the Bavarian Academy of Arts.
A traditionalist composer and champion of romanticism, who devoted much time and energy to combating the ‘modernist’ danger, Pfitzner was strongly influenced by the nationalist movements in European music after World War I. Constantly stressing the German character of his music - one of his compositions was even entitled Von Deutscher Seele {On the German Soul) - Pfitzner was widely admired in right-wing circles as a great patriotic composer, but his fame was restricted to Germany and his music had little impact in other countries.
A recipient of the Goethe Medal in 1934 and other honours, he continued to be productive during the Third Reich. A cello concerto appeared in 1934 and in 1939 Furtwängler conducted the first performance of his Kleine Symphonie. Pfitzner participated in Nazi projects for bringing art to the people, conducting a concert of his own symphonies in 1937 in the unconventional setting of a railway repair shop.
Pfitzner's works were widely played in Nazi Germany and he received the Ehrenring of the city of Vienna in 1944. He died in Salzburg on 22 May 1949, shortly after his eightieth birthday.
A rancorous, hyper-sensitive artist who was constantly complaining that his genius was not sufficiently recognized, Pfitzner saw himself as continuing Wagner’s struggle on behalf of German values and culture even into the Nazi period. He wanted to save the nation through his music and to save music through a revitalized Germany. For all his periodic rancour against Goering and other Nazi leaders, Pfitzner supported their crusade against ‘modernism’ and the intrusion of ‘foreign, subversive’ elements, such as jazz, into German music.
