Rudolf Kolisch was a Viennese violinist and leader of string quartets, including the Kolisch Quartet and the Pro Arte Quartet.
Background
Kolisch was born in Klamm, Schottwien, Lower Austria and raised in Vienna, the son of Henriette Anna Theresia (Hoffmann) and Rudolf Rafael Kolisch, a prominent physician and Dozent at the University. His father and maternal grandfather were Jewish, while his maternal grandmother was Catholic.
Education
Following service in World War I, Kolisch attended both the University and the Musikakademie, where he studied violin with Ottokar Ševčik, composition with Franz Schreker and conducting with Franz Schalk, intending at first to make a career as a conductor.
Career
Due to a childhood injury to the middle finger of his left hand, Kolisch, who had already begun to play the violin, relearned the instrument with the functions of the hands reversed. In 1919 he began studying composition with Arnold Schoenberg, who later became his brother-in-law (1924). He put Kolisch to work in the "Society for Private Musical Performances in Vienna" (Verein für musikalische Privataufführungen in Wien).
This led to the creation of a string quartet ("Wiener Streichquartett") to perform both Schoenberg"s music and the classical string quartet repertoire in a manner that would take into account the principles of Schoenberg"s teaching.
Schoenberg directed many rehearsals of this quartet. By 1927 the ensemble had become known as the Kolisch Quartet.
Numerous works were written for this ensemble by composers including Alban Berg, Anton Webern, Schoenberg, and Béla Bartók. Stranded in New York by the entrance of the United States into World World War II, Kolisch at first tried to keep the Quartet together.
When this failed, he took a position on the faculty of The New School, lecturing on "Musical Performance: The Realization of Musical Meaning".
With Otto Klemperer, he co-founded a chamber orchestra at the school, with which he gave the first United States. performances of Bartók"s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Igor Stravinsky"s l"Histoire du Soldat and Schoenberg"s Chamber Symphony Number. 1. During this time he prepared the ensemble and participated in the recording of Schoenberg"s Pierrot lunaire, conducted by the composer. He researched and wrote an article, "Tempo and Character in Beethoven"s Music" which was presented to the New York chapter of the American Musicological Society and later published in two installments in the magazine Musical Quarterly.
In 1944 Kolisch was invited to the University of Wisconsin–Madison to become the new leader of the Pro Arte String Quartet (recorded as the first "Quartet in Residence" at any United States university).
He was also granted a full Professorship. In the 1950s he began to tour in Europe again as a recitalist.
Except for one year (1956) spent in Darmstadt, he remained active in Madison until reaching the mandatory retirement age in 1966. At that time he was invited by Gunther Schuller to become head of the Chamber Music department at the New England Conservatory in Boston.
He remained on the faculty until the end of his life.
During the summers of 1974 through 1977, he also taught chamber music performance at the annual Schoenberg Seminars in Mödling, Austria near Vienna.
Membership
Second Viennese School. Kolisch Quartet; Pro Arte Quartet]
He became a member of the faculty at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany, along with his close friends and long-time associates Eduard Steuermann and Theodor Adorno.