Background
Klenau was born and died in Copenhagen.
Klenau was born and died in Copenhagen.
Klenau was among Arnold Schoenberg"s advocates during the 1920s, and Schoenberg attended a concert of his music conducted by Klenau in 1923 in Freiburg.
Klenau"s musical output, some of which is undergoing recording revival, includes nine symphonies, three string quartets, and a setting (1919) of Rainer Maria Rilke"s "Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke" among other works.
Also according to Schoenberg, Klenau once defended his use of the twelve-tone technique as the basis of an opera (Klenau"s output includes three twelve-tone-based operas in all, the first from 1932-1933) as an example of National Socialist art, making an analogy of the row with the leader that everything else in the piece needed to follow. (This, and a political analogy made by Socialist composers, Schoenberg equally derided as "nonsense" He refers to Klenau as "the German composer, Paul von Klenau").