Josef Matthias Hauer
Over the last few weeks, I’ve become increasingly preoccupied with the atonal mysticism of the Viennese composer Josef Matthias Hauer (1883-1959), a marginalised figure in 20th century music. If he is mentioned at all it is usually as a footnote to the work of Arnold Schoenberg, for Hauer himself developed a method of composing with all twelve tones shortly before Schoenberg’s ’emancipation of dissonance.’
Although both composers corresponded and planned to co-author a work on atonal composition, differences in their respective musical philosophies soon led to animosity between the pair, leading Hauer to stamp his correspondence:
The spiritual father and
(in spite of many imitators!)
still the only
master and connoisseur
of twelve-note music.
Hauer’s own theories of atonal music, underpinned by mystical hypotheses, stand in opposition to the type of strict statistical unity that Schoenberg’s ‘method of composing with twelve tones’ ensured (- in which all tones will be represented an equal number of times in the piece). Such a disconcertingly ‘modern’ conception of ‘unity’ is absent from Hauer’s approach, which scholar and composer Dominik Šedivý has called ‘anti-expressionistic.’ Continue reading
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