46-535: Symphonia domestica (published in 1904 as SYMPHONIA DOMESTICA and in 1926 as Symphonia domestica ), Op. 53, is a tone poem for large orchestra by Richard Strauss reflecting the secure domestic life valued by the composer and accordingly dedicated by him to his "dear wife and young ones." In 1898, Strauss became the chief conductor of the Royal Court Opera in Berlin. It was at this point in his life that
92-501: A music catalogue , the opus number is paired with a cardinal number ; for example, Beethoven 's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor (1801, nicknamed Moonlight Sonata ) is "Opus 27, No. 2", whose work-number identifies it as a companion piece to "Opus 27, No. 1" ( Piano Sonata No. 13 in E-flat major , 1800–01), paired in same opus number, with both being subtitled Sonata quasi una Fantasia ,
138-571: A composer's works, as in the sets of string quartets by Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827); Haydn's Op. 76, the Erdödy quartets (1796–97), comprises six discrete quartets consecutively numbered Op. 76 No. 1 – Op. 76 No. 6; whilst Beethoven's Op. 59, the Rasumovsky quartets (1805–06), comprises String Quartet No. 7, String Quartet No. 8, and String Quartet No. 9. From about 1800, composers usually assigned an opus number to
184-453: A composition, Prokofiev occasionally assigned a new opus number to the revision; thus Symphony No. 4 is two thematically related but discrete works: Symphony No. 4, Op. 47, written in 1929; and Symphony No. 4, Op. 112, a large-scale revision written in 1947. Likewise, depending upon the edition, the original version of Piano Sonata No. 5 in C major, is cataloged both as Op. 38 and as Op. 135. Despite being used in more or less normal fashion by
230-475: A five-fingered pianist. He was an older brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein . Wittgenstein was born in Vienna, the fourth son of the industrialist Karl Wittgenstein and Leopoldine Maria Josefa Kalmus. He was raised as a Catholic; three of his grandparents had converted from Judaism as adults. Only his paternal grandmother had no Jewish lineage. His brother Ludwig was born two years later. The household
276-544: A man with one arm, but he persevered. He then approached more famous composers, asking them to write material for him to perform. Benjamin Britten , Paul Hindemith , Alexandre Tansman , Erich Wolfgang Korngold , Sergei Prokofiev , Karl Weigl , Franz Schmidt , Sergei Bortkiewicz , and Richard Strauss all produced pieces for him. Maurice Ravel wrote his Piano Concerto for the Left Hand , which became more famous than any of
322-739: A much better known figure, the Polish virtuoso Theodor Leschetizky . He made his public début in 1913, attracting favourable reviews. The following year, however, World War I broke out, and he was called up for military service. He was shot in the elbow and captured by the Russians during the Battle of Galicia , and his right arm had to be amputated. During his recovery in a prisoner-of-war camp in Omsk in Siberia, he resolved to continue his career using only his left hand. Through
368-553: A number of important early-twentieth-century composers, including Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) and Anton Webern (1883–1945), opus numbers became less common in the later part of the twentieth century. To manage inconsistent opus-number usages – especially by composers of the Baroque (1600–1750) and of the Classical (1720–1830) music eras – musicologists have developed comprehensive and unambiguous catalogue number-systems for
414-504: A performer, Wittgenstein's posthumous reputation is mixed. Alexander Waugh comments in The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War that between 1928 and 1934, Wittgenstein was "a world-class pianist of outstanding technical ability and sensitivity" but that his playing grew increasingly "harsh and ham-fisted". Orchestras and conductors that had invited him once, seldom sought to rebook him. His tendency to alter and rewrite, without authorisation,
460-467: A specific musical composition, and by German composers for collections of music. In compositional practice, numbering musical works in chronological order dates from 17th-century Italy, especially Venice . In common usage, the word opus is used to describe the best work of an artist with the term magnum opus . In Latin, the words opus (singular) and opera (plural) are related to the words opera (singular) and operae (plural), which gave rise to
506-509: A total value of about US$ 6 billion, which may have been the largest private fortune in Europe. Essentially all family assets were surrendered to the Nazis in return for protection afforded the two sisters under exceptional interpretations of racial laws, allowing them to continue to live in their family palace in Vienna. His wife, Hilde, had been his pupil; they had two children before their marriage,
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#1733084530018552-546: A work of musical composition , a practice and usage established in the seventeenth century when composers identified their works with an opus number. In the eighteenth century, publishers usually assigned opus numbers when publishing groups of like compositions, usually in sets of three, six or twelve compositions. Consequently, opus numbers are not usually in chronological order, unpublished compositions usually had no opus number, and numeration gaps and sequential duplications occurred when publishers issued contemporaneous editions of
598-636: A work or set of works upon publication. After approximately 1900, they tended to assign an opus number to a composition whether published or not. However, practices were not always perfectly consistent or logical. For example, early in his career, Beethoven selectively numbered his compositions (some published without opus numbers), yet in later years, he published early works with high opus numbers. Likewise, some posthumously published works were given high opus numbers by publishers, even though some of them were written early in Beethoven's career. Since his death in 1827,
644-575: Is scored for piccolo , 3 flutes , 2 oboes , oboe d'amore , English horn , clarinet in D , 3 clarinets (2 in B ♭ , 1 in A), bass clarinet in B ♭ , 4 bassoons , contrabassoon , 4 saxophones ( soprano in C, alto in F, baritone in F, bass in C) that are ad libitum (optional)), 8 horns in F, 4 trumpets in F and C, 3 trombones , tuba , timpani , bass drum , triangle , cymbals , glockenspiel , 2 harps , and strings . The program of
690-598: The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV-number) and the Köchel-Verzeichnis (K- and KV-numbers), which enumerate the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , respectively. In the classical period , the Latin word opus ("work", "labour"), plural opera , was used to identify, list, and catalogue a work of art. By the 15th and 16th centuries, the word opus was used by Italian composers to denote
736-583: The Berlin Philharmonic 's performance on 12 December 1904. On that occasion, the concert programme carried the following outline: Strauss reserved the premiere for his American tour in 1904, and Carnegie Hall in New York was booked. He would conduct it himself. Originally the premiere was scheduled for 9 March, but the orchestral parts were delayed, so it was postponed to 21 March. The later date allowed more rehearsals, of which 15 were required before Strauss
782-647: The Domestica was conducted by Gustav Mahler on 23 November 1904. A typical performance of the work lasts approximately forty-four minutes. In 1924 Strauss wrote the Wedding Prelude for two harmoniums ( Trv 247) for the occasion of the wedding of his son Franz with Alice Grab-Hermannswörth, based largely on themes found in the Symphonia Domestica . In 1925, Strauss wrote a piece for Paul Wittgenstein for piano left-hand and orchestra , again using themes from
828-509: The Symphonia Domestica , titled Parergon zur Symphonia Domestica , Op. 73. There is also a two-piano version, which Martha Argerich and Alexandre Rabinovitch recorded in 1995 for Teldec. Opus number In music , the opus number is the "work number" that is assigned to a musical composition , or to a set of compositions, to indicate the chronological order of the composer 's publication of that work. Opus numbers are used to distinguish among compositions with similar titles;
874-610: The Vienna Secession , especially Gustav Klimt . He also owned a number of works by Rudolf von Alt . He also had a large collection of music and musical instruments. John Barchilon wrote a novel based on Wittgenstein's life, called The Crown Prince (1984). An episode of the long-running American television series M*A*S*H , "Morale Victory", featured James Stephens as a drafted concert pianist with debilitating nerve damage in his right hand after being wounded in combat. Charles Winchester ( David Ogden Stiers ) provides him with
920-456: The annexation of Austria , Paul tried to persuade his elder sisters Hermine and Helene (69 and 64 years old at the time) to leave Vienna, but they demurred: they were attached to their homes there, and could not believe such a distinguished family as theirs was in real danger. Ludwig had already been living in England for some years, and Margaret (Gretl) was married to an American. Paul himself, who
966-525: The Danish Ambassador, he wrote to his old teacher Josef Labor , who was blind, asking for a concerto for the left hand. Labor responded quickly, saying he had already started work on a piece. Following the end of the war, Wittgenstein studied intensely, arranging pieces for the left hand alone and learning the new composition written for him by Labor. Once again he began to give concerts. Many reviews were qualified with comments that he played very well for
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#17330845300181012-568: The Italian words opera (singular) and opere (plural), likewise meaning "work". In contemporary English, the word opera has specifically come to denote the dramatic musical genres of opera or ballet, which were developed in Italy. As a result, the plural opera of opus tends to be avoided in English. In other languages such as German, however, it remains common. In the arts, an opus number usually denotes
1058-964: The Mendelssohn heirs published (and cataloged) them as the Italian Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 , and as the Reformation Symphony No. 5 in D major and D minor, Op. 107 . While many of the works of Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) were given opus numbers, these did not always bear a logical relationship to the order in which the works were written or published. To achieve better sales, some publishers, such as N. Simrock , preferred to present less experienced composers as being well established, by giving some relatively early works much higher opus numbers than their chronological order would merit. In other cases, Dvořák gave lower opus numbers to new works to be able to sell them to other publishers outside his contract obligations. This way it could happen that
1104-718: The United States in 1941 he set them up in a house on Long Island , which he visited at weekends from his apartment on Riverside Drive . Wittgenstein became an American citizen in 1946 and spent the rest of his life in the United States, where he did much teaching as well as playing. He died in New York City in 1961 and was initially buried on Long Island, but was later disinterred and reburied in Pinegrove Cemetery, South Sterling, Pike County, Pennsylvania , where his widow had moved. Wittgenstein collected artworks by artists of
1150-536: The case of Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47); after his death, the heirs published many compositions with opus numbers that Mendelssohn did not assign. In life, he published two symphonies ( Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 11 ; and Symphony No. 3 in A minor, Op. 56 ), furthermore he published his symphony-cantata Lobgesang , Op. 52, which was posthumously counted as his Symphony No. 2; yet, he chronologically wrote symphonies between symphonies Nos. 1 and 2, which he withdrew for personal and compositional reasons; nevertheless,
1196-466: The cases of César Franck (1822–1890), Béla Bartók (1881–1945), and Alban Berg (1885–1935), who initially numbered, but then stopped numbering their compositions. Carl Nielsen (1865–1931) and Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) were also inconsistent in their approaches. Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) was consistent and assigned an opus number to a composition before composing it; at his death, he left fragmentary and planned, but numbered, works. In revising
1242-511: The composer took a keen interest in his own circumstances and turned his attention to his status and personal history. When he began composing the Symphonia Domestica , he intended it to be the sequel to Ein Heldenleben , the next installment of the autobiography of the now-successful artist. He worked on the piece during 1903, finishing it on New Year's Eve, in Charlottenburg . The piece
1288-410: The composer's sanction but apparently over Wittgenstein's objections, created two-hand arrangements of Franz Schmidt's Wittgenstein-inspired left-hand works. Pianists born after Wittgenstein who for one reason or another lost the use of their right hands, such as Leon Fleisher (although he eventually recovered his right hand's abilities) and João Carlos Martins , also played works composed for him. As
1334-537: The first conceived after the first piano lesson, when Hilde was eighteen years old and Paul was forty-seven. Because Hilde was not Jewish, Paul was open to charges of " racial defilement "; in 1938 he fled to New York. In 1940 he spent seven months in Cuba, attempting to secure permanent visas for Hilde and himself, and it was in Havana , on 20 August 1940, that they married in a Catholic ceremony. When his wife and children arrived in
1380-415: The first four symphonies to be composed were published after the last five; and (c) the last five symphonies were not published in order of composition. The New World Symphony originally was published as No. 5, later was known as No. 8, and definitively was renumbered as No. 9 in the critical editions published in the 1950s. Other examples of composers' historically inconsistent opus-number usages include
1426-446: The huge orchestra, and the concerts attracted audiences of 6,000 people. The New York and German press were very critical, not just of these exhibitions but of the very work itself, regarding them as a blatant commercialization of the sacred art of music and the intimacy of family life. Strauss responded: "True art ennobles this Hall, and a respectable fee for his wife and child is no disgrace even for an artist". The Viennese premiere of
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1472-414: The inner logic of the work is not clear to me, and, of course I can't play it until it is." He rejected outright Hindemith's Piano Music with Orchestra Op. 29; he hid the score in his study, and it was not discovered until after his widow's death in 2002 (by which time Hindemith himself had been dead for 39 years). He was able to take this approach because he inserted into his contracts with composers
1518-632: The music for Ravel's Concerto for the Left Hand , tells him Wittgenstein's story and encourages him not to abandon his musical gift. Wittgenstein appears as a character in Derek Jarman 's 1993 film Wittgenstein , about his brother Ludwig. Wittgenstein is referenced extensively in the latter half of Brian Evenson's novel Last Days . Wittgenstein's life is the basis for the Neil Halstead song "Wittgenstein's Arm" on his 2012 album Palindrome Hunches . The short story "Transfigured Night" (found in
1564-523: The only two of the kind in all of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas. Furthermore, the Piano Sonata, Op. 27 No. 2, in C-sharp minor is also catalogued as "Sonata No. 14", because it is the fourteenth sonata composed by Ludwig van Beethoven. Given composers' inconsistent or non-existent assignment of opus numbers, especially during the Baroque (1600–1750) and the Classical (1750–1827) eras, musicologists have developed other catalogue-number systems; among them
1610-454: The other compositions that Wittgenstein inspired. But when Wittgenstein made changes to the score for the première, Ravel became incensed and the two never reconciled. Wittgenstein did not perform every piece he had commissioned. He told Prokofiev that he did not understand his 4th Piano Concerto but would someday play it; however, he never did so. He later stated that "Even a concerto Prokofiev has written for me I have not yet played because
1656-475: The same opus number was given to more than one of his works. Opus number 12, for example, was assigned, successively, to five different works (an opera, a concert overture, a string quartet, and two unrelated piano works). In other cases, the same work was given as many as three different opus numbers by different publishers. The sequential numbering of his symphonies has also been confused: (a) they were initially numbered by order of publication, not composition; (b)
1702-497: The stipulation that he held the unique performing rights on a composition during his lifetime. As Wittgenstein explained to Siegfried Rapp on June 5, 1950: You don't build a house just so that someone else can live in it. I commissioned and paid for the works, the whole idea was mine.... But those works to which I still have the exclusive performance rights are to remain mine as long as I still perform in public; that's only right and fair. Once I am dead or no longer give concerts, then
1748-448: The un-numbered compositions have been cataloged and labeled with the German acronym WoO ( Werk ohne Opuszahl ), meaning "work without opus number"; the same has been done with other composers who used opus numbers. (There are also other catalogs of Beethoven's works – see Catalogues of Beethoven compositions .) The practice of enumerating a posthumous opus ("Op. posth.") is noteworthy in
1794-405: The word is abbreviated as "Op." for a single work, or "Opp." when referring to more than one work. Opus numbers do not necessarily indicate chronological order of composition. For example, posthumous publications of a composer's juvenilia are often numbered after other works, even though they may be some of the composer's first completed works. To indicate the specific place of a given work within
1840-408: The work reflects the simplicity of the subject matter. After the whole extended family (including the aunts and uncles) has been introduced, the parents are heard alone with their child. The next section is a three-part adagio which begins with the husband's activities. The clock striking 7 a.m. launches the finale. The most detailed exposition of the work's structure is that which was provided for
1886-503: The works he had commissioned have also contributed to his controversial musical status. The Wittgenstein family had converted to Christianity three generations before his birth on the paternal side and two generations before on the maternal side; nonetheless they were of mainly Jewish descent, and under the Nuremberg laws they were classed as Jews. Following the rise of the Nazi Party and
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1932-576: The works of composers such as: Paul Wittgenstein Paul Wittgenstein (November 5, 1887 – March 3, 1961) was an Austrian-American concert pianist notable for commissioning new piano concerti for the left hand alone, following the amputation of his right arm during the First World War . He devised novel techniques, including pedal and hand-movement combinations, that allowed him to play chords previously regarded as impossible for
1978-471: The works will be available to everyone because I have no wish for them to gather dust in libraries to the detriment of the composer. (Siegfried Rapp was to premiere Prokofiev's 4th Piano Concerto in 1956, five years before Wittgenstein's death.) Many of the pieces Wittgenstein commissioned are still frequently performed today by two-armed pianists; in particular, the Austrian pianist Friedrich Wührer , claiming
2024-401: Was frequently visited by prominent cultural figures, among them the composers Johannes Brahms , Gustav Mahler , Josef Labor , and Richard Strauss , with whom the young Paul played duets. His grandmother, Fanny Wittgenstein, was a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachim , whom she adopted and took to Leipzig to study with Felix Mendelssohn . He studied with Malvine Brée and later with
2070-494: Was no longer permitted to perform in public concerts under the Nazis, departed for the United States in 1938. From there he and Gretl, with some assistance from Ludwig (who acquired British nationality in 1939), managed to use family finances (mostly held abroad) and legal connections to attain non-Jewish status for their sisters. The family's financial portfolio consisted of properties and other assets in Germany and occupied lands with
2116-522: Was satisfied. The Wetzler Symphony Orchestra was adequate, but not much more. During a performance of his Don Quixote two nights earlier, the orchestra had broken down in the middle of the piece. Nevertheless, the performance was a great success, so much so that he was prevailed upon to conduct two more performances in Wanamaker's department store in New York, on 16 and 18 April, for a fee of $ 1,000. An entire sales floor had to be cleared to make way for
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