English version

Biography

Photo: Mara Eggert

Overview

1896 Born in Eitorf/Sieg, grows up in Bonn
1902 First violin lessons
1907 Enters Cologne Conservatory (Joseph Joachim Grant).
His teachers include Carl Körner and Bram Eldering.
1912 First composition
1914 Leaves school, takes Conservatory exams, starts military service
1919 Violin teacher at Heidelberg Academy of Music,
studies composition and musicology
1920 Founds Heidelberg Chamber Orchestra with P. Gies
1923 Leader of the Diaghilev Ballet Orchestra, Munich
1924 Establishes and takes charge of People’s and Youth Music School at Neukölln (Berlin)
1937 Joins the staff of the State Music Conservatory in Berlin (professor from 1940)
1941 Deputy director of Frankfurt Conservatory of Music
1944 Total loss of all previous compositions in an air-raid
1945 Establishes and takes charge of the State College of Musical Education, Trossingen
1952 Director of the Academy of Music and Drama, Hanover
1961 Awarded Large Cross of Merit
1961 Head of Heidelberg Conservatory of Music and Drama till 1969
1973 Dies in Heidelberg (30 October)

Brief biography


Ernst-Lothar von Knorr and Yehudi Menuhin, about 1960/61

Well over 100 works reveal Ernst-Lothar von Knorr as a major composer of the “lost” German war generation, whose development was so seriously affected by war and dictatorship. Initially von Knorr seemed all set for a career as a solo violinist. At the early age of 11 he was admitted to the Cologne Conservatory of Music, studying violin, composition and conducting. Only two years later he presented his first compositions to the public. His early works are largely Gebrauchsmusik for his own use, his mature compositions cover almost all genres of “classical” music and display an open-minded and receptive attitude to a host of aesthetic influences brought to bear on him by his encounters with major international personalities.

Notably his chamber music, songs, choral compositions and orchestral works are remarkable for their formal unity, concentration on the essentials and precision of intent. The songs are mostly settings of poets like George, Hölderlin, Morgenstern, Eichendorff, Goethe, Hesse, Rilke and Uhland. Von Knorr’s response to these poems is markedly unsentimental, combining introvert sensitivity with logical rationality and imbued with a high degree of nobility.

Von Knorr’s ease and versatility enabled him to engage with the very different worlds of traditional counterpoint, earthy Spielmusik and the experimental beginnings of electronic music. He also developed an undogmatic and highly personal response to the twelve-tone techniques of the Second Viennese School.

Among the great 20th century musicians von Knorr encountered )and was in many cases on friendly terms with) were Clifford Curzon, Sergey Diaghilev, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Walter Gieseking, Paul Hindemith, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky and many others.

His relationship to Hindemith was marked not only by the lifelong friendship between the two composers but extended to an “elective affinity” in musical terms, stemming ultimately from their joint commitment to the ideals of the Wandervogel movement spearheaded by Fritz Jöde and Fritz Reusch. This resulted in a large number of superb and by no means patronising works of a pedagogical nature for amateur musicians, an approach given an immense uplift in the Weimar Republic by Kestenberg’s Reformpädagogik movement and the effect it had on music teaching. Von Knorr’s practical contribution to this movement consisted in the establishment of a Youth Music School in the Neukölln district of Berlin, which he was in charge of from 1924 to 1936.


	Ernst-Lothar von Knorr, 1922

The subsequent years were overshadowed by the Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War. Thanks to a largely uncensored position as music officer of the Wehrmacht and despite the constant pressures involved in maintaining a balance between strict non-affiliation to the Nazi party and the avoidance of a total ban on his compositions, he might well have survived this traumatic period without any major setbacks. But disaster struck in 1944. Shortly after his appointment as deputy director of the Frankfurt Conservatory of Music, a devastating air-raid on 24 March destroyed not only a number of public institutions such as Frankfurt Opera House but also von Knorr’s apartment. Almost all his manuscripts and the compositions that had appeared in print up to then were consumed by the flames.

Despite this appalling blow, von Knorr went on composing as prolifically as before in the post-war years, as well as doing sterling administrative work in establishing and running music conservatories in Trossingen, Hanover and Heidelberg. Among the works from this period we find such major compositions as the Diaphonia a due pianoforte, one of von Knorr’s most impressive exercises in sophisticated counterpoint. This testifies not only to his earnest dedication to musical composition but also to the strength of his personality and his refusal to be beaten into submission even by the most crippling setbacks.

While the First Piano Sonata first performed so brilliantly by Clifford Curzon in 1930 appears to have been lost forever, the Sonata for Alto Saxophone of 1932, dedicated to Sigurd M. Rascher, survived in handwritten form and has become one of the standard classical works for saxophone. Other particularly popular works are the Nächtliche Suite, the Partita for solo violin and the Minnelieder for mixed chorus a cappella.

Some of von Knorr’s works, like the Second Cello Sonata and individual movements of the Nächtliche Suite for piano have been successfully arranged for large orchestra and performed by internationally renowned ensembles.

In a review of a recording of chamber music by von Knorr in Fono Forum (Germany’s equivalent of The Gramophone), Wolf-Eberhard von Lewinski spoke of his “stylistic versatility and communicative musicality.” While pointing to the obvious influence of Bartók, the reviewer emphasises the “earthy and reflective expressiveness that was invariably characteristic of von Knorr’s work.”

In conclusion it is appropriate to quote an appreciation published in a festschrift marking the composer’s 75th birthday and penned by one of von Knorr’s closest associates, his former colleague at the Frankfurt Conservatory of Music, Gerhard Frommel: “In his work, the initial inspiration invariably crystallises into a cogent musical idea, while the content is condensed into a convincing form. Thus every individual piece by von Knorr displays a unity and order of its own, perfectly adjusted to the audience it is addressed to in terms of purpose, technical demands, economy or abundance of means, and the degree of sophistication of its musical idiom.”

Peer Findeisen