DrAeSekE.org
Title
Felix Draeseke Web Pages
Description
Felix Draeseke Societies
Ever since the death of Felix Draeseke on 26 February 1913 there have been admirers and supporters who have championed his music. The very first centered around his wife Frida Draeseke, who worked tirelessly on behalf of her late husband's music. This group was made up of younger contemporaries and students of the composer. Within five years after Draeseke's death the entire German musical scene had been altered by the consequences of World War I.
The aesthetics of the New German School - western music's avant-garde of the mid- and late-nineteenth century - were viewed as causal in the misery following Versailles and young liberals treated musicians and apologians of Wagnerian-Lisztian orientation with particular distrust and malice. Among those who persisted in their efforts on behalf of Draeseke during the unsettled years of the Weimar Republic were the composer's young friend Theodor Röhmeyer and his onetime students Otto zur Nedden and Hermann Stephani.
By 1931 Draeseke's admirers had decided upon the foundation of a society which indeed came into being in 1932, appropriately named the Felix Draeseke Gesellschaft. By that time a young musicologist who had written his dissertation on Draeseke's symphonic poems and preludes had become associated with the group. He was Erich Roeder and his two volume biographical study, "Felix Draeseke. Der Lebens- und Leidensweg eines deutschen Meisters" ("Felix Draeseke. A Path of Life and Suffering for a German Master," Berlin-Dresden 1932/37) remains the fundamental source for study regarding Draeseke. Erich Roeder was a confirmed Nazi, a member of the National Socialist Party, and one who posed proudly in his SA uniform with obligatory and brutish "Herrenblick" ("gaze of the master"). Through him Draeseke was sponsored for membership among an elite of dead Germanic composers whom the Nazis would promote to purge the names of Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer and Mahler from performance.
Languages
English
Contact
- International Draeseke Society
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- Brownsville PA
- United States 15417
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- +1.51867404
Additional Information
Related Domains
External Links
- Alexa: DrAeSekE.org
