Humperdinck, E
Humperdinck, Engelbert.
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Winner of the Mozart Prize of Frankfurt 1876 and the Mendelssohn Prize of Berlin 1879.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 1st September 1854, at Siegburg, near Bonn, Hanover, Germany.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 27th September 1921, at Neustrelitz, Germany, aged 67.
DISCIPLINE: Opera composer.
FIELD: Music.
LANGUAGE: German.
PARENTS: Gustav Humperdinck and Gertrud Hartmann.
SIBLINGS: One sister, Adelheid.
SPOUSE: None.
CHILDREN: None.
EDUCATION: Cologne Conservatory, 1872-76; Royal Music School, Munich, 1877-80.
MAJOR WORK: 'Hansel und Gretel', 1893.
LIFE AND TIMES: Engelbert Humperdinck’s musical education began at the age of seven with lessons on the piano, for which he showed talent. His first experience of opera was at the age of thirteen, in 1868, when he heard Lortzing's, 'Undine'. In the same year he began working on two Singspiels, 'Perla' and 'Claudine von Villa Bella' and on the opera 'Harziperes'. In 1869, Humperdinck attended a school in Paderborn, to study architecture but, on the advice of the composer Ferdinand Hiller, he entered the Cologne Conservatory in 1872.
At Cologne, Humperdinck successfully studied harmony and composition, the piano, cello and organ, winning the Mozart Prize of Frankfurt in 1876. This gained him entry to the Royal Music School in Munich in 1877. Studying counterpoint and fugue with organist and composer Josef Rheinberger, he also took private composition lessons.
Upon hearing Richard Wagner's 'Ring' in 1878, he joined the Munich Wagnerian society 'Orden von Gral', whilst writing the choral works 'Die Wallfahrt nach Kevelaar' (1878), 'Humoreske' (1879) and 'Das Gluck von Edenhall' (1879).
In 1879, he won the Mendelssohn Prize of Berlin and later travelled to Italy where he met the composers Giovanni Sgambati in Rome and Wagner* in Naples. Wagner invited Humperdinck to Bayreuth in 1881, where he helped with the first production of 'Parsifal' and apparently became indispensable.
While at Bayreuth he conducted the local amateur music society and, during these years, composed the choral ballads 'Die Wallfahrt nach Kevelaar' (1878), 'Das Glück von Edenhall' (1884), and the 'Humoreske' (1880) for orchestra. Humperdinck won the Meyerbeer Prize of Berlin in 1881 and, with the prize money, moved to Paris.
In February 1885, Humperdinck became private musician to the arms manufacturer, Krupp*, but in November he accepted an appointment teaching theory and composition at the Barcelona Conservatory, Spain.
Having given up this post after only a year, he took a teaching post at the Cologne Conservatory, Germany and became music critic for the newspaper 'Bonner Zeitung'. In 1888, he moved to Mainz as reader and adviser to the German music publishers B. Schott & Sohne, during which time he prepared new editions of Bach's '48' and Auber's opera 'La Cheval de Bronze' and recommended Wolf's ‘Lieder’ to his employers.
During the period 1889-90, he was also opera critic for the 'Mainzer Tageblatt' and private music tutor to Siegfried Wagner, only son of Cosima and Richard Wagner. Then, in 1890, Humperdinck moved to Frankfurt am Main to teach at both the Hoch Conservatory and Stockhausen's school, and be music critic for the 'Frankfurter Zeitung'.
In April 1890, Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, asked him to set to music four stories from 'Hansel und Gretel', the fairytale by the brothers Grimm*, for performance by her children. The resultant piece was performed privately at Wette's house and Humperdinck decided to turn it into a fully-fledged opera. On receiving the completed score in October 1893, Richard Strauss declared the opera a masterpiece and the first performance was conducted by Strauss, at the Hoftheater in Weimar, on 23rd December 1893. It was an instant and immense success so, in 1894, a 'Hansel und Gretel' touring company was founded by Georg Richard Kruse, which included the conductor Gustav Mahler*.
In late 1894, Heinrich Porges asked Humperdinck to provide incidental music for a play entitled 'Konigskinder' written by his daughter, Else Bernstein-Porges, under the pseudonym Ernst Rosmer. She refused to allow the material to be expanded into an opera, so Humperdinck adopted the medium of melodrama, which later influenced Schoenberg*. The work was successfully produced at the Munich Hoftheater in 1897.
Humperdinck was made a professor in Frankfurt in 1896 and a year later he settled in Boppard to devote himself to composition, producing a Moorish Rhapsody for orchestra (1898), the songs of 'Die Maurische Rhapsodie' and he also completed sketches for 'Die Heirat wider Willen'.
In 1900 he moved to Berlin to direct a master-class in composition, where he became a member of the senate of the Academy of Arts. Humperdinck’s opera, 'Dornroschen' was performed in Frankfurt in 1902 and he later completed 'Die Heirat wider Willen in 1905. Having finally gained Ernst Rosmer's consent to transform 'Konigskinder' into an opera, Humperdinck began revising the work in 1907. The opera's premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, on 28th December 1910, was extremely successful, as was the Berlin premiere in January 1911.
Humperdinck attended the London premiere of his pantomime 'Das Mirakel' ('The Miracle') in 1911, where he suffered a physical collapse and his last years were dogged by ill-health.
Named as an honorary member of the Accademia di S.Cecilia in Rome in 1914, Humperdinck finally retired from his Berlin posts in 1920 and died the following year on 27th September 1921,at Neustrelitz.
ASSESSMENT: Although remembered mainly for ‘Hansel and Gretel’, Humperdinck wrote many ambitious operas with great success.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Engelbert Humperdinck, composer
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Glauert, Amanda, "Humperdinck, Engelbert", in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. II, ed. Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan, 1992.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Humperdinck_(composer)