thumb|Felix Draeseke, oil portrait by [[Robert Sterl (1907)]]

Felix August Bernhard Draeseke (7 October 1835 – 26 February 1913) was a composer of the "New German School" admiring Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. He wrote compositions in most forms including eight operas and stage works, four symphonies, and much vocal and chamber music.

Life

Felix Draeseke was born in the Franconian ducal town of Coburg, Germany. He was attracted to music early in life and wrote his first composition at age 8. He encountered no opposition from his family when, in his mid-teens, he declared his intention of becoming a professional musician. A few years at the Leipzig Conservatory did not seem to benefit his development, but after one of the early performances of Wagner's Lohengrin he was won to the camp of the New German School centered on Franz Liszt at Weimar, where he stayed from 1856 (arriving just after Joachim Raff's departure) to 1861. In 1862 Draeseke left Germany and made his way to Switzerland, teaching in the Suisse Romande in the area around Lausanne.

Upon his return to Germany in 1876, Draeseke chose Dresden as his place of residence. Though he continued having success in composition, it was only in 1884 that he received an official appointment to the Dresden Conservatory and, with it, some financial security. In 1894, two years after his promotion to a professorship at the Royal Saxon Conservatory, at the age of 58, he married his former pupil Frida Neuhaus. In 1912 he completed his final orchestral work, the Fourth Symphony. On 26 February 1913 Draeseke suffered a stroke and died; he is buried in the Tolkewitz cemetery in Dresden. His operas Herrat (1879, originally Dietrich von Bern) and Gudrun (1884, after the medieval epic of the same name) met with some success, but were subsequently neglected.

Draeseke keenly followed new developments in all facets of music. His chamber music compositions make use of newly developed instruments, among them the violotta, an instrument developed by Alfred Stelzner as an intermediary between viola and cello, which Draeseke used in his A major String Quintet, and also the viola alta, an instrument developed during the 1870s by Hermann Ritter and the prototype of viola expressly endorsed by Richard Wagner for his Bayreuth Orchestra. After the Second World War, changes in fashion and political climates allowed his name and music to slip into obscurity.

Operas

  • König Sigurd - opera in 3 acts after Emanuel Geibel's Sigurd (1853–7)
  • Dietrich von Bern - opera in 3 acts (1877; revised by Otto zur Nedden, 1925)
  • Gudrun - opera in 3 acts (1879–84)
  • Bertram de Born - opera in 3 acts (1892–4)

Choral and vocal (religious and secular)

  • Christus. Mysterium in a Prelude and Three Oratorios, Opp. 70–73 (1895–9):
  • Prelude: Die Geburt des Herrn (The Birth of the Lord), Op. 70
  • First Oratorio: Christi Weihe (Christ's Consecration), Op. 71
  • Second Oratorio: Christus der Prophet (Christ the Prophet), Op. 72
  • Third Oratorio: Tod und Sieg des Herrn (Death and Victory of the Lord), Op. 73
  • Grand Mass in A minor, Op. 85 (1908–9)
  • Requiem in E minor (1909–10)
  • Columbus, Cantata for soprano, baritone, male chorus, and orchestra, Op. 52 (1890)
  • Der Mönch von Bonifazio Op. 74, a melodrama (1901)

Chamber music

  • String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 27 (1880)
  • String Quartet No. 2 in E minor, Op. 35 (1886)
  • String Quartet No. 3 in C-sharp minor, Op. 66 (1895)
  • Quintet in A major 'Stelzner-Quintett' for 2 violins, viola, violotta, and cello (1897)
  • Quintet in F major for 2 violins, viola, and 2 cellos, Op. 77 (1901)
  • Quintet in B-flat major for piano, string trio and horn, Op. 48 (1888)
  • Viola Sonata No. 1 in C minor (1892)
  • Viola Sonata No. 2 in F major (1902)
  • Clarinet Sonata in B-flat major, Op. 38 (1887)
  • Cello Sonata in D major, Op. 51 (1890)

Portions of this page are reprinted by permission of the Internationale Draeseke Gesellschaft and International Draeseke Society/North America.

References

;Notes

;Sources

  • M. Guiérrez-Denhoff and H. Loos, Eds. Felix Draeseke: Chronik seines Lebens. Gudrun Schröder Verlag, Bonn, 1989.
  • S. Döhring, H. John, and H. Loos, Eds. Deutsche Oper zwischen Wagner und Strauss. Gudrun Schröder Verlag, Bonn, 1998.
  • A. H. Krueck. The Symphonies of Felix Draeseke. A Study in Consideration of Developments in Symphonic Form in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century, Zürich Diss. phil 1967.
  • Website of the International Draeseke Society
  • Complete list of Compositions by Draeseke
  • Complete list of Recordings of Draeseke's Music