Autograph Musical Quotation from the First Completely 12-tone Opera, "Karl V."

Autograph Musical quotation of 12 tones, signed "Ernst Krenek," with the original transmissal envelope postmarked 1978. 9.7 x 14.7 cm manuscript paper, mounted to card.


"Karl V (1933) is emblematic of the difficulties Krenek faced both as an individualist in an era of stultifying ideologies and as a champion of modernist compositional techniques. Although the work was commissioned by the Vienna State Opera, the 1934 premiere was cancelled, the result of political intrigue and artistic sabotage.// Krenek had become a controversial figure by the early 1930s. His compositions and essays had earned him the enmity of the Nazis, and his works were banned from performance in Germany from 1933 onwards. Although the subject matter of Karl V (about a Holy Roman emperor who attempts to reunite the Christian world) should have found favor with Austrian conservatives, Krenek’s political aloofness and modernist compositional techniques made him a suspect figure in Austrian cultural circles as well....Karl V has the distinction of being the first complete 12-tone opera. From an aesthetic point of view, Krenek’s use of dodecaphonic techniques provides a unifying structure to the work’s episodic dramatic outline while simultaneously allowing an otherworldly and unsettling melodic/harmonic overlayering." (William Grim) (9886)

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AMQS

Classical Music

$350.00

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