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Alois Melichar

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Austrian composer and conductor (1896–1976)

Alois Melichar (18 April 1896, in Vienna – 9 April 1976, in Munich) was an Austrian composer, conductor, arranger, and music critic. He was a student of Joseph Marx at the Vienna Academy of Music, then of Franz Schreker at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, but later became increasingly culturally conservative.

From 1923 to 1926 Melichar was in the Caucasus, where he collected materials on Caucasian folk songs. He then lived in Berlin and Vienna. As a composer, he followed the safe footpath of Max Reger, Hans Pfitzner, and Paul Graener; he wrote a symphonic poem, Der Dom (1934); Rhapsodie über ein schwedisches Volkslied (1939); Lustspiel-Ouvertüre (1942); lieder; and film music.

Under contract to UFA he composed music for many films during the National Socialist period.

After World War II Melichar became increasingly polemic in his attacks on modernist music. His pamphlets include Die unteilbare Musik ("Indivisible music" 1952), Musik in der Zwangsjacke ("Music in the Straitjacket" 1958), and Schönberg und die Folgen ("Schoenberg and his Consequences" 1960).

Selected filmography

Bibliography

  • Schmidl, Stefan (2018). The Film Scores of Alois Melichar. Studies in the Music of Austro-German Cinema 1933–1956. Vienna: Morawa. ISBN 978-3-99084-003-0.

References

  1. Alois Melichar bio
  2. Franz Schreker, 1878-1934: a cultural biography - Page 301 Christopher Hailey - 1993 "Many composers, among them the Schreker students Alois Melichar and Alexander Ecklebe, turned to conducting or ... "
  3. Michael Kennedy Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma 2006 Page 394 "'One after the other', Solti wrote, 'each singer broke down in tears and dropped out of the ensemble, but they recovered themselves and we all ended together.'6 The conductor and composer Alois Melichar described how, as the Trio began, ..."
  4. Miguel Mera, David Burnand European film music - Page 21 - 2006 "Speaking for most film composers, Alois Melichar called for the music chamber to establish specific guidelines to resolve the problem.20 These, however, were never made - a typical manoeuvre of Nazi bureaucracy."
  5. Pierre Cadars, Francis Courtade Le cinéma nazi 1972 - Page 99 "A partir de diverses partitions de Mozart, Alois Melichar a composé, une fois encore, une bonne musique d'accompagnement, très bien enregistrée, très bien utilisée. Le film ne manque pas d'en bénéficier, ainsi, chose plus rare dans le ..."
  6. Wim Denslagen Romantic Modernism: Nostalgia in the World of Conservation - Page 74 2011 "In 1954, Alois Melichar asserted in his pamphlet, Überwindung des Modernismus, that, after the catastrophe of 1945, "every opponent of atonal racket and abstract kitsch was automatically labelled a Nazi."
  7. E. Michael Jones Dionysos rising: the birth of cultural revolution out of the ... 1994 Page 153 "Alois Melichar describes the publicity campaign waged against those who objected to the first performance of Moses und Aaron, three years after the composer's death. Those who objected were stigmatized as anti-Semites."
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