Alfred Ottokar Lorenz (11 July 1868,

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

– 20 November 1939,

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

) was an Austrian-German conductor, composer, and musical analyst. His principal work is the four-volume ''Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner'', which attempts to comprehensively analyze some of

Richard Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...

's best-known operas. Lorenz's work reflects to a great extent his sympathy with Nazi ideology, and has only recently been discredited by scholarship.

Life

Lorenz was born in Oldislobene in 1868. Lorenz's father was

Ottokar Lorenz Ottokar Lorenz (17 September 1832 – 13 May 1904) was an Austrian-German historian and genealogist. He was born in Iglau (now Jihlava, Czech Republic) and died in Jena. He was the father of chemist Richard Lorenz (1863-1929). He studied philol ...

, a historian who studied

genealogy Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...

. His father's interest in genealogy may have influenced Alfred Lorenz's later interest in race and his eventual involvement with Nazi ideology. In 1885, Lorenz moved to

Jena Jena (; ) is a List of cities and towns in Germany, city in Germany and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 in ...

, where he began his legal studies in 1886. Lorenz ended his legal studies in 1889, and began studying music with Robert Radecke and

Philipp Spitta Julius August Philipp Spitta (27 December 1841 – 13 April 1894) was a German music historian and musicologist best known for his 1873 biography of Johann Sebastian Bach. Life He was born in , near Hoya, and his father, also called Phili ...

in Berlin. Lorenz's career as a conductor and composer lasted until 1920, when he was forced to retire by the

Social Democrats Social democracy is a social, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achieving social equality. In modern practice, s ...

. Lorenz then moved to Munich, where he spent the rest of his life as an academic. Lorenz joined the

Nazi party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...

in 1931, and remained an active party member until his death in 1939.

Analytical works

''Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner'', 1924–1933

''Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner'' consists of four volumes, each of which analyzes one of Wagner's operas. The four operas covered by Lorenz are

Der Ring des Nibelungen (''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the . The compo ...

Tristan und Isolde ''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is a music drama in three acts by Richard Wagner set to a German libretto by the composer, loosely based on the medieval 12th-century romance ''Tristan and Iseult'' by Gottfried von Stras ...

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (; "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg"), WWV 96, is a music drama, or opera, in three acts, by Richard Wagner. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks between acts, and is traditio ...

, and

Parsifal ''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is freely based on the 13th-century Middle High German chivalric romance ''Parzival'' of th ...

. To analyze these large, dramatic works, Lorenz develops a set of forms, and then proceeds to show in specific detail how Wagner's operas can be divided into these forms. One of Lorenz's forms is the

Bar form Bar form (German: ''die Barform'' or ''der Bar'') is a musical form of the pattern AAB. Original use The term comes from the rigorous terminology of the Meistersinger guilds of the 15th to 18th century who used it to refer to their songs and the ...

''AAB'', which has a historical legacy dating back to medieval poetry. Another of Lorenz's forms is the Bogen form, which in its simple form is ''ABA''. In his time Lorenz was considered to be the leading expert in Wagnerian form. His formal ideas regarding Wagner's operas were enormously influential; McClatchie suggests that by 1952, Lorenz's formal conception of Wagner's operas was almost "universally accepted."McClatchie p.169 More recently, however, scholars have roundly dismissed Lorenz's on purely analytical grounds, but also with consideration for how Lorenz's association with the Nazi party may pertain to the ideological bias of his work.

Writings

* ''Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner'' ** ''Der musikalische Aufbau des Bühnenfestspieles "Der Ring des Nibelungen"'' (Berlin, 1924) ** ''Der musikalische Aufbau von Richard Wagners "Tristan und Isolde"'' (Berlin, 1926) ** ''Der musikalische Aufbau von Richard Wagners "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg"'' (Berlin, 1931) ** ''Der musikalische Aufbau von Richard Wagners "Parsifal"'' (Berlin, 1933) ** ''Alessandro Scarlatti's Jugendoper: Ein Beitr. z. Geschichte d. ital. Oper'' ; Bde(B. Filser, 1927)

Notes

References

*McClatchie, Stephen (1998). ''Analyzing Wagner's Operas: Alfred Lorenz and German Nationalist Ideology''. University of Rochester Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lorenz, Alfred 1868 births 1939 deaths German composers German conductors (music) German male conductors (music) German musicologists German music theorists Emigrants from Austria-Hungary to Germany