Oskar Adler (4 June 187515 May 1955) was an

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

violin The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...

ist,

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

and esoteric savant. He was the brother of the political theorist Max Adler and a key early influence on his contemporary

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...

. His friend and student

Hans Keller Hans (Heinrich) Keller (11 March 19196 November 1985) was an Austrian-born British musician and writer, who made significant contributions to musicology and music criticism, as well as being a commentator on such disparate fields as psychoana ...

called him "one of our century's supreme (if largely private) instrumentalists".

Life and career

Adler was a close friend of Arnold Schoenberg from their schooldays, Adler taught Schoenberg the rudiments of music, gave him his first grounding in philosophy, and played chamber music with him. Though self-taught, Adler for many years led a string quartet whose regular cellist was another composer-friend, Franz Schmidt. Adler also played in Schoenberg's

Society for Private Musical Performances The Society for Private Musical Performances (in German, the ) was an organization founded in Vienna in the autumn of 1918 by Arnold Schoenberg with the intention of making carefully rehearsed and comprehensible performances of newly composed musi ...

, lectured on music and philosophy, as well as giving musical and spiritual advice to, and casting horoscopes for, many of Vienna's leading creative artists. In 1935 the violinist

Louis Krasner Louis Krasner (4 May 1995) was a Russian-born American classical violinist who premiered the violin concertos of Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg. Biography Louis Krasner was born in Cherkassy, Kiev Governorate, Russian Empire (now part of Ukrai ...

consulted Adler (as well as

Carl Flesch Carl Flesch (born Károly Flesch, 9 October 1873 – 14 November 1944) was a Hungarian classical violinist and teacher. Flesch’s compendium ''Scale System'' is a staple of violin pedagogy. Life and career Flesch was born in Moson (now part of ...

) about the solo part of

Alban Berg Alban Maria Johannes Berg ( ; ; 9 February 1885 – 24 December 1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Although he left a relatively sma ...

Violin Concerto A violin concerto is a concerto for solo violin (occasionally, two or more violins) and instrumental ensemble (customarily orchestra). Such works have been written since the Baroque period, when the solo concerto form was first developed, up thro ...

, which Krasner had commissioned but could not, at that time, play. Around this time, Adler was also the teacher of the young Hans Keller, later a musician, writer and Schoenberg-expert resident in the UK. After the

Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...

, Schoenberg tried to arrange for Adler to come to

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

, but he escaped instead to the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

after his visa was secured by Hans Keller's brother-in-law Roy Franey. He settled nearby Keller's family in

Herne Hill Herne Hill () is a district in South London, approximately four miles from Charing Cross and bordered by Brixton, Camberwell, Dulwich, and Tulse Hill. It sits to the north and east of Brockwell Park and straddles the boundary between the London ...

until both of them were sent to the Huyton internment camp near Liverpool. After release he and his wife Paula (Freud) Adler, a fluent pianist, joined Keller's family in the

Lake District The Lake District, also known as ''the Lakes'' or ''Lakeland'', is a mountainous region and National parks of the United Kingdom, national park in Cumbria, North West England. It is famous for its landscape, including its lakes, coast, and mou ...

and performed in chamber music concerts there with Keller. His last years were spent in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. Adler and Schoenberg resumed their friendship by letter in the late 1940s; some of the correspondence is published. Adler's principal books were ''Critique of Pure Music'' (1918, finally published in 2020), and ''The Testament of Astrology'' (published in 3 volumes 1935–37, many subsequent editions). ''The Testament of Astrology'' was translated into English by his pupil Zdenka Orenstein and edited by Amy Shapiro. A biography by Shapiro includes letters, stories and memoirs gathered across twenty years of discovery, of people who recounted the central role that Dr. Oskar Adler played in Vienna's pre-Nazi cultural life before 1938 and while in exile.

References

External links

Portrait of Oskar Adler (circa 1949-51)
by

Milein Cosman Emilie Cosman, known as Milein Cosman, (31 March 1921 – 21 November 2017) was a German-born British artist. She was best known for her graphic work of leading cultural figures, dancers and musicians in action, such as Francis Bacon, Mikhail Bar ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adler, Oskar Austrian classical violinists Austrian male classical violinists 20th-century Austrian physicians Austrian astrologers 20th-century astrologers 1875 births 1955 deaths 19th-century Austrian Jews Jews who immigrated to the United Kingdom to escape Nazism Austrian emigrants to England