Otto Singer (July 26, 1833 – January 3, 1894) was a German musician also active in the USA. He is best known for his piano transcriptions of orchestral works, including symphonies by

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

Brahms Johannes Brahms (; ; 7 May 1833 – 3 April 1897) was a German composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor of the mid- Romantic period. His music is noted for its rhythmic vitality and freer treatment of dissonance, often set within studied ye ...

Bruckner Joseph Anton Bruckner (; ; 4 September 182411 October 1896) was an Austrian composer and organist best known for his symphonies and sacred music, which includes Masses, Te Deum and motets. The symphonies are considered emblematic of the final ...

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

and

Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( ; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer during the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular ...

Life

Singer was born in Sora,

Saxony Saxony, officially the Free State of Saxony, is a landlocked state of Germany, bordering the states of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Bavaria, as well as the countries of Poland and the Czech Republic. Its capital is Dresden, and ...

. He was educated in

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

, and later in Leipzig until 1865, and after a short residence in Weimar with

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt (22 October 1811 – 31 July 1886) was a Hungarian composer, virtuoso pianist, conductor and teacher of the Romantic music, Romantic period. With a diverse List of compositions by Franz Liszt, body of work spanning more than six ...

went to New York in 1869. In 1873 he went to Cincinnati as assistant musical director, under Theodore Thomas, of the first May Musical Festival, in that year. He composed the cantata ''The Pilgrim Fathers'' for the festival of 1876, and ''Festival Ode'' for the opening of the music-hall in 1878. He also wrote a ''Rhapsodie for Piano and Orchestra'' in C major (1881) dedicated to Hans von Bülow. He remained with the Cincinnati College of Music until 1892, when he returned to New York, where he died. He was an earnest and aggressive disciple of Liszt and

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 ...

both in his compositions and piano performances. He conducted various singing societies, and in addition to the cantata mentioned he composed some piano sonatas and a piano concerto. Otto Singer Jr., his son (September 14, 1863 – January 8, 1931), composer and conductor, produced piano transcriptions of all nine of

's symphonies, at least 57 of Liszt's songs, all four of Brahms's symphonies, vocal-piano reductions (vocal parts plus solo piano) of 12 of Wagner's operas (as well as instrumental solo piano versions for some of them), as well as transcriptions of other works by Richard Strauss, Brahms, Beethoven, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Mahler, among others.Inside back cover of Otto Singer Jr.'s piano reduction of ''Das Liebesverbot''
Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, 1922 He was the teacher of the American composer, Wilson G. Smith.

References

External links

For Otto Singer * For Otto Singer Jr. * 1833 births 1894 deaths People from Bautzen (district) Musicians from the Kingdom of Saxony German composers German male conductors (music) American male composers American conductors (music) American male conductors (music) 19th-century German conductors (music) 19th-century American composers {{Germany-conductor-stub