The Duo, published in 1872, is his Opus 11, and there is an additional listing in the IMSLP for a student violin piece that was published as Opus 65. I searched through the Internet Archive and all the publications in Jstor, but I found nothing. The only reference in the Worldcat is a listing for a 1905 Edison cylinder recording of "The Old Grist Mill," a piece for concert band. [Isn't it interesting that the person running an old grist mill in the Germanic world of old would have been a Müller?]
A Google Books search finally took me to a review of the "Grosses Duo" in the April 23rd, 1873 edition of the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, a magazine started by Robert Schumann, and now (as in 1873) edited by one Joseph Müller, a librarian from Berlin.
The reviewer mentions that the piece was dedicated to Ernest II, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, (the brother of Prince Albert who married Queen Victoria) and states that the "Grosses Duo" is, at 49 pages, indeed big. Then he mentions something about the greatness of God being only in the dimensions, and in that regard this duo is the smallest ever put on paper. He calls the motives "everyday," the passages "threadbare," and the accompanying figures "uninteresting." He likens the sound of the piece to the way warm sugar water tastes: not absolutely ugly or unnatural, but immeasurably boring. He declares that one would require the patience of Job to make it through the piece just once. In the footnote to the review he makes sure to mention that he finds the cover tasteless.
While many people have another Mueller on the brain this weekend, I have been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about Otto, the unknown Müller. I guess one lousy review in the most important publication in the Germanic musical world can destroy a composer's chances of having his music played.
I like to think that if Joseph Müller had been a violist (rather than a librarian) he might have liked the piece. It is great fun to play, but the PDF in the IMSLP is really difficult to read. I took action with my iPad and my magic pencil and spent a couple of days cleaning up the PDF. The cleaned-up viola part is now in the IMSLP.
So now I can get to one of the points of this post: the great being the enemy of the good. Germany in 1873 was a hotbed of great composers. The recently dead cast long shadows, and the great composers who were living wrote a lot of great music. Perhaps this critic considered it his job to cut down and insult composers who were not among the greats. Having spent a couple of decades of my life as a critic, I can understand the way he might have felt about his position in relation to the musical world.
Once very early in my "career" as critic I wrote a note to the editor about a recording I didn't like. It wasn't a review. It was just a note to explain why I was not writing a review. The editor published the note in the magazine as if it were a review. I was really upset. I wrote a letter of apology to the person who made the recording, but never heard anything back. Could Joseph Müller have had any second thoughts about his review? I wonder.
As a violist and a former (reformed) critic I can say in these humble pages that I think the Otto Müller Duo is good. It's good enough to warrant the practice time and rehearsal time required to give a good performance, and it's good enough to warrant the time it took to clean up the part.
UPDATE: I found an entry for Otto Müller in German Wikipedia!
Otto Müller, son of the composer and Regenschori of St. Ulrich in Augsburg, Donat Müller (1804-1879), received his first music lessons from his father. He subsequently studied German literature and music at the University of Munich as well as harmony, counterpoint and organ at the conservatory.
After a first two years as a concert director in Winterthur, he worked at several theaters in Switzerland, most recently in Lyon. In 1869 he moved to Vienna, where he was first employed as an organist at the church on the court. In addition he gave private music lessons. Later he was appointed choirmaster at the Hernals Redemptorist Church, a position he held for ten years. He was also the professor of harmony and counterpoint at the school of the Vienna General Church Music Association until 1915.
His honorary grave is located in the Grinzinger cemetery (group 18, number 138) in Vienna.
No comments:
Post a Comment