To Phil Klein and to Dr. Alan Krueck,

 without whom this couldn’t exist

 

 

Table of Contents

 

Brief Biography

Personal Characteristics

Hausegger the conductor

Bruckner, Strauss and Hausegger

Other compositions and writings                

Symphonic works                                         

            Dionysian Fantasia

            Barbarossa

Wieland der Schmied

            Natursymphonie

Aufklänge

Images

Footnotes

Bibliography

 

 

Why Siegmund von Hausegger?

 

            Hausegger’s name came to me in a triple coincidence, all three events occurring in the same week. I was reading Finck’s biography of Richard Strauss, where Strauss mentioned Hausegger as an up and coming talent. The musicologist Dr. Alan Krueck gave me an impromptu “Who wrote this and when?” quiz, showing me what turned out to be two pages from the Natursymphonie. (Got the date OK; missed the composer.) Finally, an obituary for Hausegger in Slonimsky’s Music Since 1900 described his music as “…Wagnerously ponderous…feudally Teutonic… Nietzscheanly forensic”. As a lifelong partisan for German Post-Romanticism, I figured that music provoking such criticism was clearly worth knowing. So it began.

 

D O’C 11/1/08