Rudi Stephan

Rudi Stephan (29 July 1887 – 29 September 1915) was a German composer of great promise who was considered one of the leading talents of his generation.^[1] He was killed in action during World War I.

Rudi Stephan
Born	(1887-07-19)19 July 1887 Worms, Grand Duchy of Hesse, German Empire
Died	29 September 1915(1915-09-29) (aged 28) Chodaczków Wielki, Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary
Education	Hoch Conservatory
Occupation	Composer

Life

Stephan was born at Worms, Grand Duchy of Hesse, the son of the privy councillor and politician Karl Stephan [de] who was also the head of the local Richard-Wagner-Verband.^[2] Stephan became a composition pupil of Bernhard Sekles at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, and of Rudolf Louis in Munich, where he settled after completing his studies in 1908.^[3]

He left only a few works: his liking for pointedly neutral titles along the lines of 'Music for ...' has caused him to be seen as a forerunner of the 'New Objectivity' of the post-war era, but his music is in fact in a hyper-expressive late-Romantic idiom which has more plausibly been seen by some as a kind of proto-Expressionism.^[1] His father was able to finance the performance of his early works, which at first met with incomprehension, but the premiere of his 1912 Music for Orchestra in Worms was a major critical breakthrough.^[2] He completed his only opera, Die ersten Menschen, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War.^[3] It was eventually premiered in Frankfurt, five years after the composer had been killed in action at Chodaczków Wielki near Tarnopol on the Galician Front.^[2]

His complete extant orchestral works were recorded by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Oleg Caetani.^[4]

List of works

Source:^[5][6][7]

• Opus 1 for Orchestra
• Liebeszauber for baritone and orchestra, after Hebbel (1907, rev. 1911)
• Music for Orchestra [No. 1] (1910)^[8]
• Grotesque for violin and piano
• Music for Violin and Orchestra (1910, rev. 1913)
• Music for Seven Stringed Instruments (2 violins, viola, violoncello, doublebass, harp and piano) (1907–11; unfinished revision for piano quintet, 1914)^[8]
• Music for Orchestra [No. 2] (1912, rev. 1913) [NB this work is often said to be a revision of the 1910 Music for Orchestra, but they are in fact unrelated]
• Die ersten Menschen (1909–14), opera after the erotic mystery-play by Otto Borngräber^[8]