Joseph Marx (1882–1964)

The Life and Works of the Composer Joseph Marx

Prolog: Return of a major Austrian

The character portrait of Joseph Marx painted by his contemporaries shows us that he was very much an exception to the rule, for in him lay the essence of an artist with a very extraordinary musical talent, a tendency toward the mystical and at the same time highly scientific manner of thinking, a strong sense of pedagogy and humanism, an unusual talent as an author, and striking leadership qualities. These statements may seem exaggerated, but, astonishingly, have demonstrated themselves to be true. Marx was a man of contradictions: as a person an absolute original, as a musician a man of star quality — enormously charismatic, cultured in many ways, sovereign, quick-witted and cutting, but at the same time a true artist with frankly eccentric traits and an extravagant lifestyle. Yet in the company of his friends he was cherished as a kind, sociable man of humanistic character. For his pupils, who came from all corners of the globe, he was a living legend.

Marx’s fame gave way to near-total oblivion after his death because of cultural-political and political upheavals in his homeland. During the decades when he was active as a composer and pedagogue, however, he was one of Austria's few world-famous artists. Today one can hardly imagine the degree to which he was held in repute in the international music scene. Many great composers dedicated works to their colleague Joseph Marx and sent him impressive letters and communications of thanks, friendship, and admiration. This is documented in the manuscript and music collections of the Austrian National Library. These demonstrate that among Marx's friends were composers of such stature as Dmitri Shostakovich, Giacomo Puccini, Arnold Schönberg, Paul Wittgenstein, Arthur Bliss, Zoltán Kodály, Maurice Ravel, Pancho Vladigerov, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Eugene Ormandy, Clemens Krauss, Julius Bittner, Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Karl Böhm, Robert Heger, Hans Swarowsky, Walter Gieseking, Siegmund von Hausegger, Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Kienzl, Franz Lehár, Gabriel Pierné, Ottorino Respighi, Leopold Godowsky, Erkki Melartin, Alban Berg, Eric Zeisl, Aram Khatchaturian, Emil von Sauer, Franz Schmidt, Nikolai Medtner, Sergei Bortkievicz, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Schreker, and Karol Szymanowski.

It is hardly surprising that in the case of Joseph Marx, whose life can be described only in superlatives, the impressive qualities we know about the man are matched, even exceeded, by those of his music. When one considers the nearly limitless esteem in which colleagues from all over the world held his music, his reputation as an acknowledged authority, and his human characteristics, one must ask why the works of such a brilliant composer do not belong to the mainstays of the concert repertoire. The reasons for this have nothing to do with the quality of his music, but instead are found in his homeland. Parts of the Third Viennese School resented Marx's influence as high priest of tonality, and after his death they punished him mercilessly by demonizing his works as »reactionary music« and by placing a thoroughgoing taboo on his works.

Large portrait photography of Richard Strauss who dedicated it to his friend Joseph Marx with the following handwritten inscription:

In retrospect there is not the slightest justification for that which was made out of Joseph Marx after his death. Rather, it is obvious that Marx is largely unknown today because of a very great error. This seems to have been the result of a phenomenon of recent history and peculiar to Austria, in its form unique and irreplicable. The reconstruction of Joseph Marx's biography, characterized by glittering peaks and a sad dénouement, is the subject of research that is years in the making, research that is far from finished. Meanwhile, the entirely deserved renaissance of his works has already begun...

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Important Life Stages and Honors

• 1909: awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Graz and simultaneous publication of prize-winning music theoretical works
• Composition of 156 songs in all, many of which were interpreted by the greatest singers of the twentieth century
• ca. 1910-46: composition of numerous choral and orchestral works, which were performed and premiered by the most important maestros of his time (Ferdinand Löwe, Clemens Krauss, Hans Swarowsky, Miltiades Caridis, Arthur Nikisch, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Josef Krips, Fritz Reiner, Robert Heger, Karl Etti, Milan Horvat, Karl Böhm, Zubin Mehta, and many others)
• 1914-1952: Professor of Music Theory, Harmony, Composition and Counterpoint at the University of Vienna
• 1922-24: Director of the Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in Vienna as successor of Ferdinand Löwe
• 1924-27: unanimously elected Rector of the first Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, which was founded upon his initiative
• 1947-52: Professor of Musicology at the University of Graz
• 1932-33: premier adviser of the Atatürk Government in the development of the Turkish conservatory, music school system and concert life on Western models (his successors were Hindemith, Bartók, and others). Marx thus contributed decisively as an ambassador for understanding between nations, and built bridges between cultures that had previously been entirely unknown to each other
• By far the most active Austrian music pedagogue of the twentieth century, with 1,255 students from countries all over the world during his years in Vienna alone (and thus, like Nadia Boulanger, demonstratively one of the most sought-after music teachers worldwide)
• Influential essayist and music critic, who wrote over the course of several decades for the most renowned newspapers and music journals in Vienna
• Longtime President of the Max Reger Society and President and Honorary Director of the Viennese Mozart Society
• Longtime Austrian representative as juror at international composition competitions
• Longtime President of numerous institutions (often for more than two decades, and until his death) such as the Austrian Composers' Association, the AKM (the Austrian performing rights organization), the Society for the Publication of Monuments of Music, the Society of Austrian Music Educators, the Society of Viennese Critics, and others
• Longtime Austrian representative in all UNESCO juries and panels, and in this function decisively responsible for the reestablishment of Austria's international relations after the Second World War
• Honored by the naming of a prize after him: the Joseph Marx Music Prize of the Province of Styria, established in 1947, which has been awarded to such significant artists as Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Alfred Brendel, Gundula Janowitz and Iván Eröd
• Honorary President of the Union of Styrian Composers, the Austrian Day of Music Cultivation, the Fédération Internale des Sociétés d'Auteurs et Compositeurs (1960), and other entities
• Honorary doctor and member of the Universities of Music and Dramatic Art in Graz and Vienna (Joseph Marx was, after Anton Bruckner, only the second musician to have been awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna)
• Honorary member of the AKM, the Academy of Sciences, the Viennese Schubert Society, the Viennese Konzerthaus Society, the Austrian Composers' Association, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Society for the Friends of Music, the Styrian Music Society, the Austro-Soviet Society, the Franz Lehar Society, the Society for the Promotion of Contemporary Music, the Max Reger Institute, the International Schubert Society, and many others
• Honorary citizen and bearer of the honorary rings of the cities of Vienna and Graz
• Awardee of the Grand Silver Medal of the Republic of Austria (1928), the Grand Austrian State Prize (1950; Marx was the first recipient of this prize), the Music Prize of the City of Vienna (1952), the Music Prize of the Province of Styria (1956), the Grand Medal for Science and Art (1957), and many others

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His Life

Joseph Rupert Rudolf Marx (born 11 May 1882 in Graz; died 3 September 1964 in Graz) was an important Austrian composer, pedagogue, and critic.

Joseph Marx's mother introduced him to music at a young age. As a boy, he attended the famed Johann Buwa piano academy (where Hugo Wolf had been taught the piano), where he developed his virtuosic piano talents. He also taught himself to play the cello and violin at that time. He began to arrange themes from existing piano pieces and smaller works for string trios and quartets while at the Gymnasium, and presented them in local taverns and public houses with friends.

His father urged him to study law, but Joseph quickly changed to philosophy and history of the arts. Though it led to a break with his family, Marx's deepening interest in music led him to resume his composition studies at age 26; in the next four years he wrote the first 120 of his 156 songs. Following the completion of his doctorate in 1914 he assumed the professorship of Music Theory at the Academy of Music of the University of Vienna.

Prior to that, while in Graz Marx had submitted two comprehensive dissertations about the psychology and essence of tonality in the course of musicological research he had conducted over the course of several years, individually testing 8,000 subjects with varying degrees of musical training. These works were based on the pioneering work of the musicologist Hugo Riemann, and one of Marx's dissertations was awarded the Wartinger Prize of the University of Graz. This aspect of Joseph Marx's work, today entirely forgotten, is comparable in its significance to the famous studies of folk song by Zoltán Kodály or Alban Berg's research in music history, and it laid the cornerstone for Marx's future position as the leading authority in Austrian tonal music.

He became director of the academy in 1922. In 1924 he founded the first Hochschule für Musik and remained its director until 1927. In 1932 Atatürk appointed Marx to be the premier advisor for the establishment of the conservatory in Ankara, and to make music education in Turkish schools a reality. He remained in this prestigious position until 1933, and was succeeded by Hindemith, Bartók, and other notable composers of the day. Although he faded into obscurity after his death for reasons that will be further discussed, in his lifetime Marx belonged to a circle of world-renowned composers, and was well acquainted with Giacomo Puccini, Arnold Schönberg, Arthur Bliss, Gabriel Pierné, Zoltán Kodály, Maurice Ravel, Pancho Vladigerov, Eugene Ormandy, Robert Heger, Richard Strauss, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Wilhelm Kienzl, Clemens Krauss, Franz Lehár, Karl Böhm, Julius Bittner, Hans Swarowsky, Walter Gieseking, Siegmund von Hausegger, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Schreker, Ottorino Respighi, Leopold Godowsky, Erkki Melartin, Alban Berg, Aram Khatchaturian, Sergei Bortkievicz, Nikolai Medtner, Franz Schmidt, Karol Szymanowski and many others.

For years, Marx was the senior music critic and essayist for the foremost Viennese music journals and newspapers. In his 43 years as a composition teacher, Marx taught approxmiately 1300 students, many of whom, upon returning to their homelands, went on to achieve their own degree of fame. The true measure of his influence on the music of the twentieth century and his astonishing popularity was evident only after the Austrian National Library made Marx's gigantic correspondence collection available to the public (Marx received around 15000 letters from approximately 3400 different correspondents). The contents brought Marx's central role in the decades-long conflict between tonal music and the avant-garde to light.

Joseph Marx remained active as President of many important institutions and organizations representing Austrian music (for example, the Mozart Trust, the Austrian Composers' Association and the AKM) until his death in 1964. Already highly regarded in international circles as a song composer and teacher, in the years following World War II, Marx labored to reestablish middle European (in particular, the Austrian) musical life, and acted as Austria's representative to all of UNESCO's various committees for the postwar reestablishment of Austrian international relations that were destroyed during the Nazi era. To recognize his work, he was the inaugural recipient of the Austrian State Prize for Music in 1950. He would also receive the Grand Medal for Science and Art, as well as prizes from the city of Vienna and the province of Styria.

Marx was thus active as an influential honoree in the last two decades of his life, until his death in 1964, devoting all his energies to his work as pedagogue, critic, juror, and music functionary. In this way he remained true to his last breath to the Austrian and European musical and cultural life he had shaped and influenced like no other and for so long. And yet he died a fundamentally lonely and broken man, whose lifelong dream of the preservation of high music culture eventually foundered on his unequally great skepticism regarding the future viability of musical modernity.

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The Years Following His Death

Excerpt from a letter sent to Joseph Marx by Ernst Fischer (a famous Austrian politician and renowned [Karl] Marxist) on 11 May 1962, celebrating Marx's 80th birthday:

»Your music reflects the Austrian landscape: the vineyards, the golden leaves of autumn, the brilliant sky overhead, melancholy and kindness, vitality and life, a dream, romantically bewitching Austria. Your strength of character cannot be contained by the borders of this land; you rejected all deals with the devil, and made no concession to conquerors and rulers. Your imagination is not a retreat from reality, and what rings the truest in you is a courageous heart. It is also the wellspring of your mood, which is in opposition to Austrian sloppiness, namely attacks against all overblown, disrespectful dialog about authority. Your rapier wit always complements your gentlest music. You not only have rhythm; you've also got guts. And that, in this place, is to be praised above all else. Therefore, thank you, dear Sir, for your artistry and your courage.«

Although he considered himself a kind of father figure of conservative, tonal music, between the end of World War 2 and his death (1964), Marx was widely regarded as the undisputed, omnipotent authority of Viennese musical life. In fact, in the 1950s Marx was seriously considered as a candidate for the Austrian presidency. However, the reverence with which he was regarded came to an end at the time of his death. During World War II, Marx —stripped of all of his previous titles and positions including his job as a critic for Austrian newspapers that had been taken over by Nazi Germany in 1938— remained in Vienna, where he took the one post that remained available to a famous composer such as himself, lecturing on the »rescue of musical culture from decadence« as he described it.

This, and the fact that Marx neither emigrated, nor strenuously protested the Nazi regime, paved the way for the heralds of the New Modernists to besmirch his reputation as a champion of tonal music in the cultural-political conflict after his death in 1964. This was a relief to the prophets of the new modernity, and they allowed Marx's works to sink increasingly into obscurity during the course of the 1960s. Marx came to be viewed in concrete political terms, and was often labeled a »Nazi functionary«. Confusion with the composer Karl Marx (1897-1985), who during World War II worked in Joseph's hometown of Graz and composed a number of politically serviceable works, brought further shame to Joseph Marx in the years following his death.

In spite of his close friendship with countless Jewish composers such as Herbert Zipper, Erich Zeisl, Marcel Rubin, Franz Schreker and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, efforts were often made to color Joseph Marx as an anti-Semite. These efforts were finally halted when Marx's correspondence revealed a trove of letters received from his many Jewish friends and students, many of whom he personally rescued from deportation. Yet in the face of further defamation campaigns (one of which resulted in the renaming of the Joseph Marx Prize of the Province of Styria), his reputation was almost irreparably damaged and his music was lumped together with the compositional style of the arch conservatives who shared his generation. A majority of his once-beloved works —like those of his fellow tonal composers— thus disappeared from the concert halls. In a certain way Marx's death is emblematic of the downfall of a generation of composers who stood in the way of the new era's development of musical modernity.

And so Austria ultimately professed the New Music as well, and simultaneously rejected one of its formerly »display-quality« composers. As a result, in the music history books published in the years and decades after his death, Marx was portrayed as a somewhat influential, but ultimately arch-conservative music pedagogue whose chief success was presumably in the composition of songs. The Joseph Marx Society, founded in April 2006, seeks to remind the world of Marx's musical versatility and importance, and to bring Marx's forgotten (and in some cases, undiscovered) works back to the concert halls and CD market.

Please click here to read a comprehensive article (English) about Joseph Marx in the Third Reich

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His Private Life

In 1908, at just the time he was writing the bulk of his Lieder in his student quarters in Graz, and shortly before he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy, Marx became acquainted with the singer Anna Hansa (1877-1967), a well-regarded lady in the Graz artistic scene. Anna Hansa was married to the physician Dr. Fritz Hansa, who didn't want to stand in the way of the deep artists' love between his wife and the young »Pepo« Marx. However, he also asked his wife not to divorce him, because this would have hurt him too much. Thus, the marriage between Anna and Fritz Hansa remained intact, at least on paper, until the latter's death in 1941. However, Marx had found in Anna the woman of a lifetime, even if they would later never spend the entire span of a year together, let alone marry.

Anna Hansa was the first singer to perform Marx's songs. His breakthrough as a celebrated Lieder composer — a reputation that would spread throughout Austria in the following years and later throughout the entire world — owes itself to a sensational recital she gave in March 1909. By the time Marx arrived in Vienna in 1914 to take up a position as Professor of Music Theory and Composition at the Viennese Academy of Music, he already occupied a spotlight as one of Austria's most-performed Lieder composers, and he would maintain this rank of a celebrity, which eventually assumed international proportions, to the end of his days.

Marx was friends with the most famous musicians of his time, and had met many important composers of the late nineteenth century; by all accounts he radiated an enormous charisma, which was further aided by his imposing stature, his great shock of wavy hair, and his Roman profile. He was not only a highly-trained philosopher and a rapturous musical poet, but also a strong-willed rebel and provocateur. Despite all this he must have exerted quite a bit of attraction upon artists and singers of the opposite sex. Love letters and presents, sometimes delivered to him even in the presence of Anna Hansa (!), were not infrequent.

Since Joseph Marx had been, since his youth, accustomed to enjoying the ancient pleasures of life to the full, he evidently had affairs with younger women — and made no secret of it — during those months of the year that he spent in his Viennese home. Anna Hansa, who lived in Graz, knew how much the ladies desired her beloved Pepo, but she was also aware that he worshipped her with all his heart despite his affairs. Their correspondence preserved in the Austrian National Library attests impressively to this, as do first-hand reports. And thus she let him continue, despite her jealousy.

A sentimental man who was well aware of the transience of worldy life, Marx once said:

»I love life as much as I fear death. This is why I must experience youth.«

It is said that one of Marx's affairs yielded a child, but we know nothing further about the identity and fate of this supposed progeny. A strange message carved onto one of the lanterns of Marx's honorary grave in Vienna Central Cemetary, probably from one of the ladies who loved him, is the quiet witness of an unusually agitated artist's life.

Marx spent the summer months and other university holidays in the Hansa family's idyllic country house in Grambach, a small village near Graz. Here he composed most of his works. The Villa Hansa, in whose guestbook one finds the names of many prominent musicians and poets, also served as a sort of artists' club, where communal music-making and long walks and excursions into nature took place. According to the official archive of Grambach (written by Maria Hammerl, 1983):

Marx was far ahead of the attitudes of the country folk. Thus he liked to shower in the park on hot summer days. This offended an elderly neighbor of his, and she threatened him loudly with frank curses and drastic gestures. He doesn't seem to have taken this fit of anger terribly seriously, and wrote as a sort of response on a postcard to one of his friends in Vienna: “Grambach is a charming place, but these people...”

He was deeply disappointed when the Hansa family's country home was sold in 1952, and he never got over this. It was at this time that the first signs of his later old-age depression appeared.

Please click here to view pictures of this house where Marx has composed a large part of his works.

In his free time Marx liked to occupy himself with the study of world literature, arts and photography. The pictures of nature scenes he took in his early years (now preserved in the Austrian National Library) demonstrate his precociously developed sense of aesthetics and hint at how he would later develop into an »Austrian impressionist«, as his students called him. In the 1920s and 1930s Marx took his camera along during his many automobile trips, some of which he used as an opportunity to visit friends (such as Zoltán Kodály, Karol Szymanowski and Ottorino Respighi) in their home countries. One day, he invited his friend Alban Berg to accompany him on one of his trips to Italy. Marx, whose enormous scholarship in many areas such as world literature and art is attested to, also felt himself remarkably at home in the technical disciplines and in the natural sciences. Letters of his in which he talked shop about the technical advantages of various automobile models or about the latest scientific discoveries show a further side of the extraordinarily multifaceted Joseph Marx.

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Compositional Style

Hans Jancik in »Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart« (Vol. 8, 1960, p. 1738-39):

»The works of Joseph Marx are musical states of mind of purest character and an expression of an unusual sensitivity for beauty. Mediterranean joy in melody, Roman Impressionism, and the sonic experience of the Silver-Age Russian School, especially that of Scriabin, are combined in Marx's works in a synthesis all his own. One notes additionally a strong sense of polyphony, which accounts for the lively formation of even the inner voices. Balancing the constantly overflowing fantasy is the incisive thought of the highly trained musical scholar seeking to bring content and form into a unity.«

The harmonic colors in the works of Max Reger, Claude Debussy, and Alexander Scriabin exerted the greatest influence on the young Joseph Marx. His works are the product of an individualist who remained an unapologetic hedonist deeply in love with Mother Nature, most strongly identifying with the highly spiritual-intellectual, voluptuous lifestyle of the ancient world and its mythology. Like Scriabin, Marx sought to use art as an expression for the transcendental aspects of the soul.

With the sweeping and monumental Herbstsymphonie (Autumn Symphony) of 1921, Marx drove late romantic/impressionistic harmonic vocabulary to an orgiastic climax that left no opportunity – or need – for improvement or advancement. The Herbstsymphonie is the crown jewel of a body of orchestral works colored by unrestrained passion that is doubtless Joseph Marx's musical legacy.

A further high point in Marx's compositions can be found in the choral work »Ein Neujahrshymnus« (A New Year's Hymn), with which, following his song-writing period (1910-1914), Marx closed his late Romantic phase of choral composition. Finally, in 1932 he combined song and expansive, lyric orchestration in the song symphony »Verklärtes Jahr« (Transfigured Year). Although his orchestral and choral works were overshadowed by his popular songs, in the main they show a sharply defined sense of polyphony and unconventional harmony. Here Marx achieves a maximum sonic effect, often taking individual instruments of the orchestra to their very limits.

While Marx's gift for melody, and his fully developed tonal language caused him to be regarded as a »revolutionary« among traditionalists, many of his works require an extremely high degree of technical achievement. Difficulties for soloists as well as conductors and players often result in a lack of transparency and differentiation in his sometimes extremely polyphonically complex sonic structures.

These facts are undeniable proof of the fact that Joseph Marx was a virtually unprecedent combination of the highly trained scholar and the most genuine artist's soul. This alone can explain why his music was perceived as so extraordinarily euphonious, and at the same time it is an entirely satisfactory justification for the high technical demands that Marx makes of the musician in his scores. It may well be one of Marx's most important trademarks that his music, composed the greatest artfulness, is much more difficult to render in performance than the melodies and the rich sonority would lead one to believe.

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His Works

All of Marx's works are published by Universal Edition, Vienna, with the exception of the string quartets and the two works for string orchestra, which are available from the Viennese music publisher Doblinger.

The German publisher Schott International is another useful source for Marx's scores. Schott is the German distributor of Universal Edition, Vienna.

We also recommend the Marx study scores of the publisher Jürgen Höflich. Currently in stock: Romantic Piano Concerto, Idyll for orchestra and Eine Herbstsymphonie (Autumn Symphony). The latter will be available in November 2006.

Vocal works

Songs/Orchestral songs

• 156 Lieder, some twenty of which are also available as orchestral songs (approx. one third of the songs are still unpublished)
• Verklärtes Jahr (Transfigured Year) for medium voice and orchestra (song cycle, 1930-32; also available for voice and piano)

Choral works

• Ein Neujahrshymnus (A New Year's Hymn) for mixed (or male) choir and orchestra (1914)
• Berghymne (Mountain Hymn) for mixed (or male) choir and orchestra (ca. 1910)
• Herbstchor an Pan (Autumn Chorus to Pan) for mixed choir, boys's choir, organ and orchestra (1911)
• Morgengesang (Morning Chant) for male choir and orchestra (1910)
• Abendweise (Evening Melody) for male choir, brass orchestra, timpani and organ (1912)
• Gesang des Lebens (Song of Life) for male choir and organ (1914)

Note: Some of these choral works are also available in other arrangements.

Instrumental works

Orchestral/Symphonic works

• Eine Herbstsymphonie (Autumn Symphony, 1921)
• Eine symphonische Nachtmusik (Symphonic Nocturne, 1922)
• Idylle — Concertino über die pastorale Quart (1925)
• Eine Frühlingsmusik (Spring Music, 1925)
• Eine festliche Fanfarenmusik (Festive Fanfare Music) for brass orchestra, timpani and snare drum (1928)
• Nordland-Rhapsodie (Nordic Rhapsody, 1929)
• Alt-Wiener Serenaden (Old Vienna Serenades, 1941)
• Sinfonia in modo classico, for string orchestra (1944)
• Partita in modo antico, for string orchestra (1945)
• Feste im Herbst (Autumnal Revelries, 1946)

Concertos

• Romantisches Klavierkonzert (Romantic Piano Concerto) in E Major (1919-20)
• Castelli Romani for piano and orchestra in E Flat Major (1929-30)

Other works

• Three string quartets
• Three piano quartets
• »Trio-Phantasie«
• Two violin sonatas
• Works for cello and piano
• Six pieces for solo piano
• Ten more piano pieces (published in 2007)
• Ten organ pieces (published in 2007)
• A series of songs with chamber ensemble accompaniment

Books

• Harmonielehre (Harmony) according to Joseph Marx. By his student Friedrich Bayer. Universal Edition, Vienna 1933
• Kontrapunktlehre (Counterpoint) according to Joseph Marx. By his student Friedrich Bayer. Universal Edition, Vienna 1935
• Betrachtungen eines romantischen Realisten. Collection of essays, articles and speeches of Joseph Marx. Published by Oswald Ortner. Gerlach & Wiedling, Vienna 1947
• Weltsprache Musik (Music as a universal language). Bedeutung und Deutung tausendjähriger Tonkunst. Austria-Edition, Vienna 1964

For further information on Joseph Marx's life and work, please visit Berkant Haydin's comprehensive website:

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