Christopher Anderson 
Karl Straube (1873–1950) 
Germany’s Master Organist in Turbulent Times

The first thorough examination of the most renowned and influential organist in early twentieth-century Germany and of his complex relationship to his country’s tumultuous and shifting sociopolitical landscape.


In the course of a multifaceted career, Karl Straube (1873-1950) rose to positions of immense cultural authority in a German musical world caught in unprecedented artistic and sociopolitical upheaval. Son of a German harmonium-builder and an intellectually inclined English mother, Straube established himself as Germany’s iconic organ virtuoso by the turn of the century. His upbringing in Bismarck’s Berlin encouraged him to develop intensive interests in world history and politics. He quickly became a sought-after teacher, editor, and confidante to composers and intellectuals, whose work he often significantly influenced. As the eleventh successor to J. S. Bach in the cantorate of St. Thomas School, Leipzig, he focused the choir’s mission as curator of Bach’s works and, in the unstable political climate of the interwar years, as international emissary for German art. His fraught exit from the cantorate in 1939 bore the scars of his Nazi affiliations and issued in a final decade of struggle and disillusionment as German society collapsed.

Christopher Anderson’s book presents the first richly detailed examination of Karl Straube’s remarkable life, situated against the background of the dynamic and sometimes sinister nationalism that informed it. Through extensive examination of primary sources, Anderson reveals a brilliant yet deeply conflicted musician whose influence until now has been recognized, even hailed, but little understood.

Cuprins

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Part I. Berlin 1873-1897

1. Headwaters

2. Mentors

3. Liftoff

Part II. Wesel 1897-1902

4. New beginnings

5. Reger

6. ‘I’d like finally to get on with it!’

Part III. Leipzig 1903-1918

7. A Berliner in (little) Paris

8. Off the organ bench

9. Trouble in paradise

10. ‘In my naïveté’

11. Emmi Leisner

12. Deaths and transfigurations

Part IV. Intermezzo: Leipzig 1918-1920

13. Decision point

14. Portraits in ambivalence

Part V. Leipzig 1920-1929

15. On the road and at the negotiating table

16. Politics I

17. ‘When the days of darkness come’

18. Colleagues

19. The treadmill

20. Movements in time

21. ‘God preserve Karl Straube’

Part VI. Leipzig 1930-1939

22. Bach on air

23. Politics II

24.
Praeceptor Germaniae

25. The spring of our discontent

26. Beyond the Rhine

27. Deceptive cadence

28.
Tempelreinigung

Part VII. Leipzig 1940-1950

29. The Franciscan way

30. Perils

31.
Götterdämmerung 1943

32. Gone with the wind

33. Reckonings

34. ‘Like sand through the fingers’

Epilogue: Musical Offering

Bibliography

Index

Despre autor

CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON is Associate Professor of Sacred Music, Perkins School of Theology and Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.