Joseph Beer
Encyclopedia
Joseph Beer (ˈjoːzəf ˈbeːɐ; May 7, 1908 – November 23, 1987) was a composer
, mainly of operetta
s, singspiel
e, and opera
s.
Joseph Beer had early success in 1930s Vienna and Europe. Because of his convictions and of his origins he had to flee from Nazi
invasion
. Beer lived in a conflictually withdrawn position from the musical scene after the end of the war. Nevertheless he never stopped composing new works until the end of his life and his music was played in Scandinavia until 2000.
near Lemberg/Lwów
, the second child of Usi Isidore, a wealthy banker, and Amelie Esther Malka Silver; he had an older brother and a younger sister. Beer started composing in his early teens and attended the Lviv Conservatory
during his High School years.
To please his father, he agreed to a contract: a successful year of law studies at Lviv University
against musical education. As he succeeded in the final exam (on the question of Lex Salica), he could therefore apply at the Staatsakademie und Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna
. Not only did he gain admission, he was allowed to skip the first four years and enter directly in the master class
es of Joseph Marx
.Joseph Marx also first had to study law to appease his father. Following this success, his father set Joseph up in a two-bedroom apartment in central Vienna with his own baby-grand piano. In 1930, he graduated with highest honours.
and toured with the company extensively in Austria and throughout the Middle East. While on tour, he played some of his compositions to the librettist
Fritz Löhner-Beda
who was so impressed that he became very instrumental in young Joseph Beer's budding career. Their first collaboration, Der Prinz von Schiras, which also included the librettist Ludwig Herzer, premiered on March 31, 1934 at the Zurich Opera House
and subsequently toured extensively in Europe and South America.
Joseph Marx wrote a congratulatory letter to his former pupil, enthusiastically stating that in his first work, Joseph Beer had displayed a knowledge and mastery that "few established operetta composers possess." Joseph Beer was barely 25 years old.
Beer's second work, Die Polnische Hochzeit to a libretto by Fritz Löhner-Beda and Alfred Grünwald
, premiered in Zurich in 1937. It saw tremendous success and was performed throughout Europe on some 40 stages (including the Theater an der Wien
in Vienna, the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, and the Teatro Fontalba in Madrid) and translated into eight languages in the space of a couple of years.
Following the Anschluss
in 1938, Beer had to flee Austria and was granted a visa
by the French government and he settled in a hotel room in Paris
. He adapted instrumental works for orchestras and received a commission
from a conductor at the Zurich Opera House for a work to be performed under the latter's name. He completed this work, including all orchestral and voice parts, in just three weeks, and without the benefit of a piano.
After the German invasion of Paris in 1940, Beer, who was enrolled in the Polish army-in-exile, tried to reach his troops in England. But the last boat from Bordeaux was gone. He then escaped to Nice
in the south of France where he stayed until the end of the war.
While continuing to arrange orchestral works, he also composed his third major work, Stradella in Venedig based on Alessandro Stradella
's episode in Venice. When the Nazis completed their occupation of France in 1942, Beer had to go into hiding, using the name "Jean Joseph Bérard". During this time, his father, his mother and his sister who had remained in Lemberg/Lwów were caught in the Lemberg Ghetto. Postcards written under false names from the ghetto to their son Joseph also under a false name as he was in hiding in Nice, may show that they survived the Lviv pogroms
of 1941. But the end of any communication in 1942 may show that they had been sent to concentration camps, maybe after the "Great Aktion" (Großaktion) of August 1942 when between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews were deported from the Lemberg Ghetto to Belzec
. Joseph Beer always thought his parents had been murdered in Auschwitz
and his younger sister Suzanne in Buchenwald
. His librettist Fritz Löhner-Beda was murdered in Monowitz (Auschwitz III) on December 4, 1942.
Following the events of the war, Beer became increasingly withdrawn and refused performance rights to his previous works. Still, Polnische Hochzeit was performed in Scandinavia
without his co-operation or consent —even posthumously up until 2005— often under the title Masurkka. In 1946 his oratorio
Ave Maria premiered at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Nice. Stradella in Venedig, composed during his years in hiding, premiered in 1949 at the Zurich Opera House. The music critic Kurt Pahlen called it "a comic opera of the highest sort" and the member of the Académie Française
André Roussin
adapted the libretto to the French stage. Beer spent most of his time until his death in 1987 creating two new works : the singspiel
La Polonaise (1975) and Mitternachtssonne (1987) and revising Stradella.
based in Philadelphia.
In 1966, Beer earned a doctorate
in musicology
from the Sorbonne University
under the direction of renowned musicologist Jacques Chailley and the presidency of the French philosopher and musicologist, Vladimir Jankélévitch
. The topic of Beer's thesis was The Evolution of Harmonic Style in the Work of Scriabin
for which he received the highest honors (Très honorable avec félicitations du jury
).
Of late, Joseph Beer's family founded the Joseph Beer Foundation to perpetuate the memory of the composer and to increase his appreciation and recognition by a worldwide audience.
Joseph Beer is the Composer-in-Residence In Memoriam of The Atlantic Coast Opera Festival, a Philadelphia-based international summer opera festival.
He died in Nice
in 1987.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, mainly of operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
s, singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...
e, and opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s.
Joseph Beer had early success in 1930s Vienna and Europe. Because of his convictions and of his origins he had to flee from Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
invasion
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
. Beer lived in a conflictually withdrawn position from the musical scene after the end of the war. Nevertheless he never stopped composing new works until the end of his life and his music was played in Scandinavia until 2000.
Early life
Joseph Beer was born in 1908 in ChodorówKhodoriv
Khodoriv is a city in the Lviv Oblast of western Ukraine. It has a population of 10,080.The city was first mentioned in 1394. In many historic documents it is referred to as Khodoriv-stav. In many documents it is named Khodoriv-stav. It is connected with a male name Fedir and the situation of the...
near Lemberg/Lwów
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
, the second child of Usi Isidore, a wealthy banker, and Amelie Esther Malka Silver; he had an older brother and a younger sister. Beer started composing in his early teens and attended the Lviv Conservatory
Lviv Conservatory
The Lviv National Musical Academy, M. Lysenko is a state conservatory of Ukraine based in Lviv.-History:...
during his High School years.
To please his father, he agreed to a contract: a successful year of law studies at Lviv University
Lviv University
The Lviv University or officially the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv is the oldest continuously operating university in Ukraine...
against musical education. As he succeeded in the final exam (on the question of Lex Salica), he could therefore apply at the Staatsakademie und Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. Not only did he gain admission, he was allowed to skip the first four years and enter directly in the master class
Master class
A master class is a class given to students of a particular discipline by an expert of that discipline—usually music, but also painting, drama, or any of the arts....
es of Joseph Marx
Joseph Marx
Joseph Rupert Rudolf Marx was an Austrian composer, teacher and critic.-Life and career:Marx pursued studies in philosophy, art history, German studies, and music at Graz University, earning several degrees including a doctorate in 1909. He began composing seriously in 1908 and over the next four...
.Joseph Marx also first had to study law to appease his father. Following this success, his father set Joseph up in a two-bedroom apartment in central Vienna with his own baby-grand piano. In 1930, he graduated with highest honours.
Career
Joseph Beer joined a Viennese ballet company as conductorConducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
and toured with the company extensively in Austria and throughout the Middle East. While on tour, he played some of his compositions to the librettist
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...
Fritz Löhner-Beda
Fritz Löhner-Beda
Fritz Löhner-Beda , born Friedrich Löwy, was an Austrian librettist, lyricist and writer.- Life :He was born in Wildenschwert, Bohemia ....
who was so impressed that he became very instrumental in young Joseph Beer's budding career. Their first collaboration, Der Prinz von Schiras, which also included the librettist Ludwig Herzer, premiered on March 31, 1934 at the Zurich Opera House
Zurich Opera House
Opernhaus Zürich is an opera house in the Swiss city of Zurich. It has been the home of the Zurich Opera since 1891.- History :...
and subsequently toured extensively in Europe and South America.
Joseph Marx wrote a congratulatory letter to his former pupil, enthusiastically stating that in his first work, Joseph Beer had displayed a knowledge and mastery that "few established operetta composers possess." Joseph Beer was barely 25 years old.
Beer's second work, Die Polnische Hochzeit to a libretto by Fritz Löhner-Beda and Alfred Grünwald
Alfred Grünwald (librettist)
Alfred Grünwald was an Austrian author, librettist, and lyricist. Some of his better-known works were written in conjunction with the composers Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, Paul Abraham, and Robert Stolz.After the Anschluss the family emigrated to the United States in 1940 via France...
, premiered in Zurich in 1937. It saw tremendous success and was performed throughout Europe on some 40 stages (including the Theater an der Wien
Theater an der Wien
The Theater an der Wien is a historic theatre on the Left Wienzeile in the Mariahilf district of Vienna. Completed in 1801, it has seen the premieres of many celebrated works of theatre, opera, and symphonic music...
in Vienna, the Teatr Wielki in Warsaw, and the Teatro Fontalba in Madrid) and translated into eight languages in the space of a couple of years.
Following the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
in 1938, Beer had to flee Austria and was granted a visa
Visa (document)
A visa is a document showing that a person is authorized to enter the territory for which it was issued, subject to permission of an immigration official at the time of actual entry. The authorization may be a document, but more commonly it is a stamp endorsed in the applicant's passport...
by the French government and he settled in a hotel room in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. He adapted instrumental works for orchestras and received a commission
Commission (art)
In art, a commission is the hiring and payment for the creation of a piece, often on behalf of another.In classical music, ensembles often commission pieces from composers, where the ensemble secures the composer's payment from private or public organizations or donors.- Commissions for public art...
from a conductor at the Zurich Opera House for a work to be performed under the latter's name. He completed this work, including all orchestral and voice parts, in just three weeks, and without the benefit of a piano.
After the German invasion of Paris in 1940, Beer, who was enrolled in the Polish army-in-exile, tried to reach his troops in England. But the last boat from Bordeaux was gone. He then escaped to Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
in the south of France where he stayed until the end of the war.
While continuing to arrange orchestral works, he also composed his third major work, Stradella in Venedig based on Alessandro Stradella
Alessandro Stradella
Alessandro Stradella was an Italian composer of the middle baroque. He enjoyed a dazzling career as a freelance composer, writing on commission, collaborating with distinguished poets, producing over three hundred works in a variety of genres.-Life:Not much is known about his early life, but he...
's episode in Venice. When the Nazis completed their occupation of France in 1942, Beer had to go into hiding, using the name "Jean Joseph Bérard". During this time, his father, his mother and his sister who had remained in Lemberg/Lwów were caught in the Lemberg Ghetto. Postcards written under false names from the ghetto to their son Joseph also under a false name as he was in hiding in Nice, may show that they survived the Lviv pogroms
Lviv pogroms
The Lviv pogroms were two massacres of Jews living in and near in the city of Lwów, the occupied Republic of Poland , that took place from 30 June to 2 July and 25–29 July 1941 during World War II. 700 Jews were killed in the rioting by some Ukrainian nationalists and Ukrainian militia and further...
of 1941. But the end of any communication in 1942 may show that they had been sent to concentration camps, maybe after the "Great Aktion" (Großaktion) of August 1942 when between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews were deported from the Lemberg Ghetto to Belzec
Belzec extermination camp
Belzec, Polish spelling Bełżec , was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust...
. Joseph Beer always thought his parents had been murdered in Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
and his younger sister Suzanne in Buchenwald
Buchenwald concentration camp
Buchenwald concentration camp was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.Camp prisoners from all over Europe and Russia—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes,...
. His librettist Fritz Löhner-Beda was murdered in Monowitz (Auschwitz III) on December 4, 1942.
Following the events of the war, Beer became increasingly withdrawn and refused performance rights to his previous works. Still, Polnische Hochzeit was performed in Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
without his co-operation or consent —even posthumously up until 2005— often under the title Masurkka. In 1946 his oratorio
Oratorio
An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...
Ave Maria premiered at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Nice. Stradella in Venedig, composed during his years in hiding, premiered in 1949 at the Zurich Opera House. The music critic Kurt Pahlen called it "a comic opera of the highest sort" and the member of the Académie Française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...
André Roussin
André Roussin
André Roussin, , was a French playwright. Born in Marseille, he was elected to the Académie française April 12, 1973.-Bibliography:*1933 Patiences et impatiences*1944 Am Stram Gram...
adapted the libretto to the French stage. Beer spent most of his time until his death in 1987 creating two new works : the singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...
La Polonaise (1975) and Mitternachtssonne (1987) and revising Stradella.
Later life
After the war years Beer married a young German Jewish refugee, Hanna Königsberg, in 1957. She bore him two daughters, Suzanne and Béatrice. Suzanne is a Paris-based, award-winning artist and philosopher, Béatrice an international sopranoSoprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
based in Philadelphia.
In 1966, Beer earned a doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...
in musicology
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
from the Sorbonne University
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
under the direction of renowned musicologist Jacques Chailley and the presidency of the French philosopher and musicologist, Vladimir Jankélévitch
Vladimir Jankélévitch
Vladimir Jankélévitch was a French philosopher and musicologist.- Biography :Jankélévitch was the son of Russian Jewish parents, who had emigrated to France....
. The topic of Beer's thesis was The Evolution of Harmonic Style in the Work of Scriabin
Alexander Scriabin
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and pianist who initially developed a lyrical and idiosyncratic tonal language inspired by the music of Frédéric Chopin. Quite independent of the innovations of Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed an increasingly atonal musical system,...
for which he received the highest honors (Très honorable avec félicitations du jury
Très honorable avec félicitations
Très honorable avec félicitations, meaning "Highly Honorable with Praise", is the highest academic distinction awarded for doctorates in the French academic university system, equivalent to the US Summa Cum Laude...
).
Of late, Joseph Beer's family founded the Joseph Beer Foundation to perpetuate the memory of the composer and to increase his appreciation and recognition by a worldwide audience.
Joseph Beer is the Composer-in-Residence In Memoriam of The Atlantic Coast Opera Festival, a Philadelphia-based international summer opera festival.
He died in Nice
Nice
Nice is the fifth most populous city in France, after Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse, with a population of 348,721 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Nice extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of more than 955,000 on an area of...
in 1987.
External links
- Joseph Beer — biography and works at Klassika
- Die Neue Welt, Vienna, (November? 1934), p. 6, Review of Der Prinz von Schiras at the Theater an der WienTheater an der WienThe Theater an der Wien is a historic theatre on the Left Wienzeile in the Mariahilf district of Vienna. Completed in 1801, it has seen the premieres of many celebrated works of theatre, opera, and symphonic music...