Egon Wellesz

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Lore & Background

Egon Wellesz was born on 21 October 1885 in the Schottengasse district of Vienna to Samu and Ilona Wellesz, both originally from Hungary and Jewish. He formally left the Jewish community on 4 October 1917, converted to Protestantism on 14 October 1917, and in 1933 both he and his wife converted to Catholicism. As a boy he attended the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium on Hegel Street, receiving a classical education in Greek and Latin. His parents intended him for law, but attending a performance of Carl Maria von Weber's *Der Freischütz* under Gustav Mahler at the Vienna State Opera on 21 October 1898—his 13th birthday—moved him to become a composer. He began piano studies with his mother's teacher, Carl Frühling. In 1905, at age 19, he studied harmony and counterpoint at Eugenie Schwarzwald's school with Arnold Schoenberg while attending law classes. At Schwarzwald's school he met poet Rainer Maria Rilke, architect Adolf Loos, painter Oskar Kokoschka (who painted his portrait in 1911), and his future wife, Emmy Stross. His lessons with Schoenberg lasted only months; he then studied musicology with Guido Adler at the University of Vienna later in 1905. His 1921 book on Schoenberg remains a standard source on Schoenberg's early period. Wellesz married Emmy Stross in 1908, a very long and happy marriage. He graduated in musicology in 1908, his dissertation on composer Giuseppe Bonno published the following year. In 1913 he joined the University of Vienna faculty as a lecturer in music history. That year his String Quartet No. 1, Op. 14 premiered on 31 October, showing clear influence of Mahler and Schoenberg. Wellesz was the first pupil of Schoenberg to gain independent success as a composer, receiving a contract from Universal Edition before Berg or Webern. He completed five operas and three ballets in the following 12 years, with libretti by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Jakob Wassermann. Operas like *Alkestis* (1924) and *Die Bakchantinnen* (1931) use techniques from Monteverdi and Gluck. In 1922, with Rudolph Reti and others, he founded the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik (IGNM), which evolved into the International Society for Contemporary Music in 1923. In 1929 he was promoted to professor at the University of Vienna, succeeding Adler. Forced to leave Austria after the Anschluss on 13 March 1938, he was in Amsterdam on 12 March 1938 to hear his orchestral suite *Prosperos Beschwörungen* conducted by Bruno Walter. In England he worked on Grove's Dictionary of Music, but in July 1940 he was interned as an enemy alien in Hutchinson Camp, Isle of Man. He gained release on 13 October 1940 thanks to Ralph Vaughan Williams and H. C. Colles. Following internment he found himself unable to compose until the String Quartet No. 5 (1943–44) broke the block. His setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins' *The Leaden and the Golden Echo* in 1944 also helped re-kindle his urge to compose. He received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1932 and later a fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he remained until his death. His pupils included Herbert Chappell, Martin Cooper, Kunihiko Hashimoto, Spike Hughes, Frederick May, Wilfrid Mellers, Nigel Osborne and Peter Sculthorpe. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1953. A portrait was made by Jean Cooke, commissioned by Lincoln College. Wellesz continued composing until a stroke in 1972. He died two years later and was buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. His widow Emmy returned to live in Vienna until her own death in 1987.

Reader's Guide

Egon Wellesz's significance lies in his dual legacy as a composer and a pioneering musicologist. As a composer, he was the first pupil of Arnold Schoenberg to achieve independent success, with works ranging from atonal string quartets to operas based on ancient mythology, such as *Alkestis* (1924) and *Die Bakchantinnen* (1931). His dramatic music, influenced by Monteverdi and Gluck, contrasted with the Wagnerian tradition. He wrote nine symphonies (starting in 1945) and nine numbered string quartets (spanning 1912 to 1966). Several symphonies have titles: the second (the English), fourth (the Austriaca) and seventh (Contra torrentem). The Third Symphony (1950–51) was only published posthumously and received its world premiere in Vienna in 2000. Other compositions include the Octet, Op. 67 (using Schubert's combination); a piano concerto, Op. 49; a violin concerto, Op. 84; and vocal works with orchestral or chamber accompaniment. As a scholar, Wellesz made foundational contributions to the study of Byzantine music and 17th-century opera. His early musicological research focused on Baroque opera, particularly Giuseppe Bonno, subject of his dissertation. He edited Johann Joseph Fux's 1723 opera *Costanza e fortezza* for publication in Adler's *Denkmäler* and published a monograph on Fux in 1965. His interest in Byzantine music began in 1913 from dialogues with art historian Josef Strzygowski. Wellesz co-founded the International Society for Contemporary Music in 1923, with Edward J. Dent as its first president. He wrote a key early book on Schoenberg in 1921. His academic career included a professorship at the University of Vienna (1929–1938) and a fellowship at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he taught notable pupils. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1953 and received an honorary doctorate from Oxford in 1932.

Did You Know?

• Wellesz formally left the Jewish community on 4 October 1917 and converted to Protestantism just 10 days later, on 14 October 1917.
• He was the first pupil of Arnold Schoenberg to gain independent success as a composer, receiving a contract from Universal Edition before Alban Berg or Anton Webern.
• Wellesz was interned as an enemy alien in Hutchinson Camp on the Isle of Man in July 1940, and was released on 13 October 1940 thanks to Ralph Vaughan Williams and H. C. Colles.
• His Third Symphony (1950–51) was only published posthumously and did not receive its world premiere until 2000 in Vienna.
• Wellesz's wife Emmy was an art historian specializing in the art of India and a disciple of Josef Strzygowski, whose theories sparked Wellesz's interest in Byzantine music.

The Boy Who Heard Mahler Conduct Weber

Egon Joseph Wellesz was born in 1885 in Vienna's Schottengasse district to Hungarian-Jewish parents, Samu and Ilona Wellesz. His father ran a textile business, and the family's plan for him was straightforward: study law, then enter the family trade or become a civil servant. He attended the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium, where he received a classical education in Greek and Latin, while his mother, an amateur pianist and music enthusiast, encouraged him to take piano lessons with her own teacher, Carl Frühling. But the moment that redirected his entire life came on his thirteenth birthday, October 21, 1898, when his parents took him to the Vienna State Opera to hear Gustav Mahler conduct Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz. The experience so profoundly moved the adolescent that he resolved to become a composer. He still enrolled at the University of Vienna as a law student to honor his parents' wishes, yet his true ambitions had already shifted irrevocably toward music.

Between Schoenberg's Apartment and Adler's Institute

In 1905, at nineteen, Wellesz began a double life: by day attending law lectures at the University of Vienna, and by evening studying harmony and counterpoint with Arnold Schoenberg in the composer's Liechtensteinstrasse apartment. Schoenberg's training was rigorous and thorough, though it lasted only a few months before Wellesz pivoted to musicology under Guido Adler, the founder of the University's Musicological Institute. Adler, a leading editor of the Austrian Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich, became equally formative. The two influences—Schoenberg's compositional discipline and Adler's archival scholarship—shaped Wellesz's dual identity as both creator and historian, and his 1921 book on Schoenberg remains a standard reference on the composer's early period. Beyond the studios, Schwarzwald's school became a social crucible: Wellesz conducted a school choir, befriended the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the architect Adolf Loos, and the painter Oskar Kokoschka, who painted his portrait in 1911, and met his future wife, Emmy Stross, a fellow student there.

The Byzantine Turn and the Strzygowski Circle

Wellesz's lifelong fascination with Byzantine music did not emerge from a musicological vacuum. In 1913, he began engaging with the theories of the Austrian art historian Josef Strzygowski, who argued in his work Orient oder Rom that key elements of Early Christian architecture, including the rounded dome, originated in the East rather than the West. Wellesz had direct access to Strzygowski through his wife Emmy, an art historian specializing in Indian art who was both a disciple and close friend of the theorist. Their conversations and debates sparked in Wellesz a desire to trace the early roots of Christianity and to compare how chant developed in the East and the West. This inquiry would become the defining thread of his later scholarship. The connection was personal as much as intellectual: Emmy's academic world and Wellesz's musical curiosity intersected in a shared household, turning a marriage into a genuine intellectual partnership that sustained his Byzantine research for decades.

Composer, Operatic Visionary, and Institutional Architect

His String Quartet No. 1, premiered in October 1913, bore the clear fingerprints of both Mahler and Schoenberg, and three further quartets during the war years cemented his affinity for linear chromaticism, some explicitly atonal. Yet his most distinctive contributions lay in dramatic music: five operas and three ballets over twelve years, with libretti and scenarios by Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Jakob Wassermann. Works like Alkestis (1924) and Die Bakchantinnen (1931) drew on ancient mythology but deliberately turned away from the Wagnerian tradition, instead employing dance pantomime and coloratura singing in the manner of Monteverdi and Gluck. On the institutional front, in 1922 Wellesz co-founded the Internationale Gesellschaft für Neue Musik alongside Rudolph Reti, an organization that evolved into the International Society for Contemporary Music in 1923, headquartered in London. He was promoted to full professor at the University of Vienna in 1929, succeeding Adler.