Zemlinsky, Alexander

(von), Austrian composer and conductor of partly Jewish parentage (he removed the nobiliary particle "von" in 1918 when such distinctions were outlawed in Austria); b. Vienna, Oct. 14, 1871; d. Larchmont, N.Y., March 15, 1942. At the Vienna Conservatory Zemlinsky studied piano and composition from 1887 to 1892. In 1893 he joined the Vienna Tonkünstlerverein, and in 1895 he became connected with the orchestra society Polyhymnia and met ARNOLD SCHOENBERG, whom he advised on technical aspects of CHAMBER MUSIC. Schoenberg always had the highest regard for Zemlinsky as a composer and lamented the lack of appreciation for his music. There was also a personal bond between them, because in 1901 Schoenberg married Zemlinsky's sister Mathilde.

Zemlinsky's first opera, Sarema, to a LIBRETTO by his father, was produced in Munich in 1897. Schoenberg made a piano-vocal SCORE of it. Zemlinsky also contacted GUSTAV MAHLER, music director of the Vienna Court Opera, who accepted Zemlinsky's opera Es war einmal for performance. Mahler conducted its premiere at the Court Opera in 1900, and it became Zemlinsky's most popular production.

From 1900 to 1906 Zemlinsky served as conductor of the Karlstheater in Vienna. In 1903 he conducted at the Theater an der Wien, and in 1904 he was named chief conductor of the Volksoper. In 1910 he orchestrated and conducted the ballet Der Schneemann by the talented 11-year-old WUNDERKIND Erich Korngold. About that time, he and Schoenberg organized in Vienna the Union of Creative Musicians, which performed Zemlinsky's tone poem Die Seejungfrau in 1903.

In 1911 Zemlinsky moved to Prague, where he became conductor at the German Opera and also taught conducting and composition at the German Academy of Music beginning in 1920. In I927 he moved to Berlin, where he was appointed assistant conductor at the Kroll Opera, with Otto Klemperer as chief conductor and music director. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Zemlinsky returned to Vienna, and also filled engagements as guest conductor in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. After the Anschluss of 1938 he emigrated to the U.S., which effectively ended his career.

As a composer Zemlinsky followed the post-Romantic trends of Mahler and RICHARD STRAUSS. He was greatly admired, but his works were seldom performed, despite the efforts of Schoenberg and his associates to revive his music. How strongly he influenced his younger contemporaries is illustrated by the fact that ALBAN BERG quoted Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony in his own Lyric Suite.

In the latter 20th century a great number of Zemlinsky's works, both operatic and nonoperatic, received revivals. Among Zemlinsky's most popular works are eight completed operas, three symphonies (1892; 1897; c.1903), Lyrische Symphonie in seven sections, after Rabindranath Tagore, for SOPRANO, BARITONE, and orchestra (his best-known work; 1922-23), and Sinfonietta (1934). He also wrote chamber works, including four string quartets (1895; 1913-15; 1924; 1936); vocal works, including three psalms for chorus and orchestra: No. 83 (1900), No. 23 (1910), and No. 13 (1935); Maeterlinck Lieder, six songs for medium voice and orchestra (1910-13); Symphonische Gesänge for voice and orchestra (1929); four volumes of LIEDER to texts by Heyse and Liliencron (1894-97), and songs to words by Dehmel, Jacobsen, Bierbaum, Morgenstern, Ammann, Heine, and Hofmannsthal (1898-1913; 1929-36).