Biography

Hugo Kauder was born 1888 in Tobitschau, Moravia (now Czech Republic). His father Ignaz Kauder was Oberlehrer (principal) of the German language elementary school, which was separate from the Czech language school. His musical instruction as a boy consisted of violin lessons from the local teacher, who eventually dismissed him when he had “taught him everything he knew.” These lessons were Hugo Kauder's only formal training in music, everything else being self-taught.

In 1905, Hugo Kauder moved to Vienna in order to attend engineering school (Realschule), but he mostly cut classes and, together with another reluctant engineering student, Egon Lustgarten, spent much time in the Imperial Court Library studying scores of the standard works as well as the then newly published collection of works of Flemish composers of the 15th and 16th centuries (“Denkmaeler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich”), notably Josquin des Pres (1450-1521).

From 1911 to 1917, Hugo Kauder played violin in the Wiener Tonkuenstler Orchester under conductors including Ferdinand Loewe, Franz Schalk, Nikisch, and Richard Strauss. During this time he struck up a friendship with the Dutch horn player Willem Valkenier (1887-1986), who joined the orchestra in 1912. This friendship lasted a lifetime and gave rise to numerous compositions featuring the horn.

From 1917 to 1922, he was the violist of the Gottesmann Quartet. In 1919 he was introduced to the poet and philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz (1886-1969), who had composed musical settings of some classic poems and needed someone to play the music for him as he played no instrument himself. Pannwitz advocated and applied the then unconventional idea that music was already latent in the language of a poem and was to be discovered and brought to light, rather than created at will, by the musician. Hugo Kauder adopted and elaborated on this approach to vocal music and regarded Pannwitz as a life-long mentor.

In 1923 Hugo Kauder married the linguist, archeologist and bible scholar Helene Guttman (1898-1949), a cousin of his library study companion Egon Lustgarten.

For the rest of his life, in Vienna as well as later in New York, he was self-employed in composing and teaching violin, music theory, and composition. As part of his concern to bring his music to life, he conducted a chorus and a chamber music ensemble made up of students (including in later years his son Otto) and friends, studying and performing the classics as well as his own compositions. Notable musicians who appreciated and performed Hugo Kauder's music in Vienna before 1938 and to some extent after 1945 included the Gottesmann, Sedlak-Winkler, Rose, and Kolbe string quartets, the conductors Viktor Bermeiser, Josef Mertin (1904-1999), Karl Ristenpart and Alexander Zemlinsky, pianist Adolf Baller, hornist Ernst Paul, and oboist Alexander Wunderer.

Following the Nazi takeover of Austria, Hugo Kauder was able to leave Vienna in December 1938 thanks to a contract with the Dutch publisher NV Mees Uitgeverij to assist with the publication of his settings of poems by Albert Verwey, and made his way to New York after some months in Holland and England. Shortly before leaving Vienna, he assembled and presented to his friends and students a 14 page souvenir pamphlet of selections by himself and others used by his chorus, titled “Alte und neue Chormusik aus dem Repertoire des Hugo Kauder-Chores 1928-1938” (Old and New Choral Music from the Repertoire of the Hugo Kauder Chorus). The brief stay in Holland, 1938-39, gave rise to lasting friendships with the musicologist Eduard Lowinsky, who also came to the United States, and the pianist Ellen Josephy (d.1974) who survived the Nazi occupation of Holland in hiding.

Hugo Kauder made his home in New York from 1940 until his death in 1972, while spending most summers in Europe from 1955 on.

In the face of difficulties in securing publication of his compositions, Hugo Kauder investigated and used a variety of reproduction techniques. In Vienna he used hectography, a method whereby a manuscript written in a heavy and greasy ink was applied to a clay mass held in a frame to produce a negative image as the clay mass quite cleanly absorbed the ink from the manuscript, and a limited number of copies were then printed on blank sheets of paper brought into contact with the negative. Later, in New York, he adopted the system of writing his manuscripts on transparent staff paper with India ink to provide master sheets that could be reproduced in unlimited quantities by the blueprint process and by photocopying machines when these became available.

In the United States, Hugo Kauder benefited from resumed contacts with Siegmund Levarie, who had been his student in Vienna and had emigrated to the United States in 1937 and became professor of music at the University of Chicago, and Willem Walkenier, who had been a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1924. Levarie planned and rehearsed a performance of an orchestral work with the university students' orchestra but the start of his wartime service with the US Army prevented his conducting the performance, which was conducted by Frederick Stock, then conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. After Levarie's return to the University of Chicago, he regularly included Hugo Kauder's music in the study and performance program of his Collegium Musicum at the University. Valkenier introduced Hugo Kauder to his orchestra colleagues and friends in Boston, and promoted many performances of Hugo Kauder chamber music compositions, some newly composed to take advantage of the availability of performers of the caliber of Valkenier and the oboist Louis Speyer.

In New York, Hugo Kauder became acquainted and made friends with Herman de Grab (d. 1949), a writer, pianist, and collector of old instruments from Prague. De Grab established a private music school in New York called The Music House where he and his wife taught piano, and invited Hugo Kauder to teach the school's students music theory and composition and to conduct a chorus of students and friends. Among the students was Lilian Kallir, later a world renowned pianist.

Hugo Kauder won a Fromm Foundation award in 1953. As called for by the award, the foundation sponsored the publication of two works by Boosey and Hawkes, the 1947 Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano dedicated to Willem Valkenier and the 1951 setting of 10 poems by James Joyce for three voices and string quartet dedicated to Norma and Siegmund Levarie.

Hugo Kauder wrote a book on counterpoint, Counterpoint, an Introduction to Polyphonic Composition, published by Macmillan in 1960, and one on harmony, Entwurf einer neuen Melodie- und Harmonielehre (A New Theory of Melody and Harmony), published by Universal Edition in 1932. He also wrote numerous essays and reviews on the history of music, individual performances, and events in the lives of prominent musicians. Some of these were published during the 1920s in “Musikblaetter des Anbruch,” a house organ of Universal Edition, and some in German language papers published by immigrants in New York during the 1940s.