Kaun, Hugo
(b Berlin, 21 March 1863; d Berlin, 2 April 1932). German
composer and choral conductor.
Born into a merchant family, he composed prolifically as a youth. He studied at
the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin (1879–80) and in 1881 began a determined
study of the piano with Oscar Raif. At the same time he attended the
composition classes of Friedrich Kiel at the Prussian Academy of Arts. Kaun
busied himself with piano teaching, composition and conducting a mixed chorus,
but following his father's death in 1886, he went to the USA, settling in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where there was a large German community; while there,
Kaun associated with, among others, the music theorist Bernhard Ziehn. A hand
injury forced him to give up thoughts of a career as a pianist, and so he spent
his years in the USA teaching, composing and directing a choral society, the
Milwaukee Liederkranz. Some of his works were performed by the Chicago SO under
Theodore Thomas, who was one of the early champions of Kaun's music.
Kaun
returned to Berlin in 1902, and by the 1920s his fame as a composer had spread
throughout German-speaking Europe. In 1912 he was elected a member of the
Academy of Arts and in 1922 he joined the composition staff of the Berlin
Conservatory. Kaun was a prolific composer whose output embraces most genres.
Of his four neo-Wagnerian operas. Der Fremde (1920) was regarded as the
most significant, though in the more radical cultural climate of the Weimar
Republic, it quickly disappeared from the repertory, and attempts to revive it
during the Third Reich faltered. Although Kaun died one year before Hitler came
to power, his nationalist choral works, particularly those for unaccompanied
male chorus, enjoyed great popularity throughout Germany after his death. He
was out of sympathy with the modernist climate of the 1920s, and was one of a
number of neo-Wagnerian composers who were espoused by the Nazis.
WORKS
(selective list)
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Operas:
Der Pietist (1, W. Drobegg), Leipzig 1895; Sappho (3, after F. Grillparzer),
Leipzig, Neues, 27 Oct 1917; Der Fremde (4, F. Rauch), Dresden, Staatsoper,
24 Feb 1920; Menandra (3, Kaun, after F. Jansen), Kiel, 1926
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3
syms., no.1 ‘An mein Vaterland’, d; no.2, c; no.3, e; 3 pf concs., B , e, c; Fantasie-Stück, op.66, vn, orch;
Vineta, op.8, sym. poem; Im Urwald, op.43, sym. poem; Sir John Falstaff,
op.60, sym. poem; 3 suites, 3 ovs., 5 marches, 12 chbr orch pieces
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4
str qts, F, d, c, a; 2 pf trios; Octet, F, op.26, cl, bn, hn, str qt, db;
Qnt, f , op.28, vc,
str qt; Pf Qnt, op.82; many duos; Aus den Bergen, suite, sax, pf, 1932
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Abendfeier
in Venedig, op.17, 8vv chorus, str orch, 2 hp, 1890; Auf dem Meer, op.54,
sym. poem, Bar, chorus, orch, n.d.; Mutter Erde, orat, soloists, chorus,
orch, 1911; Requiem, Mez, boys' choir, org, 1921; c226 choral pieces,
incl. c160 for male vv; c170 songs and duets
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Pf
Sonata, A, op.2; c115 pf pieces; arrs. pf duo/duet; org pieces
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Principal publishers: Amsel, André, Breitkopf &
Härtel, Kahnt, Rühle, Zimmermann
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WRITINGS
Harmonie- und Modulationslehre (Leipzig, 1915, 2/1921)
Aus meinem
Leben (Berlin, 1932) [with list of works]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MGG1 (R. Schaal)
W. Altmann: ‘Hugo Kaun’, Monographien
moderner Musiker, ed. C.F. Kahnt, i (Leipzig, 1906), 156–64
G.R. Kruse: ‘Hugo Kaun’, Die Musik, ix/4 (1909–10),
339–51
F. Stege: ‘Hugo Kaun’, ZfM, Jg.98 (1931), 105–10
R. Schaal: Hugo Kaun,
1863–1932, Leben und Werk: ein Beitrag zur Musik der Jahrhundertwende (Regensburg, 1948)
[with list of works]
WILLIAM D. GUDGER/ERIK LEVI