The Violin Music of East Germany Part V: Fidelio Finke

in ,

Fidelio Finke is the East German composer of the month.

Born Fidelio Friedrich “Fritz” Finke on October 22, 1891 in Josefsthal, Austria-Hungary (now Josefův Důl, Czech Republic - not far from the German border), died June 12, 1968 in Dresden, East Germany.

Fidelio_Friedrich_Finke_(1891-1968).jpg

I spent months perusing the internet looking up Finke on the internet but apart from a Wikipedia article about him, very little can be found about the composer. I looked for recordings, videos, reference material and beyond. In a New Yorker article published in 1983, Andre Previn, after discovering, playing and enjoying the music of Finke is quoted to have said, “Fidelio Finke, where are you now?”

And it still feels pretty true…

About Fidelio

I feel like an academic sham to rely so heavily on Wikipedia but here it goes… Finke received organ, piano and violin lessons. From 1908 to 1911, he studied at the Prague Conservatory, where he studied piano and composition. From 1911, he worked as a private music teacher and in 1915 he became a music theory teacher at the Prague Conservatory. In 1920, he moved to the German Academy of Music and Performing Arts (confusing, but also located in Prague), where he taught music theory and composition. He became a professor in 1926, and worked as the rector from 1927 to 1945.

During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia(1938–1945), and while serving as the Rector of the German Academy of Music, Finke opportunistically attempted to ingratiate himself with the Nazis by creating arrangements of Sudeten German folksongs and the choral works Deutsche Kantate: Der neue Tag and O Herzland Böhmens (1942) for mixed chorus, brass and organ. His application for membership within the Nazi party was denied in 1942 because of his political unreliability.

After imprisonment and expropriation as a result of the Bene decrees* as well as a suicide attempt in 1945, Finke was brought to Dresden by the Soviet occupation forces. There, he founded the State Academy of Music and Dresden Theatre, and was the rector until 1951. He was a professor of sound recordings at the Leipzig Academy of Music until 1958. His total works comprise about 170 compositions.

Finke was a member of the SED (The Socialist Unity Party of Germany) from 1946 until his death in 1968 in Dresden. He was buried in Heidenfriedhof Cemetery in Hamburg (which seems confusing to me, because it doesn’t really seem like he spent much time there) and his estate is preserved by the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Repertoire:

·      String Quartet No. 1 (1914); dedicated to Arnold Schoenberg

·      String Trio (1923)

·      Piano Trio (1923)

·      8 Musiken for 2 violins and viola (1923)

·      Sonata for violin and piano (1924)

·      String Quartet No. 2 „Der zerstörte Tasso“ (with soprano solo) (1925)

·      Ciacona nach Vitali for violin and piano (1925) ACQUIRED

·      String Quartet No. 3 (1926, lost)

·      Transcriptions of Wagner Opera Overtures for violin and piano ACQUIRED

I can say, after spending some time with the overture arrangements, his style is fun - very romantic - and perhaps not as “envelope pushing” as some of the other composers working in East Germany, or already featured in my little series. Perhaps his memory did not persevere for many reasons, endearing yourself to the Nazis, in retrospect, was perhaps not the smoothest move to pull for one’s artistic legacy.

*a series of laws drafted by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II. The decrees dealt with various aspects of the restoration of Czechoslovakia and its legal system, denazification, and reconstruction of the country. In journalism and political history, the term "Beneš decrees" refer to the status of ethnic Germans, Hungarians and others in postwar Czechoslovakia. 

As a result, almost all ethnic Germans and Hungarians whose ancestors had lived in Czechoslovakia for centuries prior to World War II or those who had settled there during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia lost their Czechoslovakian citizenship and property and were expelled from their homes. Some of them died during the expulsion process, which took place during the late 1940s).

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidelio_F._Finke

https://slippedisc.com/2019/03/nazi-composer-gets-his-name-taken-off-school/