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1 1. The present study is the written version of my paper held on the 2017 Budapest Dohnányi Day.
It is not an easy task to reconstruct the library and music collection of a composer, whose homes – from Hungary through some European cities and South America to the United States – cannot be counted on the fingers of both hands. This paper investigates the story of Ernő Dohnányi's music collection and music library: summarizes the stages of Dohnányi's life, where he stayed for a longer period of time, therefore makes it possible to round up a considerable library and also discusses the lists, which give account of the items of the composer's books and scores. These lists preserved about the content of Dohnányi's previous Hungarian books and music collections of the Széher út villa, the music collection on Városmajor utca (the house of Dohnányi's sister), and about the library and music collection of the Dohnányis' Tallahassee home. The author of this paper could use the items of Dohnányi's books and scores, which the composer possessed in the final decade of his lifetime, too. At present, these documents, Dohnányi's American Estate is in the care of the Archives for 20th–21st Century Hungarian Music of the Institute for Musicology, Research Centre for Humanities of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. Beside the lists, the correspondence between Dohnányi and his sister, Mici, also contains information about the story of Dohnányi's libraries and music collections. This overview follows Dohnányi's collection even during the American years when he wanted to receive volumes of his former library, and understandably wanted to establish as rich a library as he had in his previous homes.
Abstract
After his emigration from Hungary and a longer stay in Austria and Argentina, Dohnányi settled down in Tallahassee (USA) in 1949 and lived there until his death in 1960. Besides his professorship at the Florida State University (FSU) and his continuous concert-tours in the whole country, he was also very active as a composer in this decade. The ultimate composition of this period and his life is the Passacaglia for Solo Flute (op. 48. no. 2) which is a quite unusual piece of the composer, not only because of the choice of instrument, unprecedented in the œuvre, and its theme, partly dodecaphonic, but because of its significant source-material to be found in the Kilényi-Dohnányi Collection of the FSU. This paper attempts to study this last, odd piece of Dohnányi exhaustively through the investigation of its musical and non-musical sources in parallel with its analysis.
Several newly-discovered manuscripts of unpublished works by Ernő Dohnányi (1877–1960) and other documents in the University Library of Bratislava and the Slovak National Museum — Music Museum Bratislava refute the misconception that this city, the composer’s birthplace, is lacking in sources about him. These manuscripts from the estates of two dedicatees, the Archduchess Isabella and Mártha Rigele, offer fresh insights into Dohnányi’s compositional process, and particularly into the multiple revisions of his String Sextet, originally composed in 1893. Versions 1 and 2 of this Sextet, with geographically divergent manuscript locations in the British Library and at Florida State University, are compared here inasmuch as Dohnányi’s development into a mature composer is clearly demonstrable. The two manuscripts from the estate of the Archduchess Isabella, a set of parts reflecting all known revisions and an autograph transcription provide evidence to support this writer’s hypothesis that the score with title page dated 1896 is probably the final version. The Sonata stands as confirmation that by 1899 the composition had reached its final form in the mind of the composer. Excerpts from Dohnányi’s family letters cited here offer further insights into this period.
Abstract
Dohnányi's Second Piano Quintet in E-flat minor was written in 1914 and is less well-known than his first one dating from 1895. The composer has been called a traditionalist, so it is worth examining how tradition appears in this work. The outer movements of the three-movement-form are both elegiac and weighty. The beginning bears the key signature of E-flat major instead of minor, but the keys are changing rapidly as the piece progresses. This is reminiscent of Franz Schubert or of Antonín Dvořák, for instance in his Piano Quartet (op. 87) inspired by Brahms. The third movement's opening is a homage to Beethoven's late String Quartet in A Minor (op. 132). While the latter works on a sub-thematic level, Dohnányi presents an elaborated theme in fugal technique, which in 1914 was a more conservative approach than Beethoven's in 1825. For Dohnányi, the symmetric structures are not a way out of traditional tonality (unlike for Bartók, who also frequently used symmetries), but rather are a way of extending it. The formal concept is no less interesting. The recapitulation of the first movement's material within the third is evocative of the double-function form used by Franz Liszt. While Liszt conflated the traditional multi-movement form into a new one-movement form, Dohnányi – so to speak – concealed the characteristics of the new one-movement form inside a traditional three-movement form. Thus, one could ask if the accusations against Dohnányi for being a traditionalist are justified. Perhaps instead we should reconsider how traditionalism and modernity are situated in our own set of aesthetic values.
The study analyses the young Ernő Dohnányi's career as a pianist, his reception, repertory, and the performances of his compositions in Austria, Hungary, Germany, and England. By the first decade of the 20th century, Dohnányi had won almost universal recognition with critics and musicians alike, but his art was truly appreciated not so much by the sensationalist public as by a significantly narrower circle of musically literate listeners. After his first tours, Dohnányi did not enter any such biographical stage which we could term his “virtuoso years”, but his “Vienna years” (1901-1905) belong to the next stage of his development. His concert life resembled that of a “classic” performer, who still gives recitals fairly regularly, while also composing symphonic pieces and conducting them himself. He retained his artistic and personal freedom through resisting the travelling virtuoso lifestyle offered by impresarios. The author gives a selection from press reports of Dohnányi's career in the Viennese years.
“There is little new to say about Dohnányi’s beautiful Beethoven recital. No one today plays Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms as he does. The touch, the classic sound of the piano should be preserved for posterity with gramophones, pianolas, etc. for
This article reveals the background of the young Ernő Dohnányi's successes as a pianist and a composer, through the investigation of all available press articles, concert programs, letters and other contemporary documents, to make a step to create an authentic image of Dohnányi. October 24, 1898, the day of Dohnányi's debut in London, marked a decisive turn in the artist's career. After concerts in Hungary, Vienna and Germany he came into the focus of attention of wide audiences by playing Beethoven's Piano Concerto in G major at the London St James's Hall. The warm reception and the sensational news in the press launched a chain reaction of invitations and Dohnányi's international career. His first England tour (October-December 1898) was followed by two further tours within a year (January-March and October-December 1899, respectively) and his series of successes was crowned by these two tours of America (March-April 1900, November 1900 - March 1901). In the meantime he acquired fame as a composer as well: with his Piano Concerto in E minor (op. 5b) he won the Bösendorfer Competition in Vienna in March 1899 and the three-movement version of the work (op. 5) was performed several times in Hungary, England, Germany and the United States. His String Quartet (op.7) was performed in London, his Sonata for Violoncello (op. 8) in London and New York. His piano pieces (op. 2, 4, 6) - just as the piano parts of his Quintet (op. 1) and Concerto - were played by him several times. The promising, yet unknown youth at the beginning of his career turned into an internationally acknowledged and appreciated artist within three years.
Ernst von Dohnányi's proverbially brilliant orchestration skills were already recognized by his contemporaries. His first monographer Bálint Vázsonyi published an anecdote, typical of these opinions, according to which Béla Bartók regarded
1 Introduction It is a commonplace in Hungarian music history that Ernő Dohnányi, who played a central role in Hungarian music life as an administrative leader and a versatile musician in the interwar period, practically disappeared from Hungarian
