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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
It is fairly safe to say that if anything is known about the composer Josef Matthias Hauer outside the German-speaking world it is that he was a contemporary of Schoenberg and that, like Schoenberg, he wrote music which employed the twelve-tone method. If anything else is known, it probably is that there was and still is great controversy over who was first to employ this method of composition. Perhaps this article will call into question our unthinking amalgamation of these two composers into the camp of twelve-tone composition.
1 Hauer, Josef Matthias, Deutung des Melos: Eine Frage an die Künstler und Denker unserer Zeit (Vienna: E. P. Tal & Co. Verlag, 1923), p. 7 Google Scholar.
2 Hauer, Josef Matthias, ‘Vom Melos zur Pauke: Eine Einführung in die Zwölftonmusik’, Theoretische Schriften (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1925). 1, p. 18 Google Scholar.
3 The descendents of Köchert still possess one of the largest collections of Hauer's manuscripts and personal effects.
4 Lichtenfeld, Monika, ‘Untersuchungen zur Theorie der Zwölftontechnik bei Josef Mattias Hauer’, Kölner Beitrage zur Musikforschung, ed. Fellerer, Karl Gustav (Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1964), XXIX, p. 1 Google Scholar.
5 Schoenberg, Arnold, Harmonielehre (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1922), p. 488 Google Scholar.
6 Melichar, Alois, Musik in der Zwangsjacke: Die Deutsche Musik zwischen Orff und Schönberg (Vienna: Edward Wancura Verlag, 1959), pp. 274–278 Google Scholar. (Melichar quotes a letter which Hauer wrote to an unidentified friend in 1917. In the letter, Hauer discusses a meetíng which the two composers had, and continues by giving a very candid assessment of what he thought about Schoenberg as a man and as a composer.)
7 Conversation with Bruno Hauer, December 19, 1975.
8 Hauer, Josef Matthias, Zwölftonspiel-Neujahr 1947 (Vienna: Fortissimo-Verlag, 1962)Google Scholar. The translation is mine.
9 Hauer went so far as to claim that ‘the tempered system having twelve equal steps is the mouth of God which proclaims life's commandments which, in turn, provide order to the world and plot the course of the planets’. This statement was found among a group of aphorisms, a copy of which was kindly given to me by Hauer's son, Bruno. The translation is mine.
10 Hauer, Josef Matthias, ‘Zwölftontechnik: Die Lehre von den Tropen’, Theoretische Schriften (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1916), II. p. 4 Google Scholar.
11 Ibid., p. 5.
12 Ibid., p. 8.
13 Ibid., p. 6.
14 Ibid., p. 3.