Karl Marx (composer)


Karl Julius Marx was a German composer and music teacher.

Life

Karl Marx was born in Munich, the son of Josef Marx and his wife Emilie, née Eheberg. After early violin and piano lessons, Marx first studied natural sciences at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in 1916. His encounter with Carl Orff, with whom he took private composition lessons after the World War I, was decisive for his decision to turn to music professionally. From 1920 to 1922, Marx studied composition with Anton Beer-Walbrunn and conducting with and Siegmund von Hausegger at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich. From 1924 to 1935, Marx was solo repetiteur in Felix von Kraus's singing class. From 1935 to 1939, he led his own interpretation class for lieder and oratorio singers at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich, where he also taught harmony and form theory from 1929 to 1939. From 1928 to 1939, he conducted the choir of the Munich Bachverein. During this time, his first settings of texts by Rainer Maria Rilke were composed, and Marx had his first great success with Rilke's motet Werkleute sind wir, Op. 6 at the Tonkünstlerfest 1928 in Schwerin and at the festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music 1929 in Geneva. Subsequently, his works were performed by leading interpreters, including the Piano Concerto, Op. 9 by Edwin Fischer under Eugen Jochum, the Viola Concerto, Op. 10 in Berlin under Hermann Scherchen, and the Passacaglia, Op. 19 by the Berliner Philharmoniker under Wilhelm Furtwängler.
In 1932, Marx was awarded the music prize of the city of Munich. After 1933, he was exposed to defamation by the Nazi press and his name gradually disappeared from concert programs. Since he did not belong to the Nazi Party, he had no further professional future to expect at the Academy of Music. He accepted a call to the newly founded Hochschule für Musikerziehung in Graz, where he taught theory of form and composition from 1940 to 1945.
The compositional focus increasingly shifted to choir and lay music, including the Rilke cantata to words from the Stundenbuch, Op. 43, 1942. One of Marx's most famous songs is Jeden Morgen geht die Sonne auf to the words of.
The assertions made by Michael Hans Kater in his controversial book The Twisted Muse about Marx's alleged Nazi past do not stand up to scrutiny and can only be described as a falsification of history.
From 1946 to 1966, Marx taught harmony, counterpoint and composition at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Stuttgart and from 1955 as head of the department for school music. The cantata Und endet doch alles mit Frieden to words from the novel Hyperion by Friedrich Hölderlin for soloists, choir and orchestra, Op. 52, was premiered in 1953. Marx was appointed to the German Music Council in 1954. In 1963, he was guest of honour of the German Academy Villa Massimo in Rome for three months. In 1966, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class. Marx died in 1985 in Stuttgart at the age of 87.

Works (selection)

Works for orchestra

Duos

Mixed Choir

With orchestra
With orchestra
With orchestra