Robert Hirschfeld
born Grossmeseritsch, Moravia, Sept 17, 1857; died Velké Meziříčí, April 2, 1914
Documents associated with this person:
Austrian music critic and music historian.
Career Summary
Hirschfeld completed a PhD at the University of Vienna in 1884 with a dissertation on the 14th-century music theorist Johannes de Muris, and in the same year launched a series of concerts of Renaissance music in Vienna; when his former teacher Eduard Hanslick ridiculed these, he attacked him in a pamphlet ("Das kritische Verfahren E. Hanslicks") of 1885. Hirschfeld was also sympathetic to Wagner. From 1893/94, he was editor of the periodical Wiener Philharmoniker: philharmonische Concerte, and wrote reviews for, among other journals, the Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt, the Wiener Abendpost, the Neue Musikalische Presse, and the Österreichische Rundschau. He was particularly hostile to Mahler, as conductor, director of the Hofoper, and symphonist. With Richard Perger, he wrote a history of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (1912).
Hirschfeld and Schenker
Hirschfeld is frequently mentioned in Schenker's diary from December 22, 1902 onwards. These entries shows him frequently in animated discussion, and even "controversy," with Schenker. Hirschfeld is referred to quite often in his letters to others.
No correspondence between Hirschfeld and Schenker is known to survive.
Sources:
- NGDM2 (2001 and online)
- Baker's1971
- Federhofer, Hellmut, Heinrich Schenker nach Tagebüchern und Briefen ... (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1985)
- See also Botstein, Leon, Music and Its Public: Habits of Listening and the Crisis of Modernism in Vienna, 1870-1914 (PhD diss.: Harvard University, 1985)