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KARL RANKL (1898-1968)
Interview with Mrs Christine Rankl on 12th July 1999
Paul Conway: Did Karl come from a big family?Christine Rankl: Yes, he was the 14th of 17 children! His mother lost 10 children, all over the age of one-year-old, with three in one week through diphtheria. All had tuberculosis in some form. Karl had one lung because of a very bad abscess. In the days before x-ray the abscess couldn't be found easily so he had to have some bits of his ribs removed in order for the surgeons to get at his lung. During his third operation they did a lumbar puncture which means the patient hears everything. The darling doctors actually said over him "I'm sure he's going to die. He only weighs about 6 and a half stone but we do have to operate." Very cheerful thought! When he came round there were 18 doctors who said he couldn't keep his profession and that he would have to go to live in Egypt in order to live in a dry climate. However, one doctor, a homeopath, advised him to work 24 out of 24 hours as the only way to make him straight again (his missing ribs meant he was initially bent over) and so Karl did work - all the time!
PC: Did he come from a musical family?
CR:Very. His father played three instruments. His youngest brother, who died of tuberculosis at 26, was a musical genius as far as Karl was concerned.
PC: How long did Karl study with Schöenberg?
CR: Karl went to study with Schöenberg halfway through the last year of the First World War. He studied with Schöenberg for four years. Karl quarrelled with Schöenbergin 1931 when Karl was in Wiesbaden and Schöenberg was in Berlin because Karl said that Schöenberg should not publish his 12-tone method. He said to Schöenberg "You write it. It is modern. But why publish your system? You are the only composer who can go in and out of the 12-tone system as you feel like it. Bach never published how he wrote a fugue." Karl didn't like writing music which had to be worked out mathematically on paper - he had to be able to hear it. After this the two men didn't speak to each other in person. Schöenberg emigrated to America but he was never happy there. They offered him a contract to compose film music and when he said he couldn't write pieces to fit so many seconds of film they said "Oh, but all our house composers can do this! If you can't do this forget the contract!" Eventually Schöenberg and Karl wrote to each other and Karl dedicated his opera "Deirdre of the Sorrows" to Schöenberg which he accepted before he died. He was always interested in what my husband was writing and always said "I would like to see something". A fellow Schöenberg pupil, Hans Eisler, went to America during the War and then went to Eastern Europe. Another Schöenberg pupil was Roberto Gerhard. Karl and he got on well. Gerhard was in Cambridge. He was a very nice man. Very serious. Mrs Schöenberg (the composer's second wife) was an old friend of Karl's from Vienna. The first Mrs Schöenberg was a bit of a difficult customer. She swore that when Arnold finished "Jacob's Ladder" he would die! So he put the manuscript away and never continued. When he did try to continue in 1950/51 he died but by then he was an old man and not very well but I don't think he would have died had he finished it earlier! Anyway, the second Mrs Schöenberg said to Karl when her husband died, "Why don't you finish Jacob's Ladder for us?" So Karl had a look at it and said, "there are stretches and stretches in the manuscript where it says, "Has to be worked out." I am a pupil of the Meister. I absolutely refuse to put notes in there where he was uncertain what he was going to put in. Leave it as a trunk of a work." (Winfried) Zilling was of another opinion and finished it.
PC: What of Berg and Webern?
CR: Karl liked them very much as composers and people but couldn't write in their 12-tone métier. "Atonal is complicated enough for me!" he said. He felt atonal music hadn't been completely worked out yet.
PC: What was Karl's instrument?
CR: He played the violin because he wanted to be a virtuoso but he had the hands of a pianist so by the age of about 20 he gave up his aspiration to be a great virtuoso violin player. He played in the UK during the (1939-45) War with the Rose¢ quartet as a viola player. Karl always had a liking for strings and an ear for strings but he accepted that he would not be a great violin player and he became a very good pianist, being a particularly fine accompanist. He was always able to get the most from his partner.
When he was seven, his piano teacher said there was nothing he could teach Karl any more, he was too good. Not long after this, one of the string players in the Vienna Philharmonic asked Karl's father if he would give his son to the orchestra so he could train to be a musician with them in the Philharmonic. Karl's father refused, saying he did not want his son to become a "starving brat" - so a chance of a lifetime was missed because if you become part of the VPO at eight years old you are built up into it - but it wasn't to be!
Then the monastery of Heiligenkreuz turned him down as a chorister because he couldn't read the alto clef - being a farm boy, he had never come across it. Once he knew about it, he could sing in it of course, but he was very upset because he didn't know he had to sing the alto clef - nobody had told him. He was very hurt about this.
PC: How did he become a conductor?
CR: After the (1914-18) War, you had to find a job or you just couldn't live. The Volksoper was looking for a chorusmaster. Karl was the successful candidate out of 27 aspiring chorusmasters. His experience as a Schöenberg pupil helped him. They put the score of "Der Rosenkavalier" in front of him (a relatively new work at this time) and asked him to play the music on the piano from the full score. He had no difficulty with this - the other candidates hadn't learned how to make a piano reduction at sight from a full score. It's a gift!
Soon, from chorusmaster Karl became an assistant conductor. The Head of the Volksoper said to him, "Rankl, who is behind you? Who is financing you?" Karl said, "Nobody." He was told he wouldn't get anywhere in the profession without a lot of rich people to back him with money and push him forward. However, Karl never had any backers.
PC: How did he become involved with the Kroll Opera?
CR: Well the Kroll Opera was closed because of financial problems in 1928. When it opened again, Karl became Klemperer's deputy. Anyway, when the big crash happened in America those people who had money didn't want to put it into opera anymore and my husband got the job at Wiesbaden then. Karl left Germany in 1932 when Hitler became Chancellor. He didn't want to have anything to do with Hitler under any circumstances.
After Wiesbaden, he went to Graz and was there for four years. Unfortunately, Graz was becoming very right wing too. Karl knew many Jewish singers from Berlin who were glad of employment and so he had a star-spangled cast in Graz but by 1937 they all went to America or wherever they could go. After Graz, he went to Prague. Szell had already left for Cleveland and Karl got the German Opera House in Prague. He moved to Czechoslovakia and came to stay with us and in 1933 did some recordings with my mother in Prague for the radio. He opened in Prague with Carmen in 1937 with an American Carmen - she was a very good singer and it was highly successful. They did Ernst Krenek's "Karl V" in 1938. They just managed the first performance and then the curtain came down on the whole thing. The theatre was closed and Karl was out of work but he said if they had one pound for every wrong note played in that performance of "Karl V" they would all be millionaires because it was so new! Krenek was another Schöenberg pupil. I'm sure he made more money with "Jonny spielt auf" than "Karl V" but Krenek was quite a nice man. He came to see us when he returned from America.
After the theatre was shut Karl stayed in Prague. He wanted to go to Switzerland but he didn't have any money. So he went back to Prague and stayed with friends and then Kenneth Wright got him out.
PC: How did Karl come to England?
CR: Kenneth Wright went to Prague for a football match and got Karl a contract for the BBC. Wright was the right hand man of Mr Edwards who was Music Director of the BBC. Wright was his deputy and was covering this football match. Edwards knew Karl because Karl was a Schöenberg pupil and Edwards said Wright must help Rankl to get out and they did! Karl's furniture was amongst those possessions bombed by the Americans because they mistook Prague for Dresden. So his furniture vanished in flames!
PC: What happened after he arrived in this country?
CR: Well he arrived at Croydon Airport. He was asked by a customs official at Croydon to explain the presence of a doll in his belongings. Dolls were believed to be used for carrying drugs, messages and so forth and they were not allowed. After it was satisfactorily explained that the doll must have been put into Karl's luggage by someone else, the official eventually relented and uttered the immortal phrase "I forgive you!" This was not a sentence Karl had been used to hearing before!
Relatives of Karl's (first) wife were in Bristol so they went to Bristol initially and then because he wasn't allowed to work, as he didn't get a permit, he composed instead. Then one morning a policeman came to visit him to take him to the internment camp. The policeman said he would come back in an hour as Karl hadn't dressed (it was about 7.15am) and I think the man was hoping when he came back that Karl would have disappeared to visit friends but no, Karl was still there when the man came back. He had packed and they went off to barracks in Albany Street and then he went to Lingfield Racecourse and then Huyton in Liverpool. Then they shipped him out to the Isle of Man even though it had been officially signed that if he was kept in confinement for any longer he would have a nervous breakdown. Ravitsch and Landauer were there and they played concerts every night for the refugee camp. Eventually Karl came out and by this time his wife had gone to Oxford and there he stayed in a lorry driver's room in Cowley. Then he went to another place and then he was lucky. A friend of theirs from the Vienna days was the housekeeper for the warden of Wadham College and had heard that Professor Gilbert Murray the Greek/Latin philologist had a cottage free. So Karl spent the last year and a half of the War at Professor Gilbert Murray's cottage
PC: One of the symphonies (The Third) is dedicated to Professor Murray and his wife.
CR: That's right. Professor Murray said to Karl, "You will forgive me. I only know when the national anthem is played when the people get up. I have no ear for music at all and going to a concert is torture to me." If you've ever seen or read Shaw's "Major Barbara", that is Gilbert Murray and his wife. Lady Mary was furious about Shaw depicting her mother and her father as "Undershaft" and so on but the story is true that Lady Mary's mother was a strict tea-totaller, as Shaw was, and had the entire cellar smashed on the rocks of Cumbria, a process she supervised. Boar's Hill is a very lovely area with heathland where my husband could walk and think about music and write music. He enjoyed it. It was a haven.
Towards the end of 1944, Felix Aprahamian, then manager of the LPO, needed a conductor for 40 concerts. Sergeant was on tour with ENSA, Beecham was in America and Basil Cameron was engaged elsewhere, so they asked the man at the Labour Exchange to give Karl, as a foreigner, a contract to conduct those 40 concerts. Karl arrived with Felix at the office and the man from the Labour Exchange looked at his CV and said, "Who guarantees that I can believe all that?" My husband said, "I have no guarantor. If you don't believe me, I'd better leave." Felix called him back. The man said, "Mr Rankl. You've been in this country for so long. You've played at various concerts as an accompanist. What was your fee?" Karl said, "I never got a fee, just my expenses to get there." The man said, "Well that can't have occupied all your time." Karl said "Well you see Sir, I am a composer. At this point the man tuned purple, jumped up, hit the desk and said "Whoever gave you permission to do that in this country!" at which point my husband left. Karl told this story to someone in Oxford who ran the refugee committee. Little did my husband know that this woman's father was the boss of that man at the Labour Exchange. A fortnight later the man found himself in France!
My husband conducted the concerts without a labour permit. He conducted a lot of concerts with the Liverpool Philharmonic afterwards because they liked him and then after the (1939-45) War in May or June, Australia approached him to become the new conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Charles Moses came over and they discussed it and Moses said "You will fly out in a military aircraft and your wife will come by ship." Karl said "No, she either comes with me or I'm not going!" So they arranged it but then it was eventually cancelled because they still insisted she would have to go by boat. My husband then took up an engagement with the Liverpool Philharmonic. He later opened his newspaper and received a shock. He knew the aircraft he would have been flying on to Australia. Sir Stafford Cripps was flying to India and this aircraft was then going on to Malaysia and so on. It had taken off from Bombay and was never heard of again. Karl said "That was close!" And then Covent Garden came along. He got the job of building up the company.
PC: You said not many of the players had experience of Opera when Karl took over.
CR: No. Out of 76 players, 12 had played in the pit and that was for incidental music in Old Vic performances of Shakespeare but never for Opera. Karl had to teach them how to do it. When he went to Australia the ABC gave the Elizabethan Theatre Trust permission to use four orchestras - Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane for Opera. They thought it would be good to use the back desks for opera and keep the principles for orchestral concerts. As they had chosen for their first operas: Carmen, Lohengrin, Peter Grimes and Madame Butterfly, my husband said "Backdesks? No way." When it came to Lohengrin, the Prelude to which they were used to playing as a concert item, the concertmaster of the Sydney SO, Ernie Llewelyn, said "Hmm it's much more difficult than I thought. They all discovered that to play Fidelio in the pit was a completely different story from playing Leonore III in the concert halls. An orchestra that plays in the pit has to be far more elastic than a symphony orchestra, or a recording orchestra or a radio orchestra because you have to be able to make them aware that someone's singing up there! So, that needed a lot of teaching.
In Covent Garden you had a lot of singers in this country - not necessarily all the big names because the War had just ended and quite a number of them were still involved or singing abroad already. So the most difficult engagements were the small parts. Therefore, they travelled to America to get the singers for these small roles. But The Labour Exchange here would say, "No, you can get singers for those parts here." So my husband said, "If I could get them here I wouldn't have bothered to go to the States!" There just weren't the amount of singers. There was one person in the whole opera house who knew about lighting. The stage manager, an awfully nice chap, had managed the ENSA concerts. Stagehands were killed in the war and those who survived mostly went into the film industry, particularly the lighting people because it was much better paid. Why should they stay with Covent Garden with old-fashioned stage lighting? So it was a permanent battle. Of course the administrators and managers had never managed an opera house. Didn't know, you see? So when something went wrong they blamed it on the Music Director if it didn't work. Nothing to do with him! Obviously to establish a repertoire of 24 operas in five years was a mammoth task. They had never seen the operas and never heard the operas and to do what they do now - engage top singers from all over the world to sing in whatever language they feel like was against the original contract which was for Opera sung in English. And Flagstad and Hotter all learned "Walkure" or "Rhinegold" or "Meistersingers" in English. I mean Flagstad was Norwegian and she was used to singing in Bayreuth in German but she said, "Alright". She ran the Norwegian Opera House and from then everybody sang in Norwegian. Why should anybody sing in another language? That is snobbery that I do not subscribe to. Of course nothing was so funny as when Christie came to the first performance of "Figaro" (with Geraint Evans) in English at Covent Garden. Christie said "We have played "Figaro" at Glynbourne for years and nobody has ever laughed". Never thought it was a comic opera!
There are two nice stories about Karl's time at Covent Garden. Once, during a long and strenuous Chorus rehearsal, my husband tried to amuse the assembled members and told them a "Furtwaengler story." When Furtwaengler came to this country in the early twenties to conduct his first Wagner Ring, the Rhine-Maidens were not very precise but Furtwaengler's command of the English language was shaky and he held off interrupting the ladies. Eventually he could not stand it any longer and shouted up to the stage: "Ladies, you have to be more pregnant." The Chorus dutifully laughed and Karl continued "you see, ladies and gentlemen, it happens very easily" - now the chorus really roared, drowning the last words of the story (in German "praegnant" means "precise" in English").
The other story demonstrates that the orchestral players were not above pulling his leg. Karl had an aversion to beards and was displeased when he learned that the tuba player he had to use (vital for the Wagner opera he was conducting) had a beard. One of the other brass players attracted his attention at the start of the rehearsal: all nine horn and Wagner tuba players were sporting false beards hooked over their ears having raided the props department. The conductor saw the joke and joined in the laughter.
PC: How did Karl get the job as Director at Covent Garden?
CR: He had just refused the Australian post and he was conducting in Liverpool. During the War Covent Garden had been a dance hall and they wanted to pull it down. But a contract had been signed with Boosey and Hawkes. The Duke of Bedford, whose ground it stands on, said in his original contract it stated that he had to have an unencumbered view of the stage so if they left his box and the stage standing they could pull the rest of the House down! Otherwise they would have pulled it down in the beginning of 1946. Then they had nobody to put in it. Mr Webster, who knew Karl from various concerts he had conducted up in Liverpool, was aware that he was an experienced opera conductor, not only as a director but also as someone who knew how to build it up. So they asked him and he said yes. Then Mrs Stein, mother-in-law of Lord Harwood who was looking after the parents of Peter Pears in the High Street in St John's Wood told Karl of a house on the market which had a huge sitting room and Dr Geissmar (Furtwangler's former secretary and now Beecham's secretary) would be able to get him a piano. And she got him a Bluthner so he had a piano and he had a house. He moved in to Accacia Road. Maximum rehearsal time for the orchestra was 27 hours a week because they also had the Royal Ballet there too. The first production was the Fairy Queen which Britten had refurbished and then there was two or three nights of ballet and then opera rehearsals or ballet in the morning and opera in the evening. As long as the guest singers were prepared to sing in English that was OK. It only changed when in 1950, behind my husband's back, the trustees engaged Erich Klieber, then out in Argentina, promising him three operas, two of which (Rosenkavalier and Carmen) had been in the repertoire since 1946. They gave Kleiber 23 rehearsals for two standing operas and one new production of Pique Dame which he would never have got on the continent. What Kleiber did was insist on having the rehearsals and after half an hour sent the orchestra home on full pay. He insisted that the operas be sung in the original language like "Pick Dame" in Italian. Pity. Now you have to read surtitles. Salzburg does the same for the simple reason they have just not got singers who have time to study a new language.
My husband liked his musicians at Covent Garden, particularly the bass clarinet player, Richard Temple-Savage who was also a wonderful copyist. As Basil Cameron once said to him, "I gather, Mr Savage you are keeping a tribe of Nibelungen in the dungeons of Covent Garden!" Being an orchestral player enhanced his skills as a copyist, familiar as he was with the intricacies of the orchestra. He once remarked to Karl about one of Karl's own works "You have put a phrase there for bass clarinet including a B flat, but you know no instrument can play that note!" So Karl said, "Right. Well we'll put it somewhere else. Where would you suggest?" so they discussed it and he said, "Mr Rankl, in "Deirdre" you have the harp playing solo but you must realise that if they change the treads for different modulations it makes a lot of noise. Could you try to change the modulations in a different way so it doesn't make a noise." With things like this you want a practical musician who is also your copyist who points these things out. Karl was grateful for these tips. Richard also used to alert Karl to situations where German instruments may have a particular note but British ones don't.
When it came to the Festival of Britain opera, Karl had already started on "Deirdre of the Sorrows". Karl didn't really want to put it forward. It was all done anonymously and they had I don't know how many entries to look at. Constant Lambert was still around in those days and eventually they agreed on one opera which they wanted to be the Festival of Britain opera. They broke open the seal and lo and behold it was the Head of Covent Garden, Karl Rankl. They thought they couldn't do this as it looked like a put up job. Constant Lambert said "I don't like him, but it's by far the best opera we've got!" Anyway, they chose again and the second choice turned out to be Berthold Goldschmidt who was with the BBC so they couldn't have that either! So the third one was Arthur Benjamin's "Tale of Two Cities". He was an Australian so they chose the Fourth one which was Alan Bush, a Communist, and he was the only one who had his opera performed a number of times. (I mean Benjamin did get his opera performed at the Fortune Theatre. It's a very intimate theatre - where Flannigan and Allen used to perform. It's a nice intimate theatre but not for opera)!
Leonard Isaacs, who was then running the Third Programme at the BBC asked if he could perform Karl's opera for him at the BBC. They enquired and of course it would mean that he wouldn't get a premiere on a stage anywhere. So Karl translated the opera into German with the help of a good friend of his who was the former intendant at Graz and a very good translator - he translated John Hunt's Everest book amongst others. It's a very good translation but the opera has never been performed. As long as the Irish situation remains as it is, an opera which ends "We're not going to glory if we go back to Ireland. We'll all be killed." is unlikely to get a performance - it's too close to the truth. The material is there. The piano scores are there, all of them. But - nothing doing. I mean Graz could do it but as far as they're concerned it's too far off the beaten track. It's not "Kiss me Kate"! I can understand that an opera house these days needs to live off its income. The state these days doesn't give the companies enough money to subsidise the empty seats.
PC: Did your husband have any pupils?
CR: No. However, he had many repetiteurs who he brought on and gave them any chance he could to rehearse the chorus and then rehearse the sections of the orchestra because he couldn't do everything. When he started, he only had Feasey, who was a brilliant, old-fashioned repetiteur, Reggie Goodall who was a conductor and Peter Gellhorn. These were the only conductors. (Warwick) Braithwaite came later. All the others were young - John Gardner and three or four others. They were all very good repetituers by the time they started conducting.
PC: After he left Covent Garden, Karl went to Scotland to conduct the Scottish Orchestra, didn't he?
CR: Yes. The nicest story about this is when he was rehearsing "Verklaerte Nacht" (orchestral version) for the Edinburgh Festival and suddenly there was the wailing of bagpipes. It was hot and the windows were open and it was impossible to continue. Karl said, "Go down and give him 10 shillings to go away". Someone went out to the player and the noise stopped. "20 minutes later it started again. My husband said, Did you give him the money?" The other man said he had so Karl went down and the bagpipe player said to him, "Where there are 10 shillings there should be a pound!" so he had to give him another 10 shillings to go away!
PC: Your husband conducted his Fifth Symphony during his time with the Scottish Orchestra.
CR: Yes. Bill Fell was a very good manager and he was with the Arts Council originally. He did a good job and the St Andrews Hall was a wonderful hall until it burnt down. Somebody threw a cigarette down - it was a splendid wooden hall though, wonderful acoustics. The Caird Hall in Dundee, however, is a bit of a nightmare. It holds 3,500 people and they played the Sea Interludes from Britten's "Peter Grimes" and by the time they came to the third interlude (I was sitting in the middle of the hall) you could just about make out somebody waving to you. The fog had come in from the Tey - it was incredible! Larry Adler wanted to play Vaughan Williams' Harmonica Concerto and Karl said, "No, not in the Caird Hall - there are even certain violin concertos you can't play in the Caird Hall because it's not suitable without amplification." These concerts took place once a month in Dundee and Aberdeen and once a week in Glasgow and Edinburgh. My husband conducted 100 concerts per year and travelled 30,000 miles with the orchestra each year. By train or bus. Whatever. It was strenuous. The Scots were aghast when Karl suggested playing a kind of Proms concert on a Sunday. They should be in church! Glasgow insisted on having the school concerts free but in Aberdeen one of the headmasters said "No, let them pay their sixpence and they'll want to come. In Glasgow they'll just get up to mischief." How right he was! In Glasgow it was a case of who could hit the timpani with chewing gum! That was the enterprise! In Aberdeen in a bar once before a concert, Karl spoke to the Director and said "Since I've come to live in Glasgow, Sauchihall Street is just one television shop after another." Another man in the bar said, "You're no bloody Sassanach. You ought to be able to pronounce it correctly. It's "Sauchihall Street". So my husband bought him a double whisky. The man said, "Well now you can call it what you like!"
Walter Susskind was there originally but after six months he went to Canada when the Arts Council decided to make it into an all-year-round orchestra they asked Karl to take over. It was another Kindergarten from the beginning. In fact once Karl had to ask the timpanist to play a certain passage over and over again. The man got tired of this and shouted out that he would put Karl's teeth down his throat if he asked him to do it again! Karl said, "Right. According to the rules and regulations of the Musician's Union, I am within my rights to ask you to leave now, please. The man said he would get the Union on to the conductor. The next day Harry Redcliffe appeared, who was then head of the Union, and said he wanted to talk to Karl. They did, over lunch at Karl's suggestion, and Karl said, "You are probably not aware of the fact that ever since I've been in this country I've been a member of the Musician's Union. I think I'm the only conductor in this country who is a member. If you'd care to look it up, here's my number." Harry Redcliffe said of the timpanist "Right. He's leaving at once because he behaved in a threatening manner and as you are a Union member…and lunch is on me!"
You see in Austria or Germany you cannot conduct anywhere, even in an amateur capacity, without being a member of the Union. So immediately Karl came here he became a member of the Musician's Union. One shilling a month I think. He only found out long after he came to this country that none of the other conductors were members.
PC: After Scotland, Karl went out to Australia in the late 1950s. How did this come about?
CR: Hugh Hunt, the brother of John Hunt, the "Everest" Hunt was with the Old Vic and he got the job of putting the Elizabethan Theatre Trust onto the map with Theatre and Opera. So we were the opera part. Hunt came to London in November. Scotland had finished in the summer. Hugh Hunt said he wanted Karl and when could he come? Karl said whenever you want me! So, we flew into Sydney in Easter week.
Melbourne had an open air concert hall where my husband had the pleasure of conducting the Victoria Symphony Orchestra. It is on a grassy slope called "The Silver Slipper". When Menzies came to open it, it started to rain and he couldn't leave the stage because the grass had slipped down and they had to clear a path for him to leave the stage! When my husband was conducting there, although the music was clamped to the stands, the entire top came off at the rehearsal. The solo violinist said "I'm not playing in this wind because I've been hit by my bow three times!" They got a clarinettist instead. Halfway through the concert Karl asked if anyone could lend him a trenchcoat because he didn't want to get pneumonia. It was bitterly cold and the wind went in and out of the Slipper. Karl always hated open-air concerts and they hadn't got any better. It was hard, hard work for my husband in Australia. He had to rehearse the singers and the orchestra and had to travel with them. Then start to rehearse the operas with each of the four orchestras (Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane) all over again.
PC: How long did he stay in Australia?
CR: Two and three quarter years. They cut the seasons into two instead of three. Of course some of the Australian singers who sang under Karl at Covent Garden came out to Australia to sing for him. Kenneth Neate who was an Australian came out to sing Pinkerton and Tamino and Sylvia Fischer sang in "Fidelio" with great success. Joan Hammond was Australian too, of course, and she sang "Salome" at a matinee at the Adelade Festival. It was 100 in the shade. Joan did the "Dance of the Seven Veils" and wore a cloak. Afterwards, it had a black streak down it because it was so hot. In fact Karl was standing in water it was so hot. One of two women at the concert said, "What do you think of it?" The other one replied, "Well, I quite like the music but I don't like the story and I needn't have brought my knitting - there was no interval! They had never heard of Oscar Wilde, I think - or the Bible!
PC: The First Sinfonietta was recorded by the VSO at Melbourne
CR: Yes. Mr Southey who ran the recording company there said to Karl "Why don't we record it for you?" and so he did. He was an extremely nice and a helpful man. It was a very good recording. Hi-fi had just come in and during the playback the technician said, "What instrument is that? Is it an oboe or a muted trumpet? Karl said it was difficult to distinguish. It was an oboe but after working 6 weeks with hi-fi one's fine hearing is gone. One has to turn up the volume so much in order to distinguish the instruments.
They opened a new hall at the University of Melbourne. Lord Carrington was then Governor of Victoria and came to the concert. I was sitting next to him. The Chancellor couldn't come because he had chopped a finger off - he was a butcher - and so the Vice Chancellor had to come. He was a Professor who hated public speaking and he was given the programme just before the start and began "We are very grateful for the Victoria Sympathy Orchestra and Karl Frankel" and Carrington said, "Hmm, he seems to have bought some courage from somewhere!"
PC: Karl wrote his Sixth Symphony and the "Waltzing Matilda Variations" in Australia.
CR: Yes. He dedicated the Variations to Sir Bernard Heinz who was the doyen of Australian music. I think it was performed once and then never again which is a pity because it's rather fun and it gives you the impression of an Austrian coming to Australia and hearing the "National Anthem". It's a nice piece but I think Bernard Heinz thought Karl was poking fun at the Australians which wasn't his idea at all. It was just about the age of the 1920s, 1930s when refugees came to Australia and how these refugees experienced it expressed in music. But, never mind. It's easy to perform - he has his "Schoenberg" way of dealing with the "variation" side of it - if you turn "Waltzing Matilda" upside down it's quite fun!
PC: What happened after Australia?
CR: Well, unfortunately nothing because if you come back form Australia you might as well ask to have been buried out there. You have been out of the eye of the British public for two and half years and that's it!
PC: Did he carry on writing?
CR: Yes, he wrote a whole oratorio, "Der Mensch". It was based partly on sketches of material he already had. He took part of "Deirdre" for the love story. It's the Human story. It starts with a poem by Claudius and then there is Childhood, Love, War and Death. He took some of the songs he had written in the War i.e. the Sassoon setting and two or three others and scored them for orchestra. He said he wasn't going to write in English any more. He said, "they do not play anything of mine so why should I?" So he even translated the English songs into German and had them in German. He said "They're an ungrateful lot and don't you dare put my music in England. He had stayed in Graz for four years, the longest he had stayed anywhere and I had a friend who knew the University people and they said "Yes, we'd be delighted to house your husband's works" and that was that. There was quite a nice ceremony. They performed the double bass sonata and a number of songs. They haven't produced any results so far.
The BBC performed a bit of "Deirdre" but it left something to be desired balance-wise. You couldn't really understand what it was all about. They did a lot of other pieces by other composers to do with the story of "Deirdre". It was done in the Hippodrome, Golders Green, an ideal venue for recording opera but my husband's music is not the kind that you can read off the page. For this sort of comprehensive rehearsal the BBC is not really geared. An hour and a half is all they will give you. Well, an hour and half with four singers and an orchestra is a beginning. It was a good try. A worthy enterprise. The balancers had no concept of how to space atonal music. I could have told them what to bring out but they never asked me!
PC: Were there many other broadcasts of any other works?
CR: Well, the BBC broadcast the First Symphony from Liverpool and also (I think) the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies from Scotland from the Edinburgh Festival. You never see anything about it. My husband said, "Look, if I go before you and as I'm twenty years older than you I expect to go first, don't you dare pay anyone to perform my music. If they don't want to perform it because they think it's worth performing, so be it. You know they offered to perform things if I gave them £10,000 but I wouldn't dream of it. If they don't believe in it on its own merit I'm not interested." The minimum that any concert management will give you is three rehearsals for the whole concert. Well if a symphony takes 30 minutes (like the Fourth Symphony) then they give you an hour and a half if you're lucky out of the three rehearsals. By then they haven't got the essentials together yet. If you pay those three rehearsals and the hall and the publicity and the programmes you have to look on the other side of £10,000. That's why I said when I gave the music to Graz, "I don't want any royalties." They ruin any new work. Unless you have the money to pay the royalties, the work dies.
PC: How did Karl compose?
CR: When people asked my husband "Why do you write symphonies?" he answered, "I have a feeling I have to write. It's in me and I want to write it. Other people write novels or detective stories or a painter wants to paint pictures. If you like, I paint pictures with music. However, I will not put pen to paper before I know how the symphony is going to end. I don't start writing a bit here or a bit there. I scribble the ideas down when they come into my head as I'm going for walks or whatever but unless I have a clear picture of the arc I want to span from the beginning of the work right to the end I wouldn't start writing." It was one whole thing for him, not a series of bits. A writer will understand this. If he writes ten sentences and can't get any further he has no concept of how his work is going to progress and you feel it.
PC: His music sounds Austrian rather than British, even though some of the symphonies were composed in this country. I assume he wasn't influenced by British composers.
CR: No. He said "I am Austrian and I cannot suddenly tune in to the British chords and music because that would be imitation. I can only write how I feel, the way I'm going." In the same way you cannot ask an English conductor to conduct an Austrian waltz. It's not the same.
PC: Who are the composers he most admired?
CR: He liked Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Richard Strauss. He also liked Puccini. "La Boheme". The three one-acters. He was not frightfully keen on "Butterfly" and he was not extremely anxious to do "Tosca". But when (Warwick) Braithwaite fell ill he had to do "Tosca" and in Australia when (Georg) Tintner fell into the orchestra pit he had to do "Butterfly".
The Manager of the OUP Music Department once said to Karl, "One of our English composers (he said the name but I don't want to say it now) thinks of four bars of a theme and then he spends agonising weeks to extend these four bars to eight." My husband looked at him and said, "You know one does feel that with his music!" You cannot convince like this. Brahms did the opposite. He wrote to Clara Schumann and said he had a good theme but she said she was sure it was about eight bars too long - could he shorten it? So he did. But to spend weeks trying to think where you are going to go next! In 12-tone pieces I think you can do that. You have to because it doesn't fit in but to struggle with a melody, unable to see how it can progress…
PC: Yes, quite. Are there any British composers he admired?
CR: Well, my husband liked Elgar very much indeed. He loved conducting Elgar. He liked the Violin Concerto, the Cello Concerto and the Symphonies. He felt Elgar was a solid, well-trained composer. He had something in his mind to put down on paper. Karl was not very keen on Vaughan Williams. He wrote film music and made a symphony out of it and that was the wrong way round as far as my husband was concerned. Britten he liked. He felt a number of songs were absolutely top class, particularly if Peter Pears sang them because they were written for him. As for Willie Walton, Façade was a good piece. In Berlin Karl conducted "Belshazzar's Feast" and that was the first encounter with Fischer-Dieskau who sang the baritone part as a very young man and my husband came back and said "I heard a baritone today. He's going to go a long way." That was Fischer-Dieskau.
PC: Did he have any contact with other British composers?
CR: Up in Scotland, Karl did two pieces of Arthur Butterworth. The composer Phyllis Tate was Alan Frank's wife and Karl played one or two small pieces of hers with the Scottish Orchestra. You always need pieces of about twelve minutes somewhere in programmes. Her pieces were quite charming. One budding composer, who was also an engineer came to Karl once. Karl said, "Would you like to come and play to me?" The composer said "But Mr Rankl, I can't play the piano". So Karl said, "Well, can you play another instrument?" The man said, "No, I've no idea about instruments. I write a lot for the Old Vic. They like what I write." So Karl suggested they sat down and studied the composer's score, perhaps at a rehearsal. The composer said he was too busy as an engineer to do that so my husband thought, "If you're not interested in what you have written why should I be interested either." He would have performed music by young composers who were interested or intent on doing something but this engineer/composer's behaviour was not an attitude he felt should be encouraged. Somebody who was an engineer and couldn't be bothered to listen to rehearsals to see how his work sounded - what's the point? If you write something, even a little essay, and you say, "can you listen to my interpretation of it to see what it sounds like and if you agree with it?" and he says, "I can't be bothered" then you say "Well, why should I?"
PC: Did Karl join Oxford University Press whilst he was staying in Cowley?
CR: Oh no, they joined him. I think one of Karl's repetiteurs and young conductors, who was also a composer (John Gardner) took him to lunch and introduced him to Alan Frank of OUP. They took some of Karl's scores into the hire library because they didn't have the money to publish. So that's how it worked at Covent Garden. John Gardner had written his opera "The Moon and Sixpence" and he was the repetiteur and conductor and I think he introduced Karl to Alan Frank.
Karl got on very well with Arthur Bliss. Bliss lived down the road here (in St John's Wood). He didn't conduct the opera by Bliss but he was responsible for it being put on. The opera was a great success. Bliss had a nice sense if humour. Karl was not very happy with the Yorkshireman who write the libretto for Bliss's opera. He was non-co-operative and very much the very great man of letters, not what opera is all about. Opera is normally about music and the less text the better. If you look at Verdi's operas, the text could be written on ten pages. It makes the best impact on the public. If you have to write too many recitatives (which are unintelligible anyhow) then the opera becomes endless. It's sad.
When my husband wrote "Deirdre" he was ruthless in cutting the text. He said "Read it to me and I'll see whether it'll hang together." He would always cut back. He was sure Synge wouldn't have minded Karl abridging the text but he didn't want to end up with a seven hour "Parsifal" on his hands. A libretto for an opera has to be to the point. I mean "Rosenkavalier" is four and a half hours if you don't cut it. There's a lot of music there which doesn't carry the story. There must be cuts. Every opera is too long, actually.
PC: As a form, did the Symphony mean a lot to him?
CR: Oh yes. Yes. He said it was created as a specific form and one has to be able to recreate it and hear it as a genuine symphony. It has a recognisable form. He said Haydn was the great Master and although Beethoven was a great composer he still took what he needed from Haydn.
PC: Did Karl like Mahler's symphonies?
CR: He loved Mahler's music. Alfred Rose¢ (of the Rose¢ Quartet) was the brother-in-law of Mahler and he emigrated to the UK. He was the leader of the Vienna Philharmonic. The first cello of the quartet was Buchsbaum, who also was in the Vienna Philharmonic. Another player from the orchestra played the second violin and Karl played the viola for the quartet when he came to England. Karl was very pleased when they took him. Buchsbaum said when he saw Karl conduct at Covent Garden he thought it was Mahler! Karl had the same idea of making music and interpreting music. The same way Mahler had of making it clear to the orchestra. Mahler was always concentrating on the orchestra not on the audience behind him and so it was with Karl - Karl always insisted on standing behind a work, not in front if it.
© Paul Conway 1999
1898 Born in Gaaden, Austria, October 1st
1925 Conductor in Liberec
1927 Conductor in Konigsberg
1928-1931 Klemperer's assistant at the Kroll Opera, Berlin
1931-1932 Director of the Opera House at Wiesbaden
1933-1937 Conductor in Graz
1937-1939 Director of the German Theatre, Prague
1938 Conducted the first performance of Ernst Krenek's "Karl V"
1939 Arrived in Britain three weeks before war broke out
1946-51 Music Director of the new Covent Garden Opera Company
1949 Conducted the first performance of Bliss's "The Olympians" at Covent Garden
1950 Conducted Wagner's Ring cycle at Covent Garden
1952-57 Conductor of the Scottish Orchestra
1958-60 Music Director of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, Australia
1968 Died in St Gilgen, Salzburg September 6th
Orchestral Works
Symphony no 1 (1938)
Symphony for large orchestra and three female voices (soprano, mezzo-soprano and alto) in the second movement.
Score: soprano, mezzo, alto, 2 piccolos, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, side drum, cymbals, triangle, wood block, tambourine, tam tam, xylophone and strings (8,8,7,6,5)
In three movements:
Un poco maestoso pp1-78 (of the score) Krassa 03/08/38
Sehr ruhevoll pp79-113 Prague 10/09/38
Lebhaft, doch nicht zu schell pp114-194 Zurich 19/11/38
Texts of the songs in the second movement: i) Ein Volkslied, ii) Ein Volkslied, iii) by Mathias Claudius.
First performance: 29th January in Liverpool (Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Karl Rankl).
Symphony no 2 (1941)
Score: 2 piccolos, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets in A, clarinet in E flat, bass clarinet in B, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, cymbals, side drum, glockenspiel and strings.
Written in 1941, England
In three movements:
Allegro energico pp1-96 Oxford 30/09/41
Adagio pp97-137 Oxford 02/07/41
Burlesque pp138-222 Oxford 12/06/41
Symphony no 3 (1944)
Score: 2 piccolos, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 clarinets in B, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, strings (8,7,6,5,4)
Written between 1943 and 1944 in England
In three movements:
Allegro non troppo pp1-75 Boar's Hill 24/07/43
Adagio pp76-100 Boar's Hill 15/08/43
Allegro molto pp101-169 Boar's Hill 08/11/43
Dedicated "to Lady Mary and Dr Gilbert Murray in affectionate admiration and sincerest gratitude"
Symphony no 4 (1953)
Score: 2 piccolos, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A, bass clarinet in B, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, side drum, cymbals, triangle, wood block, tambourine, tam tam, glockenspiel and strings (8,7,6,5,4)
Written between 1952 and 1953 in Austria and England
In three movements:
Allegro energico pp1-42 London 18/01/53
Variations on an old folksong, Andante pp43-66 London 27/01/53
Rondo Finale. Allegro ma non troppo pp67-111 London 16/04/53
Also sketched movements 1 and 3 in Schloss Huttenstein on 14/08/52 and 28/08/52
On 16/04/53 finished the score in London.
First performance: 20th January 1954 in Vienna (Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Karl Rankl).
Symphony no 5 (1954)
Score: piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets in A, clarinet in E flat, bass clarinet in B, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, strings (8,7,6,5,4).
Written between the summer of 1953 and the summer of 1954 in Austria and England.
In four movements:
Tema con variazione (un poco sostenuto) pp1-6 Huttenstein 15/08/53
Scherzo pp7-18 Huttenstein 22/08/53
Adagio pp19-25 Huttenstein 13/07/54
Finale (Allegro, ma non troppo) pp25-52 Huttenstein 03/08/54
First performance: 25th January 1957 in Edinburgh (Scottish National Orchestra under Hans Swarowsky)
Second performance: 26th January in Glasgow (SNO under Hans Swarowsky)
Third performance: 10th July at the BBC, London (SNO under Karl Rankl)
(Recorded in Glasgow on May 1957 with the SNO under Karl Rankl)
Symphony no 6 (1961)
Score: piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A, bass clarinet in B, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba and strings (8,8,7,6,5)
Written between 1959 and 1961 in Austria and Australia
In four movements:
Allegro pp1-39 St Gilgen 30/10/60
Scherzando pp39-75 St Gilgen 04/12/60
Adagio pp76-93 St Gilgen 25/12/60
Allegro giocoso pp94-130 St Gilgen 25/02/61
Finished at Hochreithaus St Gilgen 25/02/61
Dedicated "to my friend Franz Holford in memory of happy days in Australia"
Symphony no 7 (1962)
Score: piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba and strings (8,8,7,6,5)
Written in 1962 in Austria and England
In four movements:
Vivace pp1-29 London 18/03/62
Scherzo pp30-72 London 15/01/62
Adagio (attaca) pp73-82 London 01/02/62
Finale pp83-121 London 10/05/62
Orchestral parts finished 11/05/62
Dedicated to "Herrn Hofrat Professor, Joseph Marx, in Verehrung und Zuneigung gewidmet, 11. Mai 1962"
Symphony no 8 (1963)
Score: piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba and strings
Written in 1963 in Austria and England
In four movements:
Maestoso, alla marcia funebre pp1-14 Hochreithaus, St Gilgen 25/08/63
Adagio pp14-24 Hochreithaus, St Gilgen 05/09/63
Scherzo pp25-45 London 04/10/63
Allegro molto pp46-75 London 05/11/63
Sinfonietta no 1 (1957)
Score: piccolo, 3 flutes, 3 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets in A, clarinet in E flat, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in C, timpani, triangle, side drum and strings (8,7,6,5,4)
Finished on 08/01/57
In one movement: Allegro capriccioso (ma non troppo) pp1-71
Sinfonietta no 2 (1961)
Score: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C and strings.
In three movements:
Moderato pp1-12
Tema con variazione pp13-21
Allegro commodo pp21-34
Written in 1961 in Austria
Finished at Hochreithaus, St Gilgen on Saturday 2nd September 1961
Music from the Opera "Deirdre" - Suite for large orchestra (1956)
Score: 2 piccolos, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, side drum, tambourine, glockenspiel, harp and strings (8,7,6,6,6)
Written in 1956 in Austria
Finished 15/07/56
In three movements: (i) Adagio, (ii) Molto tranquilo, (iii) Poco maestoso
Suite for Strings (1953)
Score: Violin 1, Violin II, Viola, 'Cello and Double Bass
In five movements: (i) Prelude and Fugue, (ii) Valse, (iii) Fandango, (iv) Andante con variazione, (v) Scherzo
Written in Austria between July 1st and July 18th 1953
Dedicated "to my friend John Gardner and the Haslemere Musical Society"
Two Dances for Strings (Valse and Fandango from the Suite) were published separately by OUP in 1954
Weihnachts-Ouverture (Christmas Overture) (1957)
Score: piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, glockenspiel in B, F and F sharp and strings
Finished 20/10/57 in London
Variations on "Waltzing Matilda" (1959)
Score: piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A, bass clarinet in B, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horn in F, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, side drum, cymbals, triangle and strings
15 Variations and Coda (pp1-78)
Written in 1959 in Australia
Dedicated "to Sir Bernard Heinze, the Doyen of Music in Australia"
Finished 30/08/59 in Sydney
Symphonic March for large orchestra (1952)
Score: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets in B, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, side drum, cymbals, triangle and strings
Tempo di Marcia ma non troppo (pp1-16)
Written in 1952 in England
Finished 15/02/52 in London
Vocal Works
Der Mensch (1964)
Oratorio in three parts after pastiche-like texts. Rankl uses some of his own older compositions, or their different treatments.
Teil I "Jugend" ("Youth)
Teil II "Kreig" ("War")
Teil III "Alter" ("Old Age")
Score: soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, Male and female choir, gem. Chor, piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes, cor anglais, 3 clarinets in A, bass clarinet in B, bass clarinet in A, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, wood block, tam tam, xylophone, harp and strings
Verwendet wurden folgende texte von:
Matthias Claudius: "Der Mensch" ("Empfangen und genaehret")
Joseph v. Eichendorff: "Wiegenlied" ("Das Kind ruht aus")
Emil A Hermann: "Wiegenlied" ("und was she' ich den")
Dettlev v. Liliencron: "Wiegenlied" ("vor der Ture schlaft der Baum")
Paul Fleming: "Tanzlied" ("Lasst uns tanzen")
Walther von der Vogelweide: "Tandaradei" ("Unter der Linde")
John M Synge: aus dem Schauspiel "Dierdre" (Textubers: Furegg)
Heinrich v. Kleist: "Das Kathchen von Heilbronn" (Akt 4, 2. Auftritt bis Ende des 3. Auftritts. In RuB: S.82 z. ( - S.87 z. 17)
Mathias Claudius: "Kriegslied" ("'s ist Krieg")
Karl Kraus: "Chor der erfrorenen Soldaten" ("Kalt war die Nacht")
Volkslied: "Bohmisches Rekrutenleid" ("Als ich noch ein kleiner Junge")
Siegfried Sassoon: "Traumer" ("Soldaten sind Burger")
Joseph v. Eichendorff: "Der Soldat" ("Und wenn es einst dunkelt")
Anton Ulrich, Hzg. Zu Braunschweig-Luneburg: "Abschied" ("Mein matter Sinn")
Anonymous (aus dem Liederbuch eines Schwarzwalder Uhrmachers): ("Die Uhr schlaegt eins)
Volkslied: ("Wir leben und wissen nicht warum")
Matthias Claudius: "Der Tod" ("Ach, es ist so dunkel")
Matthias Claudius: "Motett") ("Der Mensch lebt")
Written between 1963 and 1964 in England
Finished Saturday 21/03/64 in London
Four Scottish Songs
Score: 1 high voice (alto), 2 flutes, 2 piccolos, 2 clarinets in A, 2 bassoons, 2 oboes, 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 3 trombones, timpani, harp, celesta and strings
1 Scottish folksong: An Eriksay Love Lilt arr Rankl "Bhair mi oro bharo"
2 Scottish folksong: Kishmul's Gallery, A' Bhirlin Bharrich arr Rankl "High form the Bena Haylich"
3 Highland Cradle Song: "O can ye sew cushions" arr Rankl
4 Robert Burns: "O whistle and I'll come to you" arr Rankl
Dedicated "to Constance Shacklock"
Deirdre of the Sorrows (1950)
Opera in three Acts after a play by John Millington Synge (1871-1908)
Written in the summer of 1948, 1949 and 1950 in Schloss Huttenstein
Scored in 1950 in London.
Songs with piano:
Songs for a Female Voice (1920-22)
A Chinese Picture-Book op5 (1941-42, England)
7 Songs for Baritone op6 (1939-42, England)
9 Songs for Soprano op7 (Jan-Oct 1942, England)
7 Songs for Tenor op8 (1941-42, England)
7 Songs for Mezzosoprano op9 (1942-42, rev. 1952, England)
War - 11 Songs for Baritone op10 (Oct-Nov 1939-42, England)
"Mutter" (3rd March 1962, London)
Choral works with instrumental ensemble:
Litanei der Gutsarbeiter (19 Feb 1933, Berlin)
Schlusschor der Arbeiter (17 March 1932, Wiesbaden)
Lied der Arbeiter (1 March 1932, Wiesbaden)
Miscellaneous choral works:
Schnitterlied (24 Oct 1932, Berlin)
Budjongs Regiment (24 Oct 1932, Berlin)
Tanzlied (29 June, 1964, London)
Ballade von der Arbeit (30 Sep 1930, Berlin)
Chor von der Arbeit (1 Mar 1932, Wiesbaden)
Leid vom Abbau (30 Oct 1930, Berlin)
Chorstuck fur Naturschwarmer (an einen Baum) (30 Oct 1932)
Kneipenlied (2 Sep 1930, Berlin)
Gehn zwei Buben (30 July 1953)
Chamber Music
String Quartet (written in the summer of 1935)
Quartettsatz: Scherzo. Sehr rasch
Quartettsatz: Menuett. Allegro moderato
Quarettsatz: Scherzo and Trio. Sehr lebhaft
Quartettsatz: Trio. Ruhiger
Sonata for Double bass and piano (1957)
Written in August 1957 in Austria.
In three movements: (i) Moderato, (ii) Tema con variazione, (iii) Rondo
Works for solo piano:
Include: Scherzos, Menuetts, Rondos, Allegros, Menuett and Trio and Maessig Langsam
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