Richard Heuberger
born Graz, June 18, 1850; died Vienna, Oct 28, 1914
Documents associated with this person:
Austrian music critic and composer, teacher at the Vienna Conservatory from 1902 and Director of the Wiener Männergesang-Verein, 1902-09.
Heuberger was a prominent music critic with the Neues Wiener Tagblatt from 1881, with the Munich Allgemeine Zeitung from 1889, and Hanslick's successor at the Vienna Neue Freie Presse (1896-1901), founder of the yearbook Musikbuch aus Österreich (1904-13), and also composer of opera, operetta, and ballet. Early in his career, he was a member of Brahms's Vienna music circle. Both Busoni and Heuberger (along with Reznicek, Kienzl, and Weingartner) were pupils of the music theorist W.A. Rémy (1831-98), and Heuberger studied also with Robert Fuchs. Heuberger had already served as editor for Universal Edition in the days before Hertzka.
Heuberger and Schenker
Schenker's acquaintance with Heuberger clearly preceded 1900, presumably arising out of the Brahms circle, although he is not mentioned in Schenker's diaries until 1909 (OJ 1/8, p. 96). On December 22, 1908, Schenker rather flippantly suggested that in order to produce volume II of Bach's Well-tempered Clavier for the Vienna Conservatory as a continuation of Busoni's edition of volume I, "All you need do is to entrust, e.g., Prof. Heuberger with the task, and, without overtaxing him, instruct him that volume II should be prepared according to the analyses of Prof. Riemann." (WSLB 31).
Correspondence
Correspondence from Heuberger to Schenker is preserved at OJ 11/49 (1899-1905: 4 items).
Heuberger is one the 55 signatories to a letter from teaching staff of the Vienna Conservatory expressing regret at the resignation of Moriz Violin (OJ 70/59, June 21, 1912).
Bibliography:
- Heuberger, Richard, Erinnerungen an Brahms: Tagebuchnotizen aus den Jahren 1875-97, ed. K. Hofmann, 2nd edn (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1976)
- Heuberger, Richard, Schubert (Berlin 1902)
- Botstein, Leon, Music and its Public: Habits of Listening and the Crisis of Musical Modernism in Vienna, 1870-1914 (Harvard University: PhD diss., 1985)
Source:
- NGDM2 (2001 and online)