Klein, Fritz Heinrich

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Klein, Fritz Heinrich

Klein, Fritz Heinrich, Austrian music theorist and composer; b. Budapest, Feb. 2, 1892; d. Linz, July 11, 1977. He took piano lessons with his father, then went to Vienna, where he studied composition with Schoenberg and Berg, and became their devoted disciple. From 1932 to 1957 he taught theory at the Bruckner Cons, in Linz. His most ingenious composition was Die Maschine (1921; N.Y., Nov. 24, 1924), subtitled “Eine extonale Selbstsatire” and publ. under the pseudonym “Heau-tontimorumenos” (i.e., self-tormentor); this work features instances of all kinds of tonal combinations, including a “Mutterakkord” which consists of all 12 different chromatic tones and all 11 different intervals, the first time such an arrangement was proposed. He also publ. an important essay bearing on serial techniques then still in the process of formulation, “Die Grenze der Halbtonwelt” in Die Musik (Jan. 1925). He made the vocal score of Berg’s opera Wozzeck. His other works include Partita for 6 Instruments (1953), Divertimento for Strings (1954), Ein musikalisches Fliessband for Orch. (1960), Musikalisches Tagebuch for Orch. (1970), and several stage works, among them the opera Nostradamus.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire