Lorenz, Alfred (Ottokar)

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Lorenz, Alfred (Ottokar)

Lorenz, Alfred (Ottokar), Austrian musicologist, composer, and conductor; b. Vienna, July 11, 1868; d. Munich, Nov. 20, 1939. He studied with Radecke (conducting) and Spitta (musicology) in Berlin. He was a conductor in Königsberg, Elberfeld, and Munich (1894–97), then became a conductor (1898) and later chief conductor (1904) in Coburg; was made director of its Opera (1917); was also director of the Musikverein in Gotha (1901–18) and Coburg (1907–20). He then gave up his conducting career and studied musicology with Moritz Bauer at the Univ. of Frankfurt am Main (graduated, 1922); lectured at the Univ. of Munich from 1923. He made a specialty of Wagnerian research; publ. the comprehensive work Das Geheimnis der Form bei Richard Wagner (4 vols., Berlin, 1924–33; second ed., 1966); also publ. Alessandro Scarlattis Jugendoper (Augsburg, 1927) and Abendländische Musikgeschichte im Rhythmus der Generationen (Berlin, 1928). He composed an opera, Helges Erwachen (Schwerin, 1896), incidental music to various plays, the symphonic poems Bergfahrt and Columbus, chamber music, and songs.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire