Hans Gál · 1890–1987

Musical Education

Although Gál's family was not particularly musical, his father enjoyed opera, and took Hans and his three sisters to performances, which awakened his interest in music. When Hans was eight, his Aunt Jenny, while visiting them, noticed Hans's musical talent, and insisted that he should receive piano lessons. He did not enjoy practising, and later confessed to having secretly moved the hands of the clock forwards in order to shorten the time.

The musical event which really ignited Hans's interest in music, however, was a concert for school-children at which Wagner's Meistersinger overture and Beethoven's Choral Symphony were played. He was fourteen, and this was his first experience of an orchestral concert. The Choral Symphony so impressed him that he made one of his sisters play it over and over again with him as a piano duet. In the next few years, he developed a passion for music. Like everyone else, he "went through a violent fit of Wagnerism, as if it had been measles" [Letter to John Russell, 14.9.1956] There were performances at the Opera, some of which were conducted by Mahler, whose conducting he could recall quite clearly, even eighty years later. Another event which remained in his memory was a performance in 1907 of Strauss's Salome by a touring company from Breslau, in the 'Deutsches Volkstheater'.

At the age of fifteen, after passing through several piano teachers, Hans had eventually become a pupil of Richard Robert (1861-1924), at that time Director of the New Vienna Conservatory, one of the most respected teachers in Vienna. Gál obtained his music-teaching certificate, which included music history, piano-playing and harmony, under Robert's supervision in April, 1909.

Hanna Gál recalled:

"There were three outstanding piano-teachers working in Vienna at the same time in the first quarter of the century. At the Academy was Emil Sauer, who had himself been a pupil of Liszt and who trained his students primarily to achieve the greatest virtuosity. Also the world-famous Leschetizky had settled in Vienna. His pupils were recognisable by their wonderfully shaped sound. The third highly-respected piano-teacher was Professor Robert. His pupils were not just 'piano-players', as Hans called them. They had to be able to transpose at sight, and vocal accompaniment and score reading were practised. Klara Haskill, before the family moved to Paris, [Georg] Szell, Hans, [Rudolf] Serkin, Rudi [Rudolf] Schwarz and many other musicians came from his school. Frau Robert occupied herself with the social aspects of Robert's pupils. Szell found his first wife there." [Private correspondence, 10.10.1989]

Through his social contacts within the Robert circle, Gál also learnt to ski, which, as Hanna comments,"'opened up a new world for him and gave him great pleasure" [op. cit.]'

By the end of his school-days Gál was already a proficient pianist, and had composed, without any technical training, around 100 songs, piano versions of four opera sketches, and innumerable piano pieces - all later destroyed as works of his apprenticeship.

In 1909 Robert obtained for him an appointment as teacher of harmony and piano at the New Vienna Conservatory, which made it financially possible for him to continue his studies. He was fortunate to find - again through Robert - his ideal mentor and 'spiritual father' in Eusebius Mandyczewski(1857-1929), who had belonged to Brahms's closest circle of friends, and under whom Gál worked intensively for two years (1909-11) on musical form and counterpoint. He loved and revered Mandyczewski, and remained in close contact with him until his death (more ...).

With regard to Gál's relationship to Mandyczewski, Hanna Gál relates:

"In his batchelor days Hans twice spent his summer holidays in Mönichkirchen, a wooded village in the hills above Aspang. Mandyczewski had a house built there to his own specifications. When it was ready an artist friend painted an organ-playing St. Cecilia al fresco on the wall. In the inn Hans heard two locals talking about the house and its decoration. One: 'Well, why didn't he paint the Virgin Mary on the house?' Answer: 'She couldn't play the piano.'

Hans had a happy time there. He lived very comfortably with Fräulein Loni, the former cook of the vicar, to whom the vicar had left the house; he worked a great deal, walked for hours on end every day in the beautiful woods, and could always go and see Mandyczewski, play with the delightlful little Vicki, then about 4 years old, and talk to Herr or Frau Mandyczewski about serious and trivial things. He couldn't have wished for anything better." [Personal correspondence, October, 1989.]

At the same time (1909-1911) Gál embarked on his academic studies of musicology at the Musikhistorisches Institut of the University, under Guido Adler (1855-1941), the eminent music historian and founder of the series Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich. In 1913 he concluded his studies with a doctoral dissertation entitled "On the stylistic characteristics of the young Beethoven, and their relationship to the style of his maturity", which was accorded the rare honour of being published in Adler's own Studien zur Musikwissenschaft.

Biographical notes

Richard Robert

Richard Robert was born in Vienna in 1861. After studying music at the Vienna conservatory, he worked as theatre conductor and pianist before turning to teaching, in which he was very successful. Among his pupils, in addition to Hans Gál, were Klara Haskill, Georg Szell, Rudolf Serkin, Alfred Rosé, Wilhelm Gross, Rudolf Schwarz, and others.

Robert also worked as a music critic, and edited the journal Musikalische Rundschau from 1885-1891. In 1909 he briefly took over the direction of the New Vienna Conservatory, where he had previously given courses in musical style. He died in Vienna in 1924.

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Eusebius Mandyczewski

Eusebius Mandyczewski was born in the Ukraine in 1857, the son of a Greek Orthodox priest. He studied with Nottebohm in Vienna, and became archivist of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. From 1879 he was a close friend of Brahms. From 1897 he taught at the Vienna Conservatory.

He was a man of great scholarship and learning, though he published relatively little. He edited the complete edition of Schubert's works and, together with Gál, that of Brahms. He died in 1929.

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Mandyczewski

In 1957, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Mandyczewski's birth, Gál wrote of his teacher in the following terms:

If I were to say who, including my immediate family, had had the deepest and most enduring influence on my development, then without a moment’s hesitation I would name my teacher, Eusebius Mandyczewski. Of what I learned from him, his teaching, however important and fundamental it may have been, was the least part. The main thing that he gave to his student was himself, his attitude, his unfailing truthfulness, his artistic and human integrity. Anyone to whom this was inaccessible remained aloof from him, and he from them. At the age of eighteen or nineteen one is too young to grasp these things consciously and they only became clear to me much later. But what the young person certainly sensed instinctively from the first moment was the authority of an unconditional belief in the active power of what the spirit of the Great and Immortal had created in the course of the centuries. He taught the skills in the only way in which they should be taught, through example and instruction, according to the method of the Gothic architects’ guild. I never saw a text-book, just as I myself could never use a text-book in my teaching.

If the teacher’s first objective was the transmission of skills, he never forgot the end for the means: to learn to find oneself through the free working-out of form. It was for him a matter of course that that could only take place on the basis of a single, unshakeably firm basis: that of unconditional truthfulness. 'Anyone who is not confident of answering for every note that he writes at the Last Judgement should not even begin',—perhaps he never uttered this sentence but it was the core of his teaching. He had neither understanding nor patience for the false, the contrived, for things born of idleness, fashion or a craving for publicity. He had just as little patience in his occasional judgements of people whom he rejected on principle. 'What do you mean', he used to say, 'he is just a rogue', or else 'a big-head'; and that for him was the end of the matter. The surprising thing was his natural amiability towards such people. He was on his guard against rogues and big-heads, but I never saw him behave towards such a person with anything other than gentle friendliness. It was enough for him in dealing with the rogue phenomenon to know that it existed, that he belonged to the necessary world order and that one merely had to distance oneself from him personally in order not to be contaminated by him; and what was true of people was also valid for actions or utterances of whatever kind.

If there is an aristocracy of existence and of the spirit, then Mandyczewski possessed it in greater measure than anyone else I have known. This nobility of the spirit was stamped on his face, in the perfectly beautiful, peaceful, contemplative features of a person who is firmly anchored in his own internal world and whom life has made into a stoic. After a serious operation he replied smilingly to a doctor who had asked him if he had any pain: 'I knew that it would not be pleasant.'

Measured against the enormous richness of his ability and his knowledge, he published little, with the exception of his participation in the great Complete Editions of the classics—Schubert, Haydn, Brahms. His encyclopaedic knowledge, supported by an unfailing memory, was placed at the disposal of anyone who wished to make use of it. The thick volumes that he could have written never came to pass, because he never felt the need to communicate what he knew in any other form than through personal contact. The unforgettable profit belonged to all those who enjoyed the good fortune of being in contact with him.

In any case one should not forget that even the wisest of the wise, Socrates, did not leave behind any books.

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Guido Adler

Guido Adler was born in Moravia in 1855. He studied theory and composition at the Vienna conservatory with Bruckner and Dessoff. While at university he co-founded (with, among others, Hugo Wolf) an 'Academic Wagner Society'. Following his appointment as lecturer in music at the University in 1882 he was one of the founders of the important journal Vierteljahrschrift für Musikwissenschaft ('Quarterly Journal of Musicology'). In 1885 he was appointed professor of music history at the University of Prague and in 1898 became Hanslick's successor as professor in Vienna.

From 1894 to 1938 he was editor of the series Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich ('Monuments of Music in Austria'), which published early Austrian music up to the time of Beethoven, and also edited the important publication Handbuch der Musikgeschichte ('Handbook of Music History'), published in 1924. He also founded and directed the Institute for Music History at the University. Many scholars and composers passed through his hands.

Adler is regarded as the founder of modern musicology. He is noted particularly for his work on stylistic analysis. He died in 1941.

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