150th birthday - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 2007 - 75 Euro Cent

On the 17th of January 2007, the 150th birthday of the Austrian composer, bandmaster and writer Wilhelm Kienzl will take place. He was born in 1857 in Waizenkirchen, Upper Austria. His father moved with his family to Graz and later became mayor of the city. After completing his studies in violin and piano, Wilhelm Kienzl studied music in Vienna with Wilhelm Mayer Rémy, Eduard Hanslik and Friedrich von Hausegger in Vienna in 1874, then in Prague with Josef Krecji, in Leipzig and briefly in Franz List in Weimar. During visits to the Bayreuth Festival, the student became acquainted with the music of Richard Wagner, whose admirer he remained for a lifetime. After completing his studies, Wilhelm Kienzl traveled throughout Europe as a pianist and conductor. In 1883 he became director of the Deutsche Oper in Amsterdam, but soon returned to Graz and took over the management of the Styrian Music Association. In 1894 Wilhelm Kienzl wrote his most famous opera "Der Evangelimann". The opera was premiered at the Berlin Court Opera in 1895. The composer took the history of the love and fire tragedy from the Viennese moral pictures "From the papers of a police commissioner" of the Viennese police lawyer and writer. Leopold Florian Meißner, who had published therein an incident in 1812 in the Hellerhof near Paudorf at the foot of Göttweig Abbey. The action of the opera therefore takes place in the "market town of St. Othmar, where there was a church and a monastery". The music historian Viktor Redtenbacher suspects behind the main character of the opera, Mathias Freudhofer, the later Göttweiger abbot Engelbert Schwertfeger. Neither "Don Quixote" nor "Der Kuhreigen" could connect Wilhelm Kienzl with the success of the popular opera "Der Evangelimann", which had more than 3,500 performances worldwide. A year before, there was a concert performance at the original venue in the Hellerhof, where the market town of Paudorf has set up a "Wilhelm Kienzl Museum" since 2002. In addition to Engelbert Humperdinck and Siegfried Wagner, Wilhelm Kienzl is considered the opera creator in the romantic Wagner succession. Attention is also his extensive song production. Kienzl composed the first national anthem of the First Republic in 1920 to a Dr. med. Karl Renner wrote poem "Deutschösterreich, du herrliches Land". Under the influence of modern musical trends, the composer did not write any major works in his late years of illness. He died on October 3, 1941 in Vienna.