Information About Reinhard Oppel and the Oppel Memorial Collection at UNT:

Timothy L. Jackson c2000
Director, Center for Schenkerian Studies,
College of Music, UNT

Julius Reinhard Oppel (1878-1941) was born in Thüringia, in the grand duchy of Coburg-Saxony-Weimar, the home province of Luther, Bach, Goethe, Nietzsche, and Wagner. He was born on 13 November 1878 as the second child of the elementary school teacher Traugott Franz Oppel in Grünberg, Oberhessen, and his wife Maria Elisabeth, both parents stemming from the area of Hildburghausen. Oppel's father taught in Grünberg from 1875-1884; in November 1884, the family moved to Groß-Gerau near Darmstadt, where his father served as principal of the elementary school until his death in March 1918. Reinhard Oppel was able to trace his family back to the year 1550 in Gellershausen, Post Heldburg, Kreis Hildburghs-Thüringia, where the Oppels were farmers, craftsmen, and even, at one point, mayor. Later in life, he often returned to Thüringia, where he accompanied the Duchess of Saxony - an amateur singer - in her palace in Coburg. Indeed, many of Oppel's Lieder and chamber pieces were composed for a small circle of the Saxon aristocracy and educated bourgeoisie. 

Growing up in the Groß-Gerauer district between Darmstadt and Frankfurt, Oppel completed his studies at the Gymnasium in Darmstadt between 1888 and 1897, earning his Arbitur in Easter 1897. Since his father was an avid amateur musician and director of the local men's choral society, the young Oppel received a firm grounding in music. He then attended the Hoch'sche Conservatory in Frankfurt. In the course of his studies at the Frankfurt Conservatory, Opel worked with Arnold Mendelssohn (1855-1933), music director at the church in Darmstadt (the cousin of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy). Among Oppel's fellow pupils numbered Paul Hindemith (composer and later professor at the Yale School of Music), K. Thomas, G. Raphael, and Heinrich Spitta (the famous Bach scholar). In Frankfurt, Oppel also studied with Iwan Knorr, a well-known music theorist at that time, who is now remembered for his treatise on fugue and his graphic analyses of Bach. At this point began a life-long friendship with Josef Knettel of Bingen (1875-1972), a composer, choral director, organist, and later music director in Bingen and Bad Kreuznach, who would later give the first performance of Oppel's Messe. 

From February 1903 to September 1909, Oppel held a position as organist and choir director at the Lutheran Church in Poppelsdorf (Bonn). It was here that he composed the Liturgien for Mixed Choir, Op. 6. During his Bonn period, Oppel continued to compose and also began publishing musicological articles. 

In 1909, Oppel decided to resume his studies at the University of Munich. He earned his doctorate under Sandberger, Kroyer, and Fischer in 1911 with a dissertation on the Renaissance composer Jacob Mailand. Degree in hand, Oppel secured a position as teacher of music theory and director of the theory program at the Conservatory in Kiel. His service at the Kiel Conservatory was interrupted from 1914 through 1919, when he served in the German army, first on the Russian front, and later in France - Verdun and the Sommes - where he was wounded three times and decorated. He ended the war as a Lieutenant in charge of an anti-aircraft battery. He spoke French fluently, and often played the piano in French castles, sometimes performing his own works.

In 1913, Oppel began an intensive correspondence with Heinrich Schenker in Vienna concerning the structure of music. Although Oppel's primary expertise was the music of Bach, he was also well-versed in the music of those composers whom Schenker mst admired (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, and Brahms). Additionally, in the period just before the First World War, Oppel also became associated with the Cologne-based Schulze-Prisca-Quartett, who performed his string quartets throughout Germany. Upon his return from the war, Oppel found himself in difficult financial circumstances; to supplement his income at the Conservatory, he accompanied silent films and accepted many private pupils.

In 1924, he wrote his Habilitation on melodic structure (only an incomplete draft survives) and from 1924-1930 held a position as Privatdozent for Music Theory and History at the University of Kiel. In April 1925, Oppel's second wife Gertrud died in a sanatorium in Switzerland. The song Mein Herz (My Heart), composed on 11 February 1926 expresses his reaction to this loss, as does the a capella Messe, completed on 25 September 1926, dedicated "To the memory of my beloved wife."

Appointed to the Mendelssohn Landeskonservatorium in Leipzig in 1927, Oppel continued to lecture at the University in Kiel, commuting between the two jobs every week. During this period, he maintained close friendships with Hans Poeschel at the Inselverlag in Leipzig (a fellow veteran), Theodor Litt, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and also Schenker, whom he visited in Vienna, Galtür, and Bad Ischl. Not only were the Schenker and his wife Jeannette Oppel's close friends, Schenker was proud of the fact that - as of his 1927 appointment to Leipzig - Oppel was representing his analytical approach at Germany's foremost Conservatory. In a letter of 7 June to his considerably younger pupil Franz Eberhard von Cube, Schenker celebrated Oppel's recent appointment, 'it will give you courage on your chosen path to know that Prof. Dr. R. Oppel, whom I have probably already mentioned to you, has been appointed to the Leipzig Conservatory as Professor of Music Theory, in which capacity, he tells me, he will officially teach my theory'. In April 1931, Oppel gave up his position at iel University and moved to Leipzig.

Oppel's friendship with Schenker was initiated in a letter dated 15 October 1913, and the correspondence extends until Schenker's death in 1935. The importance of free composition for the exchange is revealed by Oppel's very first letter, since he introduces himself by sending one of his own pieces (preserved in the Oppel Collection).

Dear Dr. Schenker,

For a long time it has been my intention to write to you and to thank you for the stimulation and instruction that I have received from your writings and works. Already I have your new edition of the Beethoven Op. 109 under my fingers. It is unfortunate, terribly unfortunate, that Vienna is so distant; I would, even today, like to spend considerable time as your pupil benefiting from your verbal instruction.

Oppel criticizes proponents of hermeneutic analysis (then fashionable at the Berlin, Leipzig, and Munich Universities) - especially Hermann Kretzschmar. His comments were welcome to Schenker, who was also seeking a firm, technical basis for analysis. With reference to his own Sonata for Violin in D minor, composed in 1910 (preserved in the Oppel Collection), Oppel continues, "Please accept as a small token of my thanks the enclosed opus, which I incorrectly called a Sonata rather than a Suite. It would give me great pleasure if it found favor in your eyes." The main body of the letter concludes with a request for information about Schenker's own compositions. Schenker's Diary reveals that the great theorist sent Oppel a detailed critique of this Sonata. Over the next twenty years, Schenker sent Oppel many detailed comments on his music, and also tried to help secure performances. In 1929 and 1931, Oppel composed two sets of Waltzes especially for Frau Schenker, an accomplished pianist. In his letters, Oppel kept Schenker abreast of his compositional activities, announcing concerts and radio broadcasts of his music.

Oppel's analytical work is also of considerable intrinsic and historical interest since initially independently from Schenker - he investigated the "middleground" in free composition, although he did not call it by this name. Working on his own prior to World War I, Oppel penetrated "the middleground" to discover "Grundlinien" - or "fundamental lines." By the early twenties, Oppel recognized that Schenker had advanced much deeper into tonal structure; for this reason, through the twenties, their friendship evolved into a teacher and student collaboration. Form example, Oppel assisted Schenker with his edition of Brahms's Oktaven und Quinten. Years later, in a letter (27 January 1978) to Franz Eibner (a professor at the Vienna Conservatory, who had written inquiring about documents now in the Oppel Collection), Oppel's wife Elfriede stressed his early autonomous development: 

According to my recollection, the friendship between H. Schenker and my husband began shortly before*..the First World War, as the two, independently from one another [my emphasis], investigated analytically the compositional principles of Bach's works and discovered the so-called 'Urlinie.' Through Schenker's publications they then became acquainted, they exchanged their research for years and saw each other often, in Vienna or Galtür or in Bad Ischl until Schenker's death. My husband died in 1941. About the political situation and the tragic death [in concentration camp] of Frau Schenker let us be silent.[I would be grateful if] it would be rewarding and possible for you, based on the extant materials, to mention the significance of the collaboration between H. Schenker and R. Oppel for the history of music. 

At the beginning of 1935, deeply concerned about Schenker's health, Oppel had sent a letter of inquiry to Schenker's student Felix Salzer. In a letter from Salzer preserved in the Oppel Collection dated 3 February 1935, approximately two weeks after the Schenker had passed away, Salzer replied with a report on the circumstances of his death. Not only does Salzer's letter provide important details concening Schenker's last days, it testifies to his and Oswald Jonas's efforts to publish Free Composition and to the aspirations of the next generation of Schenkerians to continue the "New Teaching" in the context of an "Institute for Schenkerian Studies" to be based in Vienna, with summer courses in Salzburg: "Planned are summer courses on Schenker and his teaching eventually [to be located] in Salzburg as a 'Prelude' for the establishment of a Schenker Institute. But all of this remains Zukunftsmusik! In any case, now we must spread his teaching with all the required intensity [of effort]. Naturally, I will do so with all of my own resources, nevertheless everything is still very much in the planning stages." Unfortunately, the Nazis and the Anschluss of 1938 put an end to the budding Schenkerian movements in Vienna and Leipzig. The new Center for Schenkerian Studies at the University of North Texas, associated with the Reinhard Oppel Memorial Collection, represents an effort to realize these aspirations.

Like Schenker, Oppel was a member of the German "cultural aristocracy." Bitter over Germany's defeat in the First World War, Oppel briefly hoped that the Nazis would rid Germany of "cultural Bolshevism;" however, both he and Schenker quickly came to regard Hitler with contempt. Oppel's and Schenker's opposition to the new government are clearly documented in Schenker's Diary: in an entry for 13 July 1933, Schenker noted receiving a letter from Oppel: "evidence of [his] disenchantment with the new regime." On 23 July, Schenker reported "Letter to Oppel dictated: I confirm him in his skepticism." Oppel refused to join Nazi organizations and maintained critical distance from the regime. His son Kurt recalls his refusal to give the Nazi salute, and his implacable - and imprudent - opposition to the Nazis. Until 1938, Oppel often played the organ not only in Protestant and Catholic churches, but also in Synaguoges in Leipzig. In 1937 or 1938, to protest the system he returned his venia legendi. Onhis sixtieth birthday in 1938, he was made an honored citizen of his home town of Grünberg. In 1940, he was summoned for a medical examination, but because of the poor state of his health, was released from further military service. Embittered - and hungry - he died of a heart attack on 21 November 1941 in Leipzig.

After Oppel's death, some of his manuscripts - compositions and analytical papers - and books were preserved by his family, in spite of the upheaval brought about by financial insecurity, the Nazis, the bombing of Leipzig, and the American and Russian occupations etc.. In the early fifties, the family hid the surviving music and books in Leune, East Germany, in a garden house and church steeple, before fleeing to the Western zone. The materials remained in East Germany until the Wall came down in 1990, when the composer's son, Kurt transported them to his home in the Odenwald, near Frankfurt. As a result of the generosity of the Rev. Kurt Oppel and the facilitation of Profs. Timothy Jackson, Lester Brothers, Rollie Schafer, Graham Phipps, and Morris Martin of the University of North Texas, the Reinhard Oppel Memorial Collection was established at the University's Music Library in 1998. Since the stature of the UNT College of Music and that of the Leipzig Conservatory in Reinhard Oppel's time are comparable, Kurt Oppel recognized the appropriateness of matching his father's legacy with the UNT College of Music. The main bulk of the documents from the Oppel family were deposited in the Music Library in November 1998, and the rest of the Collection arrived in June 1999. All of the music by Oppel to be performed this evening is preserved in the Reinhard Oppel Memorial Collection at UNT.

In spite of his well-known critique of prominent contemporary composers (Schönberg, Strauss, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Reger), Schenker believed a few of his close associates and students to be accomplished composers. For example, concerning the songs of his student Otto Vrieslander, Schenker enthused in his diary (9October 1929), "He plays his songs for me - they gave me a real surprise! *. I cannot restrain my praise; indeed, I consider the songs to be the best written since [Hugo] Wolf's death. Almost every piece has its own tone, well-found musical spans, that is, felicitous synthesis and penetrating effect, although the outer appearance of the score looks simple, perhaps too simple." Schenker's enthusiasm grew; on 5 August 1932, he noted that "concerning Vrieslander's songs: I find them even better than when I first heard them." In a letter to Oppel from the 16 August 1932 surviving in the Oppel Collection, Schenker makes further reference to Vrieslander's songs, to the music of Hans Weisse, and Oppel himself:

What you have written concerning the difficulties in securing performances of your compositions perhaps grieves me even more than it does you. While I firmly believe that the appreciation of the true value [of works of art] can wait, nevertheless I consider it especially helpful to find a practical way to get them into circulation. This is because, in my opinion, the composer requires the power of the work like his own physical [strength], and additionally should benefit from the judgement of the work by his contemporaries. For this reason, then, I am pleased that Vrieslander - although with outside patronage - could publish the Lieder. All the more do I wish that you too would receive such assistance! Many years ago I preached the same thing to Dr. Weisse. Think then, how much more convincing all of our efforts would have been if your's and Weisse's music were [widely] available.

Although many letters from Schenker to Oppel have been lost, a document has survived testifying to Schenker's high regard for Oppel's music. Preserved in the Oppel Collection is a copy of a letter from Oppel to his friend Josef Knettel in which Oppel quotes Schenker's extended remarks concerning his piano pieces Ops. 21, 26, 27, and 28. Since these collections were published in the late twenties, Schenker's comments probaly date from 1929-30. Schenker's testimonial to Oppel's ability to "re-create" and achieve "a new synthesis" seems applicable to the pieces to be presented tonight: 

Your music came to me in my darkest hours like a ray of sunlight. I did not think it possible that a German musician could write a piece of music today like the first one in Op. 26, in which every note, together with the other notes (like human beings), is a complete event in itself; in which everything is expressed in a manner which is pure, heartfelt, elegant and profoundly German. Number 3 from the same book is also strikingly beautiful. Number 2 from Op. 27 is full of poetry and sadness. And Number 2 from Op. 21 is so exquisite and heartfelt*..There is much that, to my ears, sounds harsh and unmelodious, but that stems from the complexity of your nature: S. Bach's world of feeling and voice-leading (Stimmführungswelt), in which you are so well grounded and which you are able to transmute into a new synthesis in your own distinctive way [my emphasis] - this is an achievement of daring. Where it succeeds it exerts a strange magic, offering something new, something of you; but it is too difficult to be able to succeed all of the time. No matter. Anyone (like me) who insists on perfection, as you might say, to redeem the material and enable the artist to redeem himself, only requires one single piece for which he can express his gratitude, like the one mentioned above, for example. In years gone by I would have drawn attention to these works straight away in a music journal, but these days all the journals keep their distance from me. It would not be too wide of the mark to say that I am 'boycotted' or 'sabotaged,' which does not shock me in the least even though it slows my work down and makes it more difficult. That is enough for now; do continue to compose music that is pure and comes from the heart. I played your works to my pupils and they were all amazed that there could still be music like that which was so profoundly moving.