The Gottfried Eschenbach
Society

Gottfried Eschenbach was born in 1842 to a middle-class family in Schleswig-Holstein, the son of Karl Eschenbach, an orchestral violist, and Margareta Eschenbach (neé Schröder). Although his father taught him to play the viola at an early age, he originally wanted Gottfried to become a lawyer. However, it soon became apparent that the boy was highly musically gifted, and Eschenbach's father eventually agreed to send him to Leipzig, where he studied composition, harmony, viola and conducting under Niels Gade and others. In 1863, he finished his studies, and his graduation piece and op. 1, a symphony in C major, was played at a conservatory concert.

Eschenbach devoted the years after his graduation to his talents as a violist, touring Europe several times with Hungarian pianist Zoltán Kovács. However, he experienced an epiphany after hearing the Leipzig premiere of Brahms' German Requiem in 1869, and decided shortly thereafter to devote himself entirely to musical composition. For the rest of his life, he rarely held public recitals and restricted his talents as a conductor largely to his own works.

Eschenbach married soprano Katrine Jünger (1849-1919) in 1873. Together, they had three children. He died in 1920.

Although well-known for his slow and meticulous craftsmanship, Eschenbach lived long enough to amass nearly 200 opus numbers. His output is often divided into three periods. The first period, sometimes called the Romantic period, is usually said to begin with the publication of Eschenbach's first extant works in the early 1860s. While heavily influenced by the works of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms, the first-period works foreshadow many of the hallmarks of the composer's mature style, especially in the area of rhythm (the finale of Eschenbach's First Symphony is one of the first pieces in the canon of Western concert music largely in 5/4 time). The most notable compositions from this period are the Symphony in C major, Eschenbach's opus 1, the first two string quartets and several smaller works for the viola premiered in recital by the composer.

Although the beginning of the second period can be traced to Eschenbach's visit to Bayreuth in 1872, its style only became apparent with the 1875 publication of the song cycle An Der Frühling. The cycle shows the clear influence of the neo-German school of Liszt and Wagner in its heavily chromatic harmony and use of leitmotifs. Most of Eschenbach's large-scale works, including six of his nine symphonies, were composed during the second period. Although harmonically adventurous, the second-period works are formally Classical, rarely breaking completely with the conventions of sonata form.

Unlike many other German composers of the older generation, the aging Eschenbach was intrigued by the innovations of composers such as Schoenberg, Debussy and Stravinsky. This becomes apparent in the works of the third period. Usually said to start around 1900, the third period synthesizes and improves on Eschenbach's earlier innovation while also introducing several new features inspired by the inventions of Germany's expressionists and France's impressionists, including complex non-functional harmonies (the Debussy-inspired Préludes), synthetic scale formations (the last two symphonies and the orchestral Symphonic Fantasy) and polytonality (the Concert Study for the Left Hand, his last major work, written for Paul Wittgenstein).