24 Facts About Egon Wellesz

Egon Joseph Wellesz was born on 21 October 1885 in the Schottengasse district of Vienna to Samu Wellesz and Ilona Wellesz.

Wellesz's father worked in the textile business and his parents initially intended Wellesz to join him in his work, or pursue a career as a civil servant.

Accordingly, Egon Wellesz entered the University of Vienna as a law student following the completion of his studies at the Franz-Joseph-Gymnasium.

Egon Wellesz began his initial music training at a young age studying the piano with his mother's teacher, Carl Fruhling.

In 1905, at the age of 19, Egon Wellesz began studying harmony and counterpoint at Eugenie Schwarzwald's school with Arnold Schoenberg while simultaneously attending law classes at the university.

Egon Wellesz met his future wife, Emmy Stross, who was a student at that school.

Egon Wellesz edited Johann Joseph Fux's 1723 opera Costanza e fortezza for publication in Adler's Denkmaler.

Many years later Egon Wellesz published a monograph on Fux in 1965.

Egon Wellesz graduated from the University of Vienna with a degree in musicology in 1908, and his dissertation on Bonno was published the following year.

Egon Wellesz married Emmy Stross in 1908, and had a very long and happy marriage.

In 1913 Egon Wellesz joined the faculty of the University of Vienna as a lecturer in music history.

Egon Wellesz had plenty of opportunity to discuss these theories directly with Strzygowski as his wife Emmy was an art historian who specialized in the art of India and was a disciple and close friend of Strzygowski.

Egon Wellesz was the first pupil of Schoenberg to gain independent success as a composer, receiving a contract from Universal Edition before Berg or Webern.

However, it was with dramatic music that Egon Wellesz really made his mark, starting with the ballet Das Wunder der Diana in 1914.

The Cambridge academic Edward J Dent, whom Wellesz had met on his first trip to London in 1906, was elected as its president.

In 1929 Egon Wellesz was promoted from lecturer to professor at the University of Vienna; succeeding Adler in his position at the university.

Egon Wellesz remained in that post until the events of the Anschluss on 13 March 1938 made it no longer safe for him to reside in Austria.

In 1938 Egon Wellesz was forced to leave Austria in the wake of the Anschluss.

Egon Wellesz was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1953.

Egon Wellesz continued composing until he suffered a stroke in 1972.

Egon Wellesz died two years later and was buried in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna.

Egon Wellesz composed at least 112 works with opus numbers as well as some 20 without numbers.

Egon Wellesz wrote nine symphonies and nine number of string quartets, the former starting in 1945 and the latter throughout his life.

Rather than follow his teacher Schoenberg's Expressionist style, Egon Wellesz found inspiration in music from the pre-modern era, becoming a forerunner to the anti-Romantic currents of the twenties.