Hans (Erich) Pfitzner

Composer, born in Moscow, Russia. He taught in various German conservatories, and conducted in Berlin, Munich, and Strasbourg. He composed Palestrina (1917) and other operas, as well as choral, orchestral, and chamber music.

Hans (Erich) Pfitzner (May 5, 1869 - May 22, 1949) was a German composer and self-described anti-modernist.

Born in Moscow, Pfitzner spent most of his life in Germany, working as conductor, pianist, and teacher as well as composer. His own music - which includes pieces in all the major genres except the symphonic poem - was respected by contemporaries such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss, although neither man cared much for Pfitzner's innately acerbic manner (and Alma Mahler reciprocated his adoration with contempt).

Easily the most celebrated of Pfitzner's prose utterances is his pamphlet Futuristengefahr ("Danger of Futurists"), written in response to Ferruccio Busoni's Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Music. "Busoni," Pfitzner complained, "places all his hopes for Western music in the future and understands the present and past as a faltering beginning, as the preparation.

Increasingly nationalistic in his middle and old age, Pfitzner was at first regarded sympathetically by important figures in the Third Reich (in particular by Hans Frank, with whom he remained on good terms). He incurred extra odium by refusing to obey the regime's request to provide incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream that could be used in place of (the Jewish) Felix Mendelssohn's; he maintained that Mendelssohn's own music was far better than anything he himself could offer as a substitute. Following long neglect, his music began to reappear in opera houses and concert halls, as well as recording studios, during the 1990s.