Sigfrid Karg-Elert
Sigfrid Karg-Elert, officially Siegfried Karg-Ehlert, was a German composer, music educator, music theorist, organist, and pianist. Born Siegfried Theodor Karg in Oberndorf am Neckar on 21 November 1877, he was the youngest of twelve children of the bookseller Johann Jacob Joseph Karg and Marie Auguste Friederike Ehlert. His early years involved frequent moves throughout Germany, and the family settled in Leipzig in 1882.
His musical ability was recognised early. At the newly established choir of Leipzig's St. John's Church, the cantor Bruno Röthig gave him his first piano lessons and donated an old piano to the family. Karg-Elert began writing sacred choral works, motets, and a Christmas cantata before acquiring formal theoretical knowledge; Röthig programmed several of these works for the church choir. He studied music theory and composition at the Leipzig Conservatory, but was initially refused admission for piano study in 1893. He also taught himself theory and composition and learned to play the flute, oboe, and clarinet.
At sixteen he moved to Markranstädt, where he remained for three years and read widely in philosophy, physics, and music theory. He later found work in Magdeburg as an oboist, clarinettist, and horn player, before returning to Leipzig to work as an orchestral musician and bar pianist. At the Leipzig Tonkünstler Assembly in 1896, he showed his compositions to Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, who recognised his ability and arranged three years of free study at the Leipzig Conservatory. His teachers included Salomon Jadassohn and Carl Reinecke in theory, Paul Homeyer in organ, Karl Wendling in piano, and later Alfred Reisenauer and Robert Teichmüller in composition. His Piano Concerto was premiered at the Leipzig Conservatory in 1900.
In 1902 Karg-Elert taught a piano master class at the Sannemann Conservatory and at the New Conservatory of Music in Magdeburg. Around this period he adopted his mother's birth name and became Karg-Elert, spelling his first name Sigfrid in a Nordic manner. His acquaintance with the Berlin publisher and harmonium specialist Carl Simon in 1904 stimulated a long engagement with the harmonium. Simon became both his publisher and financial supporter, while Karg-Elert made many concert tours as a harmonium virtuoso and composed extensively for the instrument until the mid-1920s. He later returned to Leipzig.
Homeyer also fostered his interest in organ music. Karg-Elert's best-known organ compositions include the 66 Choral Improvisations, Op. 65. Though not regarded as a virtuoso organist, he received regular invitations to perform in England and the United States. His music was especially popular and published in England, and he was also known as a composer in Australia. His output additionally includes vocal music, chamber works, piano music, and wind music, as well as numerous harmonium pieces. Among his major later organ works are Three Symphonic Chorales, Op. 87, Cathedral Windows, Op. 106, the Symphony in F-sharp minor, Op. 143, and the Passacaglia and Fugue on B-A-C-H, Op. 150.
Karg-Elert married Minna Louise Kretzschmar in 1910, and their daughter, Ingeborg Annelies Käthchen, known as Katharina, was born in 1914. During the First World War, he played oboe, horn, and saxophone in the band of the 107th Infantry Regiment and composed several works for wind instruments. In 1919 he was appointed a teacher at the Leipzig State Conservatory; his pupils included the composers Johannes Weyrauch and Wilhelm Weismann.
In May 1930 he was guest of honour at a ten-day festival organised by the London Organ Music Society. Already suffering from diabetes, he undertook an organ concert tour of the United States in 1932, but the tour was unsuccessful. He returned to Germany seriously ill and died in Leipzig on 9 April 1933. He was buried in Leipzig's Southern Cemetery.