Maria Hoferaus expressionism + impressionism + modern

Maria Francisca Friederica Hofer (* 6 July 1894 in Amstetten; † 15 August 1977 in Kitzbühel) was an Austrian organist, pianist and composer.

Life

Maria Hofer was born in Amstetten, the daughter of the accountant Michael Hofer and Albertina Anna Hofer, née Lindemann. The family soon moved to Vienna, where they had probably lived before. Maria Hofer received musical encouragement at an early age. Her first teachers were Ernst Ludwig and Hermann Graedener, who probably taught her privately. In 1912, she passed the entrance examination for the k.k. Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and completed the teacher training course with Ernst Ludwig, Richard Stöhr and Franz Schmidt in just one year.

During the First World War, she worked as a music teacher in Vienna and Budapest. Victor Boschetti, organist at St Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, gave her the opportunity to play the organ. She learnt to improvise and wrote her first compositions. From 1917 to 1918, she attended the academy again and studied organ with Rudolf Dittrich. She made a name for herself as a pianist and gave numerous performances at the Vienna Konzerthaus between 1916 and 1919. During a concert tour to Scandinavia in 1922/1923, she met the Danish composer Paul von Klenau, who put her in touch with Universal Edition in Vienna. There she was employed as an editor for organ music, worked with Josef Venantius von Wöss and came into contact with musicians such as Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg, Egon Wellesz, Anton von Webern and Béla Bartók and writers such as Stefan Zweig and Franz Werfel. She had a close friendship with the director of Universal Edition, Emil Hertzka, and in particular his wife Yella Hertzka. The two were very supportive of her and also published some of her works. Maria Hofer lived in the Hertzkas’ villa in Grinzing for several years.

Maria Hofer was sporty, played tennis and rode horses. She already had a driving licence in the 1920s. She was close to the women’s and peace movements and joined the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom at the suggestion of Friederike Zweig.

After the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the forced closure of Universal Edition as a “Jewish publishing house”, Maria Hofer emigrated to London with the widowed Yella Hertzka, but returned after several months and settled in Kitzbühel in August 1939. She was imprisoned for eight months in 1941/42 for “insulting the Führer, suspected of listening to banned foreign broadcasts and food hoarding”.

Hofer played the organ in Kitzbühel and Kirchberg. After 1945, she received numerous commissions and gave concerts. On her initiative, a carillon was purchased for the Liebfrauenkirche in Kitzbühel in 1950, for which she created “tone monograms”, small compositions based on the names of people from her neighbourhood and famous personalities. In 1959, she became a permanent organist at the parish church in Kitzbühel. Around 1974/1975 she lived in Hopfgarten im Brixental for two years.

Maria Hofer had her most creative phase as a composer from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s. During this time, she composed her only symphonic work, the Dance of Death based on the painting of the same name by Albin Egger-Lienz, as well as piano and organ pieces, songs, incidental music and much more. The compositions from this period are stylistically indebted to the avant-garde of the first third of the 20th century and are related to Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg, Max Reger, Igor Stravinsky and the French Impressionists. In the last years of her life, however, she confined herself to church music, commissioned works for associations and the like, and destroyed many of her compositions from earlier years. The œuvre, which has only survived in fragments as a result, shows considerable qualitative and stylistic differences and has led to speculation about the authenticity or authorship of some pieces. The surviving works by Hofer were recorded on CD in 2006 under the direction of Bernhard Sieberer.

Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Hofer