Mathilde Kralik von Meyrswaldenaus modern

Mathilde Kralik von Meyrswalden (* 3 December 1857 in Linz; † 8 March 1944 in Vienna) was an Austrian composer.

Life

Mathilde Aloisia Kralik von Meyrswalden was a daughter of the Bohemian glass industrialist Wilhelm Kralik von Meyrswalden (1807-1877) from Eleonorenhain. She was the fourth of five children from his second marriage to Louise née Lobmeyr. She felt a kindred spirit with her brother Richard Kralik von Meyrswalden, the historian and cultural politician. Her compositions were often based on her brother’s poems and hymns. Mathilde received private lessons from music teachers; she never pursued a paid profession.

Mathilde Kralik was a pupil of Anton Bruckner, Franz Krenn and Julius Epstein. In the calendar from 1876, which Bruckner used as a notebook, the entry ‘Miss Mathilde Kralik …private pupil’ can be found for 11 May. In 1876, she passed the entrance examination for the conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and was accepted into the 2nd year of Franz Krenn’s composition class. From 1876 to 1878, she studied at the conservatory, which was run by Joseph Hellmesberger senior at the time. Mathilde Kralik also studied music history in addition to courses II and III in the 3rd year of the conservatory’s wide range of courses.

She graduated with honours. In her first year (after completing the 2nd year) she was awarded 2nd prize for the Scherzo of her piano quintet. After completing the 3rd year, she was awarded 1st prize for her final work, Intermezzo from a Suite, which she conducted herself at the ‘Concurs der Ausbildungsschule für Komposition’ on 2 July 1878 at the age of 20. Six other candidates from her composition class were also examined at this competition: Gustav Mahler, Hans Rott, Rudolf Pichler, Rudolf Krzyzanowski, Ernst Ludwig and Katharina Haus. Kralik (like Mahler) was awarded 1st prize. She left the conservatory with a diploma in composition and the ‘Silver Society Medal’.

In April 1894 and in the same month of 1895, musical-declamatory women’s evenings were held in the Brahms Hall of the Musikverein, at which works by Kralik were played and sung. Her Piano Trio in F major was presented at a concert by the Duesberg Quartet in the 1898/99 season. She had this composition printed by the publisher Albert Gutmann. A highlight was the sacred concert organised by Josef Venantius von Wöss on 12 January 1900 in the Großer Musikvereinssaal, at which Mathilde Kralik’s work Die Taufe Christi after a poem by Pope Leo XIII for solo, choir and orchestra and the Christmas cantata for four solo voices, choir and orchestra were performed. Kralik composed choruses and songs for Maria Theresia Ledóchowska’s play, Die Heilige Odilia, in 1906.

Private concerts often took place on Sunday afternoons in her house in Weimarer Straße (Vienna-Döbling). The collaboration between brother Richard and sister Mathilde also extended to the field of opera. Their first work was the three-act fairy-tale opera Blume und Weißblume, whose libretto Brother Richard had modelled on the folk book Flos und Blankflos. Like many of her colleagues, Mathilde Kralik was active in the life of associations: as honorary president of the Vienna Ladies‘ Choir Association, the Vienna Bach Community, the Austrian Composers’ Association, the Association of Writers and Artists of Vienna and the Club of Viennese Women Musicians. In the latter club, she frequently met the composers Vilma von Webenau and Maria Bach as well as Alma Mahler. She had a close friendship with Vilma von Webenau. In a letter to her brother Richard from 1903, she describes Vilma as her ‘companion’ at a funeral.

Mathilde Kralik also had contact with the writer and women’s rights activist Rosa Mayreder. On 13 May 1936, she wrote her a letter: ‘Dear Madam, I am delighted by your wonderful sonnets, which are both perfect in form and deep in thought and so rich in linguistic beauty that they already carry music within them …’ Her mother died on 3 October 1905 at the age of 74. Mathilde Kralik, who was 48 at the time, was deeply shaken by her mother’s death and reacted by stagnating her creative work for six months. From 1912, the composer, who had been single until then, lived together with Dr Alice Scarlates (1882-1958) in the flat at Weimarer Str. 89 in Vienna. There is no trace of her partner in her work. In her will dated 31 July 1934, her ‘long-time friend … who had shared her joys and sorrows’ is named as the main heir to her estate.

The presentations of her fairy-tale opera Blume und Weißblume in Hagen/Westphalia in 1910 and in Bielitz/Silesia in 1912 can be considered the high point of her performances. This opera achieved popularity not only through these two performances, but also as a sensationalised plagiarism story in the press. The former Capuchin friar Nicasius Schusser (former porter of the Franciscan monastery in Falkenau) wrote an opera Quo vadis, in which he copied 52 pages from the opera Blume und Weißblume. Kralik reacted to this in the press, but refrained from taking legal action against Schusser. Kralik was active into old age; at the age of 80, she took part in a concert of ‘music-making women’ together with artists such as Johanna Müller-Hermann, Friederike Karger-Hönig, Emma von Fischer, Lise Maria Meyer and Juli Reisserova.

She was buried at Vienna’s Central Cemetery.

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