Julius Röntgen - Serenade, Op 14

 

Julius Röntgen

  (9 May 1855 – 13 September 1932) was a German-Dutch composer of classical music.

 

Serenade, Op 14

 

1. Allegro tranquillo
2. Scherzo
3. Andante con espressione
4. Allegro molto vivace

Viotta Ensemble

 

Julius Röntgen was born in Leipzig, Germany, to a family of musicians. His father, the Dutch born Engelbert Röntgen, was first violinist in the Gewandhaus orchestra in Leipzig; his mother, Pauline Klengel, was a pianist, an aunt of the renowned cellist Julius Klengel, born in 1859.
His first piano teacher was Carl Reinecke, the director of the Gewandhaus orchestra, while his early compositions were influenced by Reinecke, but also by Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms.
In 1870, at the age of 14, Julius Röntgen visited Franz Liszt in Weimar; after playing piano for him he was invited to a soiree at Liszt's house.

In Leipzig, he and his parents were part of the musical circle around Heinrich von Herzogenberg, and it was at their house that he first met Brahms. Later Röntgen moved to Munich, where he studied piano under Franz Lachner, a friend of Franz Schubert. At the age of 18 he became a professional pianist. During a concert tour through southern Germany he became acquainted with the singer Julius Stockhausen; at this time he also met a Swedish music student Amanda Maier, whom he would marry in 1880.
In 1877 Röntgen had to make a decision whether to go to Vienna or Amsterdam. He chose Amsterdam, and became a piano teacher in the music school there.
Between 1878 and 1885 Brahms was a frequent visitor in Amsterdam. In 1887 Röntgen performed Brahms's second piano concerto
, conducted by the composer himself.
Röntgen also played an important part in establishing institutions for classical music in Amsterdam. In 1883, in association with composers Frans Coenen and Daniel de Lange, Röntgen founded the Amsterdam Conservatory. In 1884 Röntgen was heavily involved in the foundation of the Concertgebouw. He applied for the position of the director; however, to his great disappointment, the choice fell instead on the German Hans von Bülow, as the committee seemed to doubt Röntgen's abilities as a conductor. Nevertheless, Bülow was not able to accept the appointment, and the position went in the end to the violinist Willem Kes.

For some years, Röntgen and his sons performed together as a piano trio. After the death of his wife Amanda in 1894, Röntgen married the gifted piano teacher Abrahamina des Amorie van der Hoeven. The children of the second marriage also became professional musicians. Röntgen's son Joachim, a violinist, founded the Röntgen String Quartet.

At the end of the First World War, in 1919, Röntgen became a naturalized Dutch citizen.
In the years from 1920 on Röntgen experimented with atonal music; he wrote e.g. a bi-tonal symphony in 1930.

In 1924 Röntgen retired from public life. He moved to Bilthoven, a small village near Utrecht. His son Frants, who followed a career in architecture, designed for him the country house Gaudeamus. The unusual round music room in that house was constructed in such a way that its floor did not touch the ground, but hung from the ceiling. During the last eight years of his life Röntgen wrote about 100 compositions, mostly chamber music and songs. Gaudeamus became a meeting place for many important composers and musicians; among the visitors in that house were Pablo Casals and Percy Grainger. At that time, Röntgen studied musical analysis and was interested in the work of Hindemith, Stravinsky, Schönberg, and Willem Pijper.