Presentation FR 20 05 2016, Wienbibliothek im Rathaus Musiksammlung, Wien

As a contemporary of Arnold Schönberg and Kurt Weill, Max Brand was a gure shaped by late romanticism, futurism, and the early elec- tronic age. The cultural upheaval caused by the Nazis, from whom he ed from Vienna to Rio de Janeiro in 1937, put an end to a very prom- ising career as an opera composer. In 1940 he settled in New York, where he worked to real- ize his visions of an electronic music machine for the stage. There were many attempts, which all fell short, one of these was an optical syn- thesizer with waveforms he drew himself, and nally the Moogtonium, a synthesizer based on Oskar Sala’s Mixtur-Trautonium and engi- neered by Robert A. Moog. But development took much too long, and Brand was never able to ful ll his dream of an electronic one-man- orchestra for the opera stage. In 1975 he returned to Austria, where he lived in Lang- enzersdorf until his death in 1980.

Machines for the Opera | The Composer Max Brand. (1896 – 1980) | Shop
editor Elisabeth Schimana | Schriftenreihe zur Musik der Wienbibliothek im Rathaus Thomas Aigner [ed.] | editorial staff Peter Donhauser, Elisabeth Schimana | publisher Hollitzer | Sprache German – English