Paul Dessau (19 December 1894
Hamburg,
Germany - 28 June 1979 in
Königs Wusterhausen,
Germany) was a German
composer and
conductor.
Biography
Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family. His grandfather, Moses Berend Dessau, was a
cantor, his uncle, Bernhard Dessau, a violinist at the
Royal Opera House,
Unter den Linden, and his cousin Max Winterfeld became generally known under the name
Jean Gilbert as a composer of operettas.
From 1909 he majored in violin at the
Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin. In 1912 he became
répétiteur at the City Theatre (Stadttheater) in Hamburg. There he studied the works of the composers
Felix von Weingartner and
Arthur Nikisch and took classes in composition from
Max Julius Loewengard. He was second
Kapellmeister at the Tivoli Theatre in
Bremen in 1914 before being drafted for military service in 1915.
After
World War I he became conductor at the Intimate Theatre (Kammerspiele), Hamburg, and was répétiteur and later
Kapellmeister at the opera house in
Cologne under
Otto Klemperer between 1919 and 1923. In 1923 he became
Kapellmeister in
Mainz and from 1925 Principal
Kapellmeister at the
Städtische Oper Berlin under
Bruno Walter.
In 1933 Dessau emigrated to France, and 1939 moved further to the
U.S. where initially he lived in
New York before moving to
Hollywood. Dessau returned to Germany with his second wife, the writer
Elisabeth Hauptmann, and settled in East Berlin in 1948.Starting in 1952 he taught at the Public Drama...
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