Adagio
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Product ID: YEP2 8218
By Wolfgang Hofmann
Publisher:
Edition Peters
Line Up:
String Orchestra (Solo: Organ)
Full Score
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Composer
Wolfgang Hofmann (1922-2003)
Born: September 6, 1922 - Karlsruhe, Germany
Died: March 19, 2003 - Mannheim, Germany
The German violinist, composer and a conductor, Wolfgang Hofmann, was the son of the clarinettist Hermann Hofmann (b 1889 in Frankfurt/Main), who had once served as a solo clarinettist of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Wilhelm Furtwängler. Wolfgang Hofmann grew up in Leipzig. He received his first piano lessons the age of 5 with his father. A year later he began taking violin lessons with Emil Kolb. At 11 he began studying composition with Hans Lindner. This period saw also the first composition exercises, but forbade his composition with the argument that he must dominate first the four-part harmony as well as J.S. Bach, before he could have a go at his own compositions, so that the father provided of new teachers. These were of exceptional quality: Rudolf Kempe (piano), at that time principal oboist with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, who prepared himself for his conducting career, Kurt Steadman (violin), then concertmaster of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, and later a professor in Munich, and Dr. Reinhard Oppel (music theory, music history).
Wolfgang Hofmann began appearing as a soloist already at a young age. At 17 he got a job as a violinist in the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, which was then directed by Hermann Abendroth. However, in 1939 he was drafted for military service and had to interrupt his musical career for 8 years. During most of the war he was in a French prison camp at the edge of the Sahara. However, officers there detained had formed a camp university, where in addition to history, law, mathematics, science, architecture and linguistics, the prisoners could study music with Wolfgang Hofmann. Instruments were supplied by the Red Cross. Hofmann conducted a camp choir, founded a camp orchestra, made chamber music, gave violin and theory lessons and was active as a church musician for both denominations. He composed during this time a quintet for 2 violins, viola, flute and violoncello, 2 short operas and even a Catholic mass. All these works had their premieres in the prison camp. Only after the war and the return from captivity in 1948, he took posts as a violinist in the orchestras of Kaiserslautern and Darmstadt, and in 1955 as concertmaster at the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra.
He composed over 360 works: classical notation; style: bitonal, very rhythmical; for nearly all classical instruments and ensembles (solo - symphony orchestra).
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