Charles Martin Loeffler
Berlin, 1861 - 1935, Medfield, Massachusetts
In 1881 Loeffler emigrated to the United States. He played for one year in the New York Symphony Orchestra, after which he became assistant concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO). During the summer of 1884 he lived again in Paris while studying with Hubert Léonard, and he returned to Europe during a few additional summers. However, because his father had been subjected to political imprisonment during which he had suffered a fatal stroke, Loeffler disavowed his native country and allied his sentiments, tastes, and style with France and the United States. A self-professed "true and good republican," he adored the United States and became a citizen in 1887. "This country," he said, as reported in Hampton's Magazine (Jan. 1911), "is quick to reward genuine musical merit, and to reward it far more generously than Europe."
Loeffler often performed as a soloist with the BSO. He also appeared on Boston recital stages and achieved a reputation as a violinist of flawless and elegant technique and exquisite interpretation. He was a champion of modern French compositions and premiered several new French works in Boston.
In 1891 the BSO premiered Loeffler's first orchestral work, Les veillées de l'Ukraine. This tone poem and his first chamber works--a quartet, quintet, and sextet--met with critical and popular success. With his cello concerto, violin divertimento, and other works of the 1890s, however, he acquired a controversial reputation as an avant-garde composer. His eclectic style became increasingly allied with the French symbolist aesthetic; works such as his symphonic poem La mort de Tintagiles (1897), based on a play by Maeterlinck; his Rapsodies for viola, oboe, and piano (1901), based on poems by Maurice Rollinat; his choral work L'archet (c. 1899), based on a medieval legend; and his songs to verses by Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Gustave Kahn, were judged to be "decadent." Though Loeffler's tone poetry was considered to be refreshing and beautiful by those who admired his ability to evoke mood through color and effect, it was vague and difficult to others.
Despite mixed critical response to his music, Loeffler became something of a cult figure in Boston, and his compositions formed part of the city's culture for a half century. His works were performed repeatedly by the BSO and leading choral and chamber ensembles, such as the Cecilia Society and the Kneisel Quartette. He frequently appeared in the salons of such patrons as Isabella Stewart Gardner, where he was highly regarded for his keen intellect and sharp wit along with his musical talent.
Loeffler retired from the BSO in 1903, the same year that G. Schirmer began publishing his music. His national and international reputation steadily grew. He spent a year in Paris, where he strengthened his ties to French musicians and culture. Loeffler returned to the United States in 1905 and settled on a farm in Medfield, Massachusetts, where he continued to teach violin and to compose. In 1908 he formed the American String Quartette, which he coached. He married Elise Burnett Fay in 1910. The couple did not have children.
Loeffler served on a number of juries and committees, including the Board of Directors of the Boston Opera Company. He acted as an adviser to the BSO, recommending players and conductors, until the Serge Koussevitzky era. During World War I he organized several benefit concerts. Although he continued occasionally to perform his own works in concert through the war years, he left the public concert stage after the war.
Loeffler's most famous orchestral work, A Pagan Poem, was premiered by the BSO in 1907. Characterized by the inventiveness and sensuousness common to his compositions, the emotional passion of the piece signaled a departure from his early predilection for somber and macabre subjects, which had alienated conservative critics. No longer a "decadent," Loeffler became known as a mystic who evoked moving and beautiful musical visions. He then composed his only completed, but never staged, opera, The Passion of Hilarion (1913); his second string quartet, Music for Four Stringed Instruments (1917-1919); Five Irish Fantasies for tenor and orchestra (1920); and Partita for violin and piano (1930), among other works. His tone poem Memories of My Childhood won the Chicago North Shore Festival Association prize in 1924. His Canticum fratris solis was commissioned for the opening of the new music hall at the Library of Congress in 1925, and Evocation was commissioned for the opening of Severance Hall in Cleveland in 1930.
During his lifetime Loeffler was the most important liaison between the musical cultures of France and the United States. He received several honors from France. He was named an officier (1906) and a correspondent (1920) of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, received the palms of Officer of Public Instruction (1917), and was elected a chevalier of the Légion d'honneur (1919). Loeffler received several American honors as well, including a gold medal from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1920), an honorary doctor of music from Yale (1926), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1931).
During the last years of his life, Loeffler became increasingly reclusive as a victim of angina pectoris. He died in Medfield. Through the terms of his will, a Charles Martin Loeffler composition prize was established at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris.
After an early reputation as a modernist and a "decadent" composer, Loeffler became established as a leading composer of his time. His style was acknowledged to be individual and distinctive. At a time when adherents to French impressionism or symbolism were rare in American musical culture, Loeffler was the leading proponent of the symbolist aesthetic in music in the United States.
Bibliography
The principal collection of Loeffler manuscripts, including musical manuscripts and correspondence, is located at the Library of Congress. Other manuscripts are at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Boston Public Library, New England Conservatory, and Yale University. The first comprehensive biography, with a complete, annotated catalog of works is Ellen Knight, Charles Martin Loeffler: A Life Apart in American Music (1993). Interviews with Loeffler include Olin Downes, "Originality in Composer's Art Means Sophistication, Says Loeffler," Musical America, 16 Apr. 1910, p. 3, and "The Music of Charles Martin Loeffler," Christian Science Monitor, 29 Jan. 1910. Valuable articles by Loeffler's contemporaries include Carl Engel, "Charles Martin Loeffler," Musical Quarterly 11 (1925): 311-30, which was revised for Oscar Thompson, ed., Great Modern Composers (1940); Walter Damrosch, "Charles Martin Loeffler," American Academy of Arts and Letters Publication no. 88 (1936); Lawrence Gilman, "The Music of Loeffler," North American Review 193 (1911): 47-59; and Edward Burlingame Hill, "Charles Martin Loeffler," Modern Music 13 (1935): 26-31.
Ellen Knight
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Ellen Knight. "Loeffler, Charles Martin";
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American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
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