DESSAU, PAUL

DESSAU, PAUL (1894–1979), German composer. The grandson of a cantor, Dessau was born in Hamburg. He was co-répétiteur in Hamburg (1912) and conducted operetta at the Tivoli Theatre, Bremen (1913). In 1919 he became co-répétiteur and conductor in Cologne. In 1925 he was appointed principal conductor at the Stätlische Oper, Berlin, and won the Schott Prize for his Violin Concertino. He left Germany in 1933 and visited Palestine. In 1939 he settled in New York and wrote a number of film scores (such as Adamah in 1947), but his political convictions led him to return to East Germany in 1948 and he made his home in East Berlin. Dessau composed in several fields. His vocal music, influenced by the concise verse of Bertolt Brecht (whom he met in New York in 1943), embraced almost every genre from political song to cantata and full-length opera. The latter include the operas Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1946), Das Verhoer des Lukullus (1951), Puntila (1957–59), Lanzelot (1969), Einstein (1971–73), and Leonce and Lena (1977–78). Dessau wrote also functional music for theater and radio. In 1936, he composed for the synagogue an oratorio, Haggadah, for which max brod supplied the text. His early works were in free tonality; from 1936 he was influenced by the twelve-tone technique of leibowitz . After the rigorous separation of West and East Berlin, he remained one of the few artists allowed to commute between the two Germanys. He became a member of the East Berlin Deutsche Akademie der Künste in 1952 and was appointed professor in 1959. He was honored by both the East and West Berlin academies, he received an honorary doctorate from Leipzig University (1974), and four National Prizes of the German Democratic Republic (1953, 1956, 1965, 1974). Among his works are operas for children, the cantata Requiem for Lumumba (1963), and symphonic and chamber music. -ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grove online; MGG; Baker's Biographical Dictionary; F. Hennenberg, Dessau-Brecht Musikalische Arbeiten (1963), with bibl.; idem, Paul Dessau (1965); idem, Für Sie porträtiert: Paul Dessau (1974, 1981); J.J. Gordon, "Paul Dessau and his Opera Einstein," Ph.D. thesis, University College of Wales (1990). (Peter Emanuel Gradenwitz / Israela Stein (2nd ed.)