On 20 June 2001, the pianist Karl Steiner died in Belleville, Ontario. The Österreichische Musikzeitschrift and the Newsletter of the Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna both published obituaries,1 but in Canada Steiner’s death passed virtually unnoticed. Steiner had been living in Canada for fifty-two years, he had been affiliated with the Faculty of Music at McGill University for most of this time, he had been heard on the CBC regularly, and there had even been three documentaries about him on Canadian television. But although he had found increasing recognition in Vienna, he was very disappointed with the Canadian music scene, from which he gradually withdrew in his last years. Who was this man, who was considered to be worthy of highest honours in Austria and yet is not mentioned once in the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, not even in passing?
Karl Steiner was born in Vienna on 12 March 1912. His father owned a clothing store. After taking his Matura (Austrian high school degree) Steiner studied musicology at the University of Vienna with Egon Wellesz, Robert Lach, Alfred Orel, and others. Among his fellow students there was the violinist Joseph Berliawsky, whom he would meet again in Canada. Steiner did not take a doctorate, but otherwise he pursued practically the same programme Ida Halpern (then still Ruhdörfer) had begun about five years earlier; when I asked Steiner whether he knew her, it turned out that he had never heard her name. At the same time, Steiner took private piano lessons, but because of the Austro-German institutional separation of musicology (taught at universities) from practical music making (taught at Musikhochschulen) he could not take a degree in performance. Finally he succeeded in obtaining a diploma in music education from the Viennese Staatsakademie as an external candidate, which legally allowed him to teach music. In his earlier years Steiner also tried his hand at composing, in a style resembling Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill, as he would recall. Although he later claimed to have been ‘far too liberal’ to develop Communist sympathies, he did collaborate with artists from the Arbeiterbewegung such as the stage director Franz Ibaschütz, for whom he wrote incidental music. Nothing of this work survives. In 1937 Steiner opened a music school of his own, organized within the social-democratic Volksbildungsverein 'Apolloneum', but the Nazi invasion on 10 March 1938 put an end to his teaching efforts. After Reichskristallnacht he was interned in the Dachau concentration camp near Munich for some months. An uncle of his bailed him out. By way of France, Steiner emigrated to Shanghai, one of the few places he could access without a visa. Steiner taught music there intermittently and tried to support himself by playing in bars and dance halls; for several years he hardly touched a piano. The Jewish community of Shanghai included musicians like the Joachim brothers, Herbert Ruff, and Erwin Marcus, all of whom Steiner would meet again in Montreal.
After the communist revolution in China the European refugees in Shanghai were cast adrift again. Steiner contemplated a return to Austria, but when he learned how devastating the effects of the Nazi regime had been, he abandoned the idea. His entire family had perished. He would not go to Israel either; to the end of his life he remained a staunch anti-Zionist. But when Canada opened its doors again for Austrians in 1949, he took the chance. Entering the country by way of Vancouver, he was advised to settle in Montreal. He began teaching, at first privately, then from 1964 at McGill; however, he never advanced beyond adjunct faculty status in spite of Helmut Blume’s support. He retired from McGill in 1989.
In Shanghai Steiner had married another Jewish refugee, Lisa Cohn of Breslau, but this was something of a marriage of convenience, even though it lasted until 1970. Then he married Emmy Hummel, a post-war émigré from Germany who was twenty years his junior. Steiner adopted her two sons from an earlier marriage to an Italian: Nicolino (born 1956) and Bruno (born 1963). Steiner had no children of his own. The Steiners lived in Montreal’s anglophone Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhood until October 1999, when a new surge of Quebecois separatism finally led Steiner (who spoke no French at all) to quit the province. He and his wife settled in Belleville, Ontario. From the mid-1990s, Karl and Emmy Steiner would spend the winter months in New Orleans, where their son Bruno had established himself.
Karl Steiner was introduced to the Second Viennese School by the pianist Olga Novakovic, who had been affiliated with the circle for several years before Steiner became her student in 1932. Henceforth, Steiner would always emphasize his close ties to the Second Viennese School.2 Yet Steiner knew neither Schoenberg nor Berg personally, and his acquaintance with Webern was rather superficial. In the case of Schoenberg, who had been living in Berlin since 1925 and who left Europe just one year after Steiner’s introduction to Novakovic, this is not particularly surprising; Berg, however, is another matter. Steiner related that Novakovic made him study Berg’s Piano Sonata early on; he prided himself in having been one of its first interpreters, and Novakovic seems to have treated him as her favourite student. It is strange, then, that she never introduced Steiner to Berg. Of course Berg died early, but there would have been no less than three years during which such an encounter could have taken place. Steiner recalled that he once played Berg’s sonata at a concert; the following day, Novakovic summoned him and told him, ‘You have to play it more slowly.’ She had discussed the sonata with Berg the night before. As to Webern, Steiner attended some of his lectures on the history of music, but again there is no evidence of a personal encounter. To Steiner’s credit it must be said that he was always frank about this. But how then did he justify his claim of a close affiliation with the circle?
The answer is that to Steiner the Second Viennese School was always more than just Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern. He viewed the composers he called its ‘second generation’ as integral members: Hans Erich Apostel, Hanns Jelinek, Eduard Steuermann, Julius Schloss, Philipp Herschkowitsch (Herscovici), and some others. These Steiner actually knew; he was especially close to Apostel, whose Sonatina ritmica, Op. 5 (1934) he played early on (as the second pianist after Novakovic, who premiered it), and later to Julius Schloss, whom he met only in exile, in Shanghai. After the war Steiner resumed his correspondence with Apostel, Jelinek, and Steuermann; in the case of Apostel, he succeeded in luring him to Canada for a visit. Consequently, it was this ‘second generation’ whose music was especially dear to Steiner and which he promoted almost single-handedly. There was, however, another member of the circle, and a fairly prominent one, that Steiner shunned: Hanns Eisler. Eisler, after his breach with Schoenberg in 1925 (i.e. before Steiner could have met him), was, quite obviously, a renegade, a traitor to the aesthetics of Schoenberg, something Steiner could never forgive.
Steiner’s repertory as a pianist was not confined to the music of the Second Viennese School. In his choice of earlier music, however, he was nevertheless guided by the preferences typical of the school. As one would expect, he championed Bach and the music of the Viennese classics. Typically Viennese was his neglect for much music composed outside the German-speaking area, a neglect that even extended to 20th-century music. Steiner’s admiration of Stravinsky was confined to his dodecaphonic period, and when I asked him about his opinion on Messiaen, he answered brusquely, ‘He comes from a different tradition; he does not belong to us.’3 Quite apart from the question of national traditions, sensuality, playfulness and virtuosity (even in music of indisputable greatness) were things Steiner disliked. He used to say, ‘Romantik interessiert mich wenig’ (Romanticism interests me little), thus dismissing most 19th-century music. Steiner held some sympathies for Brahms and even Chopin, but as he defended the ideal of ‘absolute music’ uncompromisingly, Liszt, Wagner and many others were anathema to him. Once, searching for common ground, I discussed Beethoven’s sonatas with Steiner. He was unhappy about my admiration for Opp. 53, 57, and 106: ‘Why always the virtuosic sonatas?’ For the ascetic Steiner, virtuosity was almost a sin: at best, it detracted from the content; at worst, it tried to conceal its absence. Music of unabashed sensuality made him no less uneasy. ‘At age fourteen,’ he once remarked on TV, ‘I admired Tchaikovsky, but later I became more mature.’
For Steiner, the Second Viennese School also included a specific tradition of performance, which he sought to preserve. His correspondence with Apostel, Jelinek, Schloss, and Steuermann shows his almost obsessive quest for authenticity, for rendering a score exactly as the composer wished. A report on the courses Steiner gave in Vienna in June 1997 sheds light on his pianistic ideals:4 Making the structure of a composition audible was Steiner’s foremost goal; he said, ‘The perception of the intended meaning is the fundamental prerequisite for playing this music [of the Second Viennese School].’ In terms of technique, he advocated a ‘fluent’ style of playing that should emphasize horizontal lines, using ‘natural rubato.’ According to him, the pedal should be used sparingly, as little as possible. He always warned against romanticizing Berg, frequently referring to Novakovic and also to Josef Polnauer, another member of the circle. As to the Russian piano school, Steiner spoke of it only with disdain. Ironically, he counted Ukrainian-born Lubka Kolessa among its members, although she had actually received her entire education in Vienna under Louis Thern and the Liszt pupil Emil Sauer.
Steiner had a good sense of humour, but as any true believer, he did not permit jokes about what was holy to him. And music was a dead serious matter to him. He felt offended by any kind of popular or ‘light’ music, and not only by its post-war North American manifestations; unlike the Joachim brothers, he took no delight in playing ‘light’ music in Shanghai. As happy as Steiner was about being courted by Vienna again in his last years, he was furious about the fact that these efforts at rehabilitation of expatriate musicians were not confined to the Second Viennese School, but also extended to composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold. ‘Das muss bekämpft werden’ (This has to be fought against) was his standard comment on Korngold. On the other hand, Steiner was equally critical of post-war developments like the total serialism of the Darmstadt school, electronic music, and new attempts to transcend the boundaries of absolute music. What he advocated was, basically, traditional music, ‘tönend bewegte Form’ in Hanslick’s sense, only with tonality replaced by dodecaphony.
After settling in Canada, Karl Steiner took it upon himself to systematically introduce and promote the music of the Second Viennese School to the Canadian public. Hartmut Krones, Professor of Musicology at the Universität (until 1999 Hochschule) für Musik in Vienna, holds that outside Austria the ‘second generation’ of the school never had a more zealous champion than Karl Steiner. In his teaching, Steiner regularly used twelve-tone music from the earliest possible stage. Essential to Steiner’s teaching was Jelinek’s Zwölftonfibel (Twelve-tone Primer), Op. 21, published in 1953, which is both an introduction to twelve-note composition and to playing music written in that idiom. Of course Steiner was in need of pedagogical repertory. At his suggestion, Schloss wrote two cycles for beginners (1958-59), to which he later added his 23 Impressions (completed 1964); similarly, Steiner prompted Otto Joachim to write his Twelve 12-Tone Pieces for Children (1959). And of course, he welcomed Webern’s Kinderstück after its belated discovery in 1963.
As the case of Otto Joachim shows, Karl Steiner’s work was not without effect on Canadian music. Steiner also established contacts with younger composers, mostly French-Canadian, whose aesthetic outlook was similar to his and whose music he played, even premiered; Gilles Lefebvre was one of them. The Six Preludes on a Tone Row (1963) by William Keith Rogers was another favourite of his. At McGill, he established a lasting friendship with Bruce Mather. On the other hand, Steiner seems to have ignored dodecaphonic composers in other regions of Canada, even John Weinzweig. In the 1960s Steiner wrote articles and gave lectures with the goal of convincing Canadian schools to add a compulsory training in twelve-note music to their curricula, but these efforts were in vain.5
There was one ally from the old Viennese days: Franz Kraemer, another refugee, had studied composition with Berg and was in fact closer to the Second Viennese School than anybody in Canada. (Incidentally Kraemer’s estate, acquired by the National Library of Canada after his death in 1999, contains an unpublished cycle of five dodecaphonic piano pieces composed in 1934.) But soon after Kraemer had settled in Canada he gave up his artistic career in favour of an administrative one. As a CBC executive, Kraemer championed Steiner’s work; Steiner frequently performed on the radio, mostly the music of the Second Viennese School. Otherwise, Steiner was rarely heard or seen outside of Montreal, which may also explain his absence from the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. He was never introduced to Helmut Kallmann, who heard Steiner’s name for the first time in 1999. Yet various Canadian TV channels, including the CBC, aired documentaries on Steiner between 1985 and ca. 1996. There is a brief mention of Steiner in the collective volume A History of the Austrian Migration to Canada, published in 1996,6 and Arthur Kaptainis mentions him in his 1998 article on musical refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria, ‘Generation EX.’7 On the Austrian side, Christian Baier wrote a short article on Steiner in 1988.8 Steiner also has an entry in the book Orpheus im Exil (Orpheus in Exile) from 1995.9
In contrast to Steiner and Kraemer, soprano Ruzena Herlinger, who in 1929 had commissioned the aria Der Wein from Berg and who lived in Montreal from 1949 as well, did not do much to disseminate the legacy of the Second Viennese School in Canada. She no longer appeared in public, and her students hardly performed the respective music, least of all Der Wein. Steiner used to refer (with a smile) to the memoirs of Hans Heinsheimer, where Herlinger is described as ‘a Viennese lady of Czech descent, whose financial resources unfortunately far surpassed her vocal qualities.’10 As to Alfred Rosé, who lived in London, Ontario, he had known members of the Second Viennese School, but he had never subscribed to its aesthetics. Hence Steiner had good reason to regard himself the true standard-bearer of the Second Viennese School in Canada.
Like Steiner, Otto Joachim believed that dodecaphony was the only artistically valid method of composing contemporary music and thus seemed Steiner’s natural ally. Indeed Joachim entrusted the pianistic tuition of his son Davis to Steiner, and his Twelve 12-Tone Pieces for Children were expressly written for his son’s lessons with Steiner. But the Steiner–Joachim relationship was always purely professional and, at times, strained. Steiner used to remark that Joachim was a late convert, who in Shanghai still had expressed his inability to understand dodecaphony. For his part, Joachim rebuked Steiner: ‘He speaks of the Viennese School. He was the student of some woman in Vienna and has never met Webern and so on … The only one he was in touch with was Apostel. And he tried and even succeeded to bring Apostel here. And now Steiner is the one who understands everything about dodecaphony, with his Jelinek and his Apostel, and all the others do not exist.’11
In 1985, on the occasion of Berg’s hundredth birthday, Steiner organized a concert with music by Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern in McGill’s Pollack Hall. It accompanied an exhibition on the Second Viennese School that was organized by the Austrian Government. But in the course of time Steiner grew more and more embittered. At McGill, he believed himself to be surrounded by enemies, especially after the retirement of Helmut Blume; he went so far as to accuse a colleague of having wilfully destroyed some of his recordings. Of course the continuing public indifference towards most of the music he championed did not make him feel better. A few days before leaving Montreal, he gave a lecture (poorly attended) at McGill, which he called his ‘testament.’ (It was on the occasion of this lecture that I personally made Steiner’s acquaintance.) Titled ‘Interpretation of the Piano Music of the Viennese School,’ it was practically the same lecture Steiner had given in Vienna on 19 June 1997. Thanks to Edward Laufer’s intervention Steiner also appeared at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, together with Hartmut Krones of Vienna, for a series of masterclasses and lectures.
Towards the end of his life Steiner attracted more attention in his native city than in Canada. He first returned to Vienna in 1981, and then more and more frequently. He gave courses (master classes) in Vienna in 1997 and 2000; in 2000 Austria awarded him the Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst I. Klasse (Cross of Honour in Arts and Sciences, First Class).12 On the other hand, he never became a member of the Order of Canada (let alone a Chevalier du Québec). The only true professional friend he won in his last years was Hartmut Krones. Krones organized Steiner’s trips to Vienna and also assisted Steiner with his last public appearance, the two master classes (on ‘Piano Music of the Viennese School’ and ‘The Lied of the Viennese School’) that he gave at the University of New Orleans in February 2001.
Karl Steiner taught the piano from about 1937, when his ill fated school in Vienna opened, almost to the very end of his long life. But for some unknown reason it is extremely hard to find a professional pianist who numbers Steiner among his teachers. Some of his many students, including his adopted son Bruno, showed exceptional gifts early on. They won prizes in prestigious competitions, and did so performing the music Karl Steiner championed. But once they had grown to adulthood, all of them seem to have abandoned their pianistic careers. Davis Joachim is of course a professional musician, but he is not a pianist. Paul Helmer, once Steiner’s colleague at McGill, remembers a certain Simon Aldrich (identical with the clarinetist of the same name?). As to Steiner’s sons, the older became a singer who now maintains a teaching studio in London, England. Known as Johann Nikolaus Steiner for years, he later broke with his stepfather and adopted his birth name of Nicolino Giacalone again. On his (somewhat extravagant) personal web page the name of Karl Steiner is not mentioned.13 His brother Bruno, who continues to use the name of Steiner, first turned to rock music (very much to the distress of his father) and later, in New Orleans, established himself as a physiotherapist. The impact of Karl Steiner’s latter-day master classes is as yet unknown.
Steiner made quite a lot of recordings – at McGill, for the CBC and also in Germany. But in his lifetime, he only published one album of two compact discs, entitled Music of the Second Generation of the Second Viennese School, which was issued by Centaur Records of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1995 (CRC 2241/42).14 It is a compilation of recordings made from 1956 to 1985; despite the title, Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern (and indeed William Keith Rogers) are also represented, and besides piano music, there are some songs by Berg and Apostel and a Suite for flute and piano by Schloss. In many instances these were world premiere recordings. As such, they were warmly welcomed by the press, but certain doubts about the quality of the music (especially Schloss’s) and some criticism of Steiner’s playing, albeit slight, infuriated Steiner. It is difficult to judge Steiner’s pianistic achievement on the grounds of the album, as it includes only one familiar work that has been recorded by a significant number of other pianists (Berg’s Sonata). Meanwhile the Universität für Musik in Vienna is to issue another CD with Steiner playing music from the standard repertory (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.), which should at last make such an assessment possible. Hartmut Krones is also preparing a volume including some of Steiner’s papers. So far, only one example of his writing has been published, a short article on Julius Schloss, written in German.15
In 1972 Steiner arranged the sale of the estate of Schloss to McGill University. Today, the ‘Julius Schloss collection’ occupies a special room in McGill’s Marvin Duchow Music Library. Besides Schloss’s own papers it includes letters from Schoenberg and other Viennese celebrities. Still, Steiner continued to keep part of Schloss’s legacy, including letters from Berg, in his own possession. Steiner subsequently grew angry with McGill because the university did not devote itself to the systematic promotion of Schloss and his music. His new friendship with Krones and his apparent reconciliation with Austria prompted his decision to sell the rest of the Schloss estate to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna in 1999. After Steiner’s death his own archives went there as well. Included in his archives are letters and dedicated scores (partly in manuscript) from Apostel and Jelinek.
Ed. note: Albrecht Gaub was born in 1967 in Stuttgart. He completed a doctoral degree in musicology at the University of Hamburg in 1997 with a dissertation on the ballet-opera Mlada, a collective work by members of the Russian Mighty Handful and the ballet composer Ludwig Minkus. Dr. Gaub spent 15 months in Canada (1999-2000) on a post-doctoral fellowship. During this time he studied refugee musicians from the Third Reich who managed against great odds to settle in Canada. An earlier article based on his research in Canada is ‘Nördlich der unbregrenzten Möglichkeiten: von den National-sozialisten vertriebene Musiker im kanadischen Exil,’ Das Orchester 49.3 (2001): 2-7.