Brief biography of German composer Engelbert Humperdinck - his life and works - famous for fairytale opera Hänsel und Gretel (Hansel and Gretel).

German composer Engelbert Humperdinck is famous for his fairytale opera Hänsel und Gretel (Hansel and Gretel), popular to this day.

Early Years

The son of a school headmaster, Engelbert Humperdinck was born in Siegburg, near Bonn, on September 1, 1854. At an early age, Humperdinck learned to play the piano. At 14, he already had the gift for composition but his parents insisted he take up architecture. However, four years later, he began to study music at Cologne Conservatoire.

Education and Collaboration with Wagner

At Cologne, Humperdinck studied composition, cello, piano and organ. He later studied at the Royal Music School in Munich where he started to compose. In 1879, he won the Mendelssohn Prize which enabled him to visit Italy. It was there he met Wagner and collaborated with him in the preparation for the production of Parsifal at Bayreuth.

Prizes in Composition Competitions

Aside from the Mendelssohn Prize, he also won a Mozart scholarship under Joseph Rheinberger and Franz Lachner.

Music Professor and Music Critic

Humperdinck became a professor teaching theory and harmony in Paris, Spain, Cologne and Mainz. When he moved to Frankfurt he continued teaching and became music critic for Frankfurter Zeitung.

Famous Opera Hänsel und Gretel

In 1890, Humperdinck started writing Hänsel und Gretel. Its first performance in 1893 at Weimar under Richard Strauss was a huge success.

More Teaching, Composing and Writing

By 1900 Engelbert Humperdinck was in Berlin teaching, composing operas, and writing Shakespearean incidental music for the theatre, including The Merchant of Venice (1905), The Winter’s Tale (1906), The Tempest (1906), As You Like It (1907), and Romeo and Juliet (1907), among others which was among his most successful work. His operatic version of Königskinder (The King’s Children), another characteristic piece in his folk like style, was first performed in New York in 1910. Like Hänsel und Gretel, it also starts from simple song settings through to a full opera, showing influence of Wagner in terms of harmony and orchestration.

Aside from operas, Humperdinck also wrote other musical genres, including orchestral music, chamber music (string quartets, notturno for violin and pianoforte), incidental music for plays, choral works, and numerous songs. Only his opera Hänsel und Gretel is now performed.

Death

In 1921, aged 67, Engelbert Humperdinck died in Neustrelitz.

Humperdinck's known works

• Hänsel und Gretel, (Hansel and Gretel) opera 1893
• Die Sieben Geisslein, (The Seven Little Kids) opera 1895
• Morrish Rhapsody, for orchestra 1898
• Dornröschen, (Sleeping Beauty) opera 1902
• Die Heirat wieder Willen, (The Reluctant Marriage) comic opera 1905
• Königskinder, (The King's Children) opera 1910
• Die Marketenderin, light opera 1914

Trivia

Engelbert Humperdinck is not in any way related to the pop singer who uses the same name.

Sources:

Opera. András Batta, Editor-in-Chief. Könemann (2000, for English Version)

The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd Edition, edited by Stanley Sadie (2000)

The Oxford Dictionary of Music, edited by Michael Kennedy (1994)