Born in Königsberg [now Kaliningrad], Dec 7, 1840
Died in Hottingen, near Zürich, Dec 3, 18761
- Hermann Goetz was born in (then) East Prussia, receiving his formal musical training in Berlin and settling in Switzerland for much of his adult life.
- Goetz is best known today for his opera, Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung (“Taming of the Shrew”), though his compositional output included symphonic works, chamber music, choral works, Lieder, and pieces for piano.
- Goetz contracted tuberculous during childhood and consequently developed severe depression that plagued him throughout his short adult life.
- Sad/ morbid fact – Like Mozart, Goetz died just shy of his 36th birthday.
- George Bernard Shaw wrote the following of the composer:
“You have to go to Mozart’s finest quartets and quintets on the one hand, and to Die Meistersinger on the other, for work of the quality we find, not here and there, but continuously, in the [Second] Symphony and in [Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung], two masterpieces which place him securely above all other German composers of the last hundred years, save only Mozart and Beethoven, Weber and Wagner.”2
Sources
- Christopher Fifield, “Goetz, Hermann,” Grove Music Online (2001), Accessed August 18, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000011360.
- Ibid.