Friedrich August Bungert: Overture to Aurora, Op. 23
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Friedrich August Bungert (1845-1915)
Overture to the opera Aurora, Op. 23
Südwestfunk Orchester
Emmerich Smola, conductor
Bungert was born in Mülheim. His unusual musical talent was noticed and nurtured at high school by his teacher, Heinrich Kufferath, the brother of the composer Ferdinand Kufferath. Bungert's father, a wealthy merchant and an eminent member of the community, was unenthusiastic about his son's ambitions and considered his son's musical ability to be an ill-fated inclination. He would have preferred his son to undertake a career as a merchant or a doctor. Only his mother supported him, but she died when August Bungert was ten. In the aftermath of her death, the conflict between father and son became more intense.
Upon finishing high school at 16, Bungert fled to Cologne. He attended the Conservatorium there and was taught by Ferdinand Kufferath, his high school teacher's brother. In Cologne, he was discovered by the composer Max Bruch's sister, who had been charged by the Paris Conservatorium with finding a talented musician to be educated in Paris.
Without hesitation, I agreed. Before 1866, Paris was a cultural centre, which every aspiring musician must visit in order to gain recognition
— August Bungert, Der Bund - monthly publication for the Bungert-Bund 9 July 1915
Bungert was destitute in Paris, just managing to make ends meet by giving piano lessons, until his father grudgingly gave him a little emergency support. Although the Paris Conservatorium was home to some celebrated musicians, such as Berlioz, Auber and Rossini, who occasionally noticed talented students, Bungert did not receive the encouragement he expected. Due in part to this disappointment, and in part to an unhappy love affair, he returned to Germany. In 1869 he took a position as a chorus-master, and in 1870 as the director of an orchestra in Bad Kreuznach. Although he composed more in Kreuznach - the production of his piece Hutten und Sickingen during the unveiling of a monument was a big success - he was obviously not satisfied.
In 1874 he moved to Berlin, where he continued his studies under Friedrich Kiel. Here he produced more significant works, among others the Piano Quartet in E flat major, opus 18, which was awarded the Florentine Quartet Prize of 1877 by Johannes Brahms and Robert Volkmann who were the judges of the competition. According to Bungert, he composed the piece as he lay in bed feverish with appendicitis. The piano quartet was performed very successfully in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1913.
Bungert travelled to Italy with the prize money, ostensibly for health reasons, but probably from a deep yearning for Italian life, moving to Pegli, near Genoa. Here he met Giuseppe Verdi, and his neighbour was the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, with whom he would form a strong friendship. In Pegli he wrote the opera Aurora, which premiered in Leipzig in 1884.
In Italy, Bungert made the acquaintance of the Queen of Romania, Elisabeth of Wied, known artistically as Carmen Sylva, who would become of great importance in his later life and for his music. Through Sylva he finally gained the yearned-for access to the highest nobility. Bungert was a regular guest in the royal Wied castles and in the Swedish and Rumanian royal courts.
August-Bungert-Haus in Leutesdorf
In 1890, Sylva gave him an expensive Bechstein grand piano, and in 1894 she transferred the ownership of a house to him. The house was situated on the Rhine in Leutesdorf, had a large garden and was renovated by the Cologne architect Carl Schauppmeyer in the Ionic style. The villa is still considered an adornment in the plane-tree-lined Rheinallee (today August-Bungert-Allee). Bungert furnished the house with expensive furniture, works of art and memorabilia. He celebrated his greatest artistic triumphs during this time, especially with the setting of Sylva's poetry to music and his Rhine-songs, which he often composed sitting at his regular table in the Rhine garden of the Leyscher Hof Hotel in Leutesdorf, for which he mostly wrote the texts himself.
Bungert was awarded a professorship at the Leipzig University in 1911 and gave several lectures about his work there. He died, following a long illness, on 26 October 1915 in his house in Leutesdorf.