Max Kalbeck

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Max Kalbeck (January 4, 1850 in Breslau – May 4, 1921 in Vienna) was an important German writer on music, critic and translator.

Kalbeck studied music at Munich. In 1875 he became music-critic of the Schlesische Zeitung and assistant director the Breslau Museum. Kalbeck came to Vienna in 1880 on the invitation of Eduard Hanslick, first as critic of the Allgemeine Zeitung and then, from 1886 till his death, of the Neue Wiener Tagblatt. He became one of the most influential critics in Austria and, like Hanslick, was bitterly opposed to the music of Wagner, Bruckner and Hugo Wolf.

On the other hand, also like Hanslick, he became a close friend and partisan of Brahms. His principal achievement was his eight-volume biography of the composer, published from 1904 to 1914, which became the standard work on the subject and remains, despite some failings attributable to attitudes at the time in which it was written, an indispensable source. (It has never been translated into English.) Kalbeck also edited several volumes of Brahms’s Correspondence and, in 1918, the Letters of the poets Gottfried Keller and Paul Heyse, as well as publishing two collections of his reviews.

In addition to his translations he provided new libretti for, among other works, Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne and La Finta Giardiniera; and he revised those of Don Giovanni and Le Nozze di Figaro for Gustav Mahler's productions at the Vienna Hofoper. In addition he supplied lyrics for the songs in the operetta Yabuka by Johann Strauss II, the dialogue and plot being the work of Gustav Davis. Kalbeck wrote poetry of his own; Brahms set a few of his verses as songs.