Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt

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Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt (1 November 1901 in Strasbourg - 15 August 1988 in Berlin) was a German composer, musicologist, and historian and critic of music.

[edit] Life

At as early an age as 19, Stuckenschmidt was the Berlin-based music critic/correspondent for the Prague-based periodical Bohemia, and lived as a freelance music writer in Hamburg, Vienna, Paris, Berlin and Prague, becoming personally acquainted with numerous composers of avant-garde music.

Amongst his most prominent musical productions were the "new music" concert cycle in Hamburg, and the 1927-8 concerts of the Berlin November Group with Max Butting.

In 1929, Stuckenschmidt became the successor to Adolf Weissmans as the music critic at the Berliner Zeitung am Mittag. Due to political pressure owing to the newly-empowered Nazi regime, he left the paper, later moving to Prague. At the end of the 1930s, he was conscripted into the armed forces as an interpreter.

After the end of the war, Stuckenschmidt became the director of "new music" at the RIAS American-run radio station in Berlin, and in 1947, the music critic of the Neuen Zeitung, later also taking up a post at the University of Berlin.

Amongst his most prominent work were things written on Arnold Schoenberg, Boris Blacher, Ferruccio Busoni and Maurice Ravel. Stuckenschmidt received numerous honours for his work, and was, among other things, a member of the German Academy for Language and Poetry, Darmstadt.

In Darmstadt he also taught at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse.