Bernhard Kaun quintett für bläser
notationpro.eu Coverphoto (skyblue colored): Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Hochhaus am Bahnhof Friedrichstraße, 1922. With permission of VG Bild-Kunst (2011).
Photo (Preface): Bernhard Kaun (1929/30) Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Nachlaß Hugo Kaun. With permission of Musiksammlung der Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
ISBN 978-1-71661-031-8 Imprint: Lulu.com
!is publication is registered at Deutsche Nationalbibliothek www.dnb.de and is freely available there as PDF.
!is sheet music publication is published under license Creative Commons 3.0 by-nc-nd, AD. 2020
Composer: Bernhard Kaun (ca. 1925) Licensor and legal successor: Jeanette Stobie, Applegate/Oregon c/o AlbisMusic, Brunsbüttel, Walter F. Zielke, [email protected]
Notation & Graphic: notationpro.eu PREFACE
Bernhard Kaun (b. April 5, 1899, in Milwaukee; d. January 3, 1980, in Baden-Baden, Germany) was a !lm orchestrator, composer and conductor. He was the !fth child of the German-American composer, conductor, and music teacher Hugo Wilhelm Ludwig Kaun (1862-1932). Hugo Kaun and his bride had immigrated to the US in 1887, but in 1902, the family returned to Germany. Bernhard began musical studies at an early age under his father’s instruction and later studied violin and piano in Berlin. He served in the German army during WWI, playing clarinet in a military band; after the war, he found employment as a music teacher in Germany. In 1922, Kaun began working as an orchestrator for RCA Victor in Berlin. He moved to New York in 1924, after which he worked as a copyist at a NYC movie theatre and as an arranger for Mills Music Co. "at same year, he collaborated with composer Gottfried Huppertz on the music for Fritz Lang’s heroic epic Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924). Kaun’s arrangements for the !lm attracted the attention of Victor Wagner, associate conductor of the Eastman "eatre Orchestra, who then introduced the young composer to Howard Hanson. After working brie#y in Milwaukee as an assistant to Heinz Roemheld at the Alhambra "eater (1924).
His Quintett für Bläser1 was composed during the time in Milwaukee and was his application for a position at Eastman-Music-School. It’s a modern composition that is far ahead of its time. German-American music theorist Bernhard Ziehn (1845-1912) was also well acquainted with the Kaun family. He had a strong in#uence on the compositional style of Bernhard Kaun.
So, Kaun moved to Rochester, NY, to work as an assistant to Howard Hanson (1925-1928). He was also involved in organizing the !rst Festivals of American Music at Eastman and taught theory during the 1926-27 and 1927-28 academic years. In 1928, Kaun left Eastman and spent some time in Germany (World economic crisis 1929).
In February 19312, he returned to the US to work as a composer at Universal with Heinz Roemheld, who, by then, was employed as general music director of Universal´s Music Department. For the next decade, Kaun enjoyed a proli!c career as a !lm composer and orches- trator. He contributed to more than 200 !lms for RKO, Universal, Warner Brothers, and Paramount as a composer, orchestrator, arranger, musical director and conductor. His œuvre of !lm music includes Heaven on Earth (1931), Universal’s !rst sound !lm with a full- length score; Frankenstein (1931); A Farewell to Arms (1932); and Death Takes a Holiday (1934). As an orchestrator, he worked regularly with Max Steiner3; among his most well-known contributions are orchestrations for the now classic !lms King Kong (1933) and Gone with the Wind (1939).
1 Source of manuscript: University of Michigan Library, Sign. M557K22Q, OCLC Number 62876230, digitized in Haithi Trust Digital Library.
2 B. K. took the ship passage as Passenger No. 5 with the Transatlantic liner „Bremen“ from Bremen on January 31, 1931. He named „CA, Universal City" as his travel destination.
3 Peter Wegele, Der Filmkomponist Max Steiner (1888-1971), Böhlau Verlag, Wien-Köln-Weimar, 2012. Kaun was highly regarded as an orchestrator and worked with several other eminent !lm composers, including Korngold, Toch and Tiomkin.4 In the early 1940s Igor Stravinsky publicly expressed his admiration towards Kaun’s distinctive orchestrating style. In 1941, Kaun left Hollywood for New York, where he devoted himself to composing concert music. He wrote numerous cue sheets for the TV series Lassie (1957/59), Perry Mason and !e Fugitive. In 1953, he returned to Germany. "ereafter, he composed music for two German feature !lms (Special Delivery, 1954; Alle Wege führen heim, 1957). In further productions (!e "y, 1958; Bravados, 1962; !e Five cities of June; 1963) he conducted the Graunke Symphony Orchestra.
Walter F. Zielke Brunsbüttel, September 2020
GREETING
Dear friends of music! I am delighted that, after almost 95 years, this extraordinary and demanding chamber music work by my father has now been published as a free music edition. "e music engraver and publisher Walter F. Zielke (to whom I am very grateful), has made it possible that this piece of music, in the spirit of my father, is now available to you under the licence Creative Commons 3.0 BY-NC-ND. For you as the performer, this means that this chamber music work is free of any rights in the whole world. It may be copied and distributed as described in this CC- license.
I wish you much pleasure in making music and I hope that the great music of Bernhard Kaun will !nd a wider distribution.
Jeanette Stobie Applegate/Orgeon, in September 2020
4 W. H. Rosar: Music for the Monsters: Universal Pictures' horror Film Scores of the thirties Quarterly Journal of the library of congress, xl (1983), p. 390–421