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Even in his lifetime, Ernst Krenek who left an oeuvre of more than 240 works when he died at the age of 91, was seen as holding an extreme position in musical history: on the one hand, his versatility as a composer was frequently criticized as a repeated "change of style", on the tacit presupposition that a creative life ought to be distinguished by stylistic consistency, on the other, critics in the USA characterized him as a "one-man history of twentieth-century music", thus taking account of the unique and almost incredible fact that Krenek's oeuvre spans more than seven decades of the 20th century - from the late 1910s to the late 1980s. If it ist to be taken seriously, the point in question is not mere historical coincidence or keeping up with every modish trend, but rather Krenek's status as a companion of the century. |
