Wörner, Karl(heinz) H(einrich)
Wörner, Karl(heinz) H(einrich)
Wörner, Karl(heinz) H(einrich), German musicologist; b. Waldorf, near Heidelberg, Jan. 6, 1910; d. Heiligenkirchen, near Detmold, Aug. 11,1969. He studied at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik and took courses in musicology with Schünemann, Schering, Blume, Hornbostel, and Sachs at the Univ. of Berlin (Ph.D., 1931, with the diss. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Leitmotivs in der Oper). He was music critic of the Berliner Zeitung am Mittag (1933-34); then (1935-40) opera conductor at Stettin, Magdeburg, and Frankfurt am Main. He was in the German army during World War II; in 1944, was taken prisoner of war by the U.S. Army and spent 2 years in an American internment camp. After his release, he taught at the Heidelberg Hochschule für Musik (1946-54). From 1954 to 1958 he was on the staff of B. Schotts Söhne (Mainz); in 1958, joined the faculty of the Folkwangschule in Essen; from 1961, taught at the North-West Germany Academy of Music in Detmold.
Writings
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Wiesbaden, 1947); Musik der Gegenwart: Geschichte des neuen Musik (Mainz, 1949); Robert Schumann (Zürich, 1949); Musiker-Worte (Baden-Baden, 1949); Geschichte der Musik (Göttingen, 1954; 6th ed., aug., 1975; Eng. tr., 1973); Neue Musik in der Entscheidung (Mainz, 1954); Gotteswort und Magie: Die Oper “Moses und Aron” von Arnold Schönberg (Heidelberg, 1959; Eng. tr., aug., 1963); Karlheinz Stockhausen: Werk und Wollen 1950-1962 (Rodenkirchen, 1963; Eng. tr., aug., 1973); Das Zeitalter der thematischen Prozesse in der Geschichte der Musik (Regensburg, 1969); Die Musik in der Geistesgeschichte: Studien zur Situation der Jahre um 1910 (Bonn, 1970).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire