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influenced, as was Strauss, by contact with the Wagnerian Alexander Ritter, whom Strauss had first known in Meiningen. On graduation Thuille started work as a private music-teacher, before his appointment in 1883 to the Royal Music School as a teacher of piano and harmony. In 1890 he was appointed professor and in 1893 succeeded his teacher Rheinberger as professor of composition. Thuille enjoyed an early career in Munich as a pianist, particularly in chamber music, and from 1889 won a reputation as conductor of a men’s choir, Liederhort, while earning distinction as a composer and as a teacher. It was in the latter capacity that he was chiefly remembered, his academic position tending to develop the more conservative aspect of his composition, distancing him from Strauss, with whom, nevertheless, he remained on friendly terms until his early death in 1907. A leader of the so-called Munich School that reflected the influences of Rheinberger and of Liszt and Wagner, Thuille wrote choral music and songs. His operas included two fairy-tale works, Lobetanz and Gugeline, with libretti by the writer and editor Otto Julius Bierbaum that had originally, it seems, been intended for Strauss, and his orchestral works include a piano concerto, a symphony and a Romantic Overture. At the same time he made a then significant contribution to chamber music and to a lesser extent to solo piano music. At the time of his death he was preparing for publication his important Harmonielehre, a collaboration with Rudolf Louis, a work later edited by his former pupil Walter Courvoisier, who married Thuille’s daughter.

Discography