ETA Hoffmann - Die Elixiere Des Teufels

Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann (Königsberg , January 24, 1776  Berlin, June 25, 1822), who changed his third name to Amadeus in honour to Mozart, is one of the best-known representatives of German Romanticism, and a pioneer of the fantasy genre, with a taste for the macabre. He was also a jurist, composer, music critic, draftsman and caricaturist. As a musician, he composed about 80 works, including several operas, among them Aurora (1811-12), after Franz von Holbein, and Undine (1814), after Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's tale, one symphony, sacred and chamber music, as well as instrumental pieces. His tales inspired many other authors (Edgar Allan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, Charles Dickens, Franz Kafka, Charles Baudelaire, among others) and also composers. His most familiar story is Nussknacker und Mausekönig  (1816), which inspired Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker (1892). Jacques Offenbach's masterwork, the opera Les contes d'Hoffmann (1881), is based on the stories Der Sandmann  (1816), Rath Krespel  (1818), and Das verlorene Spiegelbild  from Die Abenteuer der Silvester-Nacht  (1814). Robert Schumann composed his Kreisleriana (1837) in homage to Hoffmann's most famous character, the genius musician Kreisler. As musical critic, he set new standards for writing about music, and was the first one to describe music as "the most Romantic of all the arts." Most important is his review of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 (1808). Some of his most important works as author are: - Fantasiestücke in Callots Manier , 1814 - Die Elixiere des Teufels (18151816) - Nachtstücke (18161817) - Die Serapions-Brüder (18191821) - Lebensansichten des Katers Murr nebst fragmentarischer Biographie des Kapellmeisters Johannes Kreisler in zufälligen Makulaturblättern (18191821, fragment).

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