Otto Singer (July 26, 1833 – January 3, 1894) was a German musician, composer, conductor, and arranger who was also active in the United States. He is best known for his piano transcriptions of orchestral works, including symphonies by Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky.
Life
Singer was born in Sora, Saxony (now part of Germany). He was educated in Dresden and later in Leipzig until 1865. After a short residence in Weimar with Franz Liszt, he emigrated to New York in 1869.
In 1873, he moved to Cincinnati, where he served as assistant musical director under Theodore Thomas for the first May Musical Festival. He composed the cantata The Pilgrim Fathers for the festival of 1876 and a Festival Ode for the opening of the music hall in 1878. He also wrote a Rhapsodie for Piano and Orchestra in C major (1881), dedicated to Hans von Bülow. Singer remained with the Cincinnati College of Music until 1892, when he returned to New York, where he died.
Work and Style
Singer was described as an earnest and aggressive disciple of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner, both in his compositions and his piano performances. He conducted various singing societies. In addition to the cantata mentioned above, he composed piano sonatas and a piano concerto.
Otto Singer Jr.
His son, Otto Singer Jr. (September 14, 1863 – January 8, 1931), was also a composer and conductor. He produced piano transcriptions of all nine of Beethoven's symphonies, at least 57 of Liszt's songs, all four of Brahms's symphonies, vocal-piano reductions of 12 of Wagner's operas, as well as transcriptions of works by Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Mahler, among others.
Legacy
Singer was the teacher of American composer Wilson G. Smith. His piano transcriptions remain of interest to pianists and scholars of 19th-century music, as they made large-scale orchestral works accessible for domestic and pedagogical piano performance.
