Rudi Stephan (29 July 1887 – 29 September 1915) was a German composer of great promise who was considered one of the leading talents of his generation.[1] He was killed in action during World War I.
He left only a few works: his liking for pointedly neutral titles along the lines of 'Music for ...' has caused him to be seen as a forerunner of the 'New Objectivity' of the post-war era, but his music is in fact in a hyper-expressive late-Romantic idiom which has more plausibly been seen by some as a kind of proto-Expressionism.[1] His father was able to finance the performance of his early works, which at first met with incomprehension, but the premiere of his 1912 Music for Orchestra in Worms was a major critical breakthrough.[2] He completed his only opera, Die ersten Menschen, shortly after the outbreak of the First World War.[3] It was eventually premiered in Frankfurt, five years after the composer had been killed in action at Chodaczków Wielki near Tarnopol on the Galician Front.[2]
Music for Seven Stringed Instruments (2 violins, viola, violoncello, doublebass, harp and piano) (1907–11; unfinished revision for piano quintet, 1914)[8]
Music for Orchestra [No. 2] (1912, rev. 1913) [NB this work is often said to be a revision of the 1910 Music for Orchestra, but they are in fact unrelated]
