Richard Specht

Richard Specht (7 December 1870, Vienna - 19 March 1932) was an Austrian lyricist, dramatist, musicologist and writer.

Specht is most well known for his writings on classical music, and in his time was seen as a leading music journalist. He was a great authority on the music of Gustav Mahler, and in later life became a regular acquaintance of his widow, Alma Mahler-Werfel.

He was, amongst other things, a contributor to the Wiener Illustrierten Extrablatts and other Viennese newspapers. From 1910, he worked at the Merker publishing house. In 1925, he was appointed to a professorship at the institution that is now the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna.

Works

Fiction

• Gedichte (1893)
• Das Gastmahl des Plato, Drama (1895)
• Pierrot bossu, Drama (1896)
• Mozart, twelve poems (1914)
• Florestan Kestners Erfolg, a story (1929)
• Die Nase des Herrn Valentin Berger, Drama (1929)

Academic works

• Johann Strauss II (1909)
• Gustav Mahler (1913)
• Das Wiener Operntheater - Fifty years of memories (1919)
• Die Frau ohne Schatten - Introduction to the music (1919)
• Richard Strauss and his work (1921)
• Julius Bittner (1921)
• Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek - A preliminary study (1922)
• Arthur Schnitzler - The poet and his work. A study (1922)
• Wilhelm Furtwängler (1922)
• Franz Werfel (1926)
• Johannes Brahms: Leben und Werk eines deutschen Meisters (1928; English translation by Eric Blom)
• Giacomo Puccini. Das Leben, der Mensch, das Werk (1931; English translation, 1933)

External links

• Works by or about Richard Specht at Internet Archive