Decsey, Ernst (Heinrich Franz)

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Decsey, Ernst (Heinrich Franz)

Decsey, Ernst (Heinrich Franz) , German-born Austrian writer on music; b. Hamburg, April 13, 1870; d. Vienna, March 12, 1941. He studied law in Vienna (doctorate, 1894), then composition with Bruckner and Robert Fuchs at the Vienna Cons. He was active as a music critic in Graz and in Vienna. He was the author of a major biography of Hugo Wolf (4 vols., Berlin, 1903–06; abridged 1-vol. ed., 1921). He also wrote Anton Bruckner (Berlin, 1920), Johann Strauss (Berlin, 1922; 2nd ed., 1947), Franz Lehdr (Vienna, 1924), Franz Schubert (Vienna, 1924), Maria Jeritza (Vienna, 1931), Claude Debussy (2 vols., Graz, 1936), and Debussys Werke (Graz and Vienna, 1948).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

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