Hedwig Frank-Autherid

Hedwig Frank-Autherid, also known as Hedy Frank-Autherid, was born Hedwig Autherid on 22 January 1902 in Vienna (then part of Austria-Hungary). Her first systematic musical training took place at the music school of Adolf Desen Nesbeda in Vienna. There she studied violin and violoncello with Karl Gibitsch, while Nesbeda himself taught her piano as well as harmony and musical form. In 1921, Autherid successfully passed the entrance examination for the Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna. She studied piano with Hedwig Andrassy and Camillo Horn and harmony with Richard Stöhr. Her chief interest, however, increasingly lay in music theory and composition. She wanted to make harmony her principal subject, but Stöhr refused this request. As a result, she discontinued her studies, and the interruption was connected with a nervous breakdown. In 1922, she married the bank employee Ferdinand Frank, whose surname she combined with her maiden name. It was not until 1928 that she resumed serious musical studies, now privately with Camillo Horn. Under his guidance, she worked on piano, modulation, harmony, counterpoint, musical form and instrumentation, effectively receiving the composition training that she had been unable to pursue at the Academy. Horn evidently thought highly of her abilities and counted her among his three most gifted pupils.

Hedwig Frank-Autherid began to establish herself publicly as a composer around 1930. Her formal debut as a composer took place in 1932 in the Großer Musikvereinssaal in Vienna. Further performances followed rapidly, and her works appeared repeatedly in Viennese concert programmes between 1930 and 1938. The documented sequence of performances then breaks off during the war years and resumes in 1946, after which she remained active as a freelance composer in Vienna until the end of her life.

In the post-war decades, Frank-Autherid became closely associated with several organisations in Vienna’s cultural life, among them the Verband der Geistig Schaffenden Österreichs, the Wiener Frauenklub and the Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und Künstlerinnen. Her most significant public honour came in 1977, when, on the occasion of her seventy-fifth birthday, the Verband der Geistig Schaffenden Österreichs, the Wiener Frauenklub and the Verein der Schriftstellerinnen und Künstlerinnen jointly organised a portrait concert devoted to her music.

Frank-Autherid was an exceptionally prolific composer. Her output is particularly rich in art songs, piano music and melodramas for reciter and piano. The latter genre occupied an unusually important position in her work. She also wrote a substantial body of music for children and for the stage. Her instrumental music includes orchestral pieces, a Lyrische Suite for piano trio, a Theme and Variations, and an A-minor Sonata for violin and piano, as well as numerous piano works, among them sonatas, preludes, impromptus, fantasies, marches, dances and character pieces. Choral and sacred compositions also form part of her catalogue.

Hedwig Frank-Autherid died on 24 April 1979 in Vienna, Austria.

In my possession are two autograph manuscripts of piano works by Hedwig Frank-Autherid. Both manuscripts bear an inscription by Hedwig Frank-Autherid to her niece Martha and are dated 1946. The both works are "Feierliches Präludium" op.33 and "Kleines Intermezzo" op.66.