Alfred Orel

Alfred Orel (Vienna, 1889 – Vienna, 1967) was an Austrian musicologist whose work focused above all on the music of his homeland, with particular attention to Anton Bruckner and fifteenth-century polyphony. Born and died in the Austrian capital, he first trained in law at the University of Vienna, where he graduated in 1912, before turning to musicology.

He worked at the Austrian Ministry of Finance until 1918, the year he began directing the music collection of the Vienna Stadtbibliothek, a post he held until 1938. In parallel, he resumed his musicological studies under Guido Adler, received his doctorate in 1919 with a dissertation on settings of the Salve regina in the Trent Codices, and gained his habilitation in 1922 with a work on rhythm in fifteenth-century polyphony. His academic career advanced slowly: he was appointed reader in 1929 and extraordinary professor in 1939. In 1938 he served as acting director of the Staatliche Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, and between 1940 and 1945 he was special adviser on Viennese musical research to the city's office for cultural affairs. After the war, his membership of the Nazi Party prevented him from continuing at the university.

Orel organised numerous music exhibitions during the 1920s and 1930s and received state decorations in 1928 and 1959 for his services to Vienna. He was also one of the founders of the Zentralinstitut für Mozart-Forschung in Salzburg and sat on its board of directors.

His best-known work is Anton Bruckner: das Werk, der Künstler, die Zeit (1925), which is still regarded as a reference. He was responsible for the first complete edition of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, in which he restored the cuts omitted in Löwe's 1903 edition and the original orchestration, and included sketches for the finale. He also published extensively on Mozart and on composers associated with Vienna, although his legacy is today debated because of his political past.