Edgar Istel

Edgar Istel (Mainz, 1880 – Miami, 1948) was a German musicologist and composer whose work on the history of opera, and in particular on the libretto, earned him recognition. Born in Mainz, he first trained as a violinist in his native city, though he soon turned to composition, and he was a pupil of Volbach.

In 1898 he moved to Munich, where he completed his training with Thuille and Sandberger. He obtained his doctorate in 1900 with a dissertation on the music Rousseau composed for Pygmalion. Until 1913 he worked as a teacher, music critic and essayist. In that same year he was appointed professor of aesthetics at the Humboldt Academy, a post he held until 1919, when he moved to the Lessing-Hochschule. At the same time he contributed criticism to several newspapers.

In 1920 he settled in Madrid, from where he represented two authors' societies: the German Verband deutscher Bühnenschriftsteller und Bühnenkomponisten and the Viennese Gesellschaft der Autoren, Komponisten und Musikverleger. In 1936 he emigrated to England and, in 1938, to the United States, where he died.

His reputation rests above all on his studies of the history of opera. His book on the libretto is among the most complete accounts of the characteristics and structure of operatic texts. As a composer, he left five operas, incidental music for Goethe's Satyros, a Hymn to Zeus for chorus and orchestra, and choral works and songs. His writings also include monographs on Wagner, Hoffmann, Paganini and Bizet, as well as editions of texts by Hoffmann and Ditters von Dittersdorf.