‘The Haarlem Brahms’: Composer and performing musician Leander Schlegel

Leander Schlegel was ‘een musicus van groote betekenis, maar stil, in zich zelf gekeerd levende […]. Het was niet de groote massa waarvoor hij speelde en schreef, maar alleen een kring van menschen die zijn kunst en streeven waardeerde’ (a musician of great significance, but a quiet, introspective living man […]. It was not the great masses for whom he performed and composed, but only a circle of people who appreciated his art and striving), as v. M. (Simon van Milligen¹) summed up his nature and life as a violinist, virtuoso pianist, conductor and composer in an obituary.² Perhaps his art was overly civilized. But do high ideal and distinction suffice to explain what a journalist rightly sighed as early as 1924: ‘Wat weet een komende generatie nog van een Verhulst, een Rich. Hol, een Leander Schlegel, een Heinze, een Sam. de Lange?’³ (What does a coming generation still know of a Verhulst, a Rich. Hol, a Leander Schlegel, a Heinze, a Sam. de Lange?) Schlegel died too early to connect with the modernist styles that emerged after the First World War. But unlike Johannes Verhulst and Samuel de Lange, he embraced the music of Liszt and Wagner that was new in his day. Although some of his compositions show that he was sensitive to the late-Romantic harmonies of Reger and R. Strauss and the breathless melodic progression that characterized much of the latter’s work, he himself, however, like Hol and De Lange, composed mainly along the lines of Schumann and Brahms. As a result, he, who was highly esteemed in Germany and Austria, was and remained a fringe figure in the Netherlands. His compositions are mentioned only briefly or not at all in overviews of Dutch music in the 19th century, and since the 1990s have featured almost exclusively on programmes of artists who want to showcase forgotten composers. Thus happened what, according to violinist and music collector Willem Noske, should never have happened: Schlegel’s music went out of fashion and practically into oblivion.⁴

Leander’s father is honoured in Altenburg with a monument. In Haarlem, the family name still adorns the Teylers Museum, but even there, of course, it refers to Hermann Schlegel. Moreover, a series of animals are named after Hermann, such as a Schlegel boa and a Schlegel crocodile. Musical Holland might also honour the (tame) keyboard lion and fine composer Leander Schlegel with a toponym or otherwise.