Gisela Frankl
Musical artist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gisela Frankl (also known as Gisella Frankel and, after her marriage, Gisela von Irgens-Bergh; 14 March 1860 – 8 June 1935) was an Austrian composer, pianist, and music teacher. She was active in Vienna, the United States, and Denmark.[1][2] Trained in Vienna, she opened her own music school there in 1880 and first drew public notice as a composer in 1881 with a wedding hymn dedicated to Crown Prince Rudolf; she published about 50 works, mostly salon and chamber music.[3][4]
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- Composer
- pianist
- music teacher
Gisela Frankl | |
|---|---|
Frankl in an 1895 portrait | |
| Background information | |
| Born | 14 March 1860 |
| Died | 8 June 1935 (aged 75) Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Occupations |
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Life and career
Frankl was born in Vienna on 14 March 1860, the eldest child of the lawyer Moriz (Moritz) Frankl, who came from Prostějov in Moravia, and his wife Theresa, née Löwy.[3][1] She was one of seven children.[1] The biographical dictionary biografiA records her under the names Gisela, Gitl, and Gisella Frankel.[5] The family first lived in the Leopoldstadt before moving, around the end of the 1860s, to Oberdöbling and then to the Innere Stadt.[1]
Frankl began private piano lessons at the age of seven with Josef Dachs, to whom she later dedicated her Mazurka de Salon, Op. 25.[3] She attended the girls' school of the Wiener Frauen-Erwerb-Verein, studied for a semester (1873–74) at the conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, and then moved in 1874 to the Klavierschule Ungar, where she took piano with Ignaz Ungar and studied counterpoint, harmony, and composition with Carl Wolfrum.[3] She passed her state examination with distinction in 1880, with the critic Eduard Hanslick among those present, and in the same year opened her own state-licensed school for piano and music theory in Vienna.[3][2]
Frankl published her first composition, the "Hochzeits-Hymne" (Wedding Hymn) dedicated to Crown Prince Rudolf, in 1881, and went on to publish about 50 works.[3][2] As a pianist she concentrated on chamber music and appeared often at the Bösendorfer-Saal, the Musikverein, and the Ehrbar-Saal.[3] She toured in 1890 with the cellist Josefine Donat and the singer Ziona Grieger, and in 1891 with the violinist Amalie Ebner and the singer Karoline Wogrinz.[3]
In 1892 Frankl toured North America with her younger sister, the painter Regine Frankl.[3][2] The family appears to have left Vienna soon afterwards.[3] She spent some years in the United States before settling in Denmark as the wife of Theodor Alfred Christian von Irgens-Bergh, a member of a Danish noble family, where her later life was marked by philanthropy.[6][2] She died in Copenhagen on 8 June 1935; by her will she set up a foundation that still awards scholarships to young musicians in Denmark.[1][2][6] The older Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon gives her death only as after 1892, place unknown.[3] Her sister Regine Frankl (born 4 February 1864) was deported and killed at the Treblinka extermination camp in 1940.[3]
Music
Frankl's output was mainly salon and chamber music, including piano pieces and songs; about 50 of her works were printed in Vienna by publishers such as Kratochwill, Wetzler, Cranz, and Röhrich, though most are now lost.[3][4] A biographical sketch of 1890 noted that her published works included a piano quartet, a piano trio, a violin duo, and many songs and solo concert pieces.[7] Some of her manuscripts and printed music are held by the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus and the Austrian National Library.[1] Her life and career are the subject of a 2025 biography by Ursula Erhart-Schwertmann, Gisela Frankl. Werdegang einer Wiener Komponistin.[6]