Melichar, Alois

Alois Melichar (18 April 1896, in Vienna – 9 April 1976, in Munich) was an Austrian composer, conductor, arranger, and music critic. He was a student of Joseph Marx at the Vienna Academy of Music, then of Franz Schreker at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, but later became increasingly culturally conservative. From 1923 to 1926 Melichar was in the Caucasus, where he collected materials on Caucasian folk songs. He then lived in Berlin and Vienna. As a composer, he followed the safe footpath of Max Reger, Hans Pfitzner, and Paul Graener; he wrote a symphonic poem, Der Dom (1934); Rhapsodie über ein schwedisches Volkslied (1939); Lustspiel-Ouvertüre (1942); lieder; and film music. Under contract to UFA he composed music for many films during the National Socialist period. After World War II Melichar became increasingly polemic in his attacks on modernist music. His pamphlets include Die unteilbare Musik ("Indivisible music" 1952), Musik in der Zwangsjacke ("Music in the Straitjacket" 1958), and Schönberg und die Folgen ("Schoenberg and his Consequences" 1960).