1857–1944 · Austria · 20th century
Mathilde Kralik (1857–1944) was an Austrian pianist and composer, a pupil of Anton Bruckner and a graduate of the Vienna Conservatory. She wrote operas, oratorios, chamber and sacred music, and songs with piano. The site offers 18 of her editions for voice and piano, at different levels of difficulty.
Mathilde Kralik was born in Linz on 3 December 1857. Her father, Wilhelm Kralik von Meyrswalden (1807–1877), was a Bohemian glass industrialist. After the death of his first wife he married Louise Lobmeyr (1832–1905), and Mathilde was the fourth of the five children of that marriage. Her brother Richard wrote poetry, worked on philosophy and history, and organised artistic life.
There was constant music in the Kralik house: her father played the violin and her mother the piano. In Mathilde's own words, her father was a passionate self-taught violinist who loved quartet playing, and her mother played the piano well as an amateur. Mathilde first heard Beethoven's violin sonatas from her parents, and later her two older brothers and then she herself took over music-making at home, playing duets, trios and quartets by the classical masters. Her parents noticed their daughter's gift early, and her father's means allowed him to engage the best teachers of the day.
Mathilde had her first piano lessons with her mother and then studied with Eduard Hauptmann in Linz. She began with lyrical poems and hymns drawing on the work of her brother Richard, who was keenly interested in what she wrote. In 1870 the family moved to Vienna.
In Vienna Mathilde studied piano and harmony with Carl Hertlein, a flautist at the Court Opera. In 1875 she became a private piano pupil of Professor Julius Epstein. He took a serious interest in her compositions and advised her to continue with Anton Bruckner for counterpoint.
In Bruckner's calendar for 1876, which he used as a notebook, there is an entry for 11 May that records Mathilde Kralik as a private pupil. In an autobiographical note she named Bach as her main teacher and said that in modern forms she was interested above all in Liszt.
In 1876 Mathilde passed the entrance examination for the Vienna Conservatory, which was then led by Joseph Hellmesberger senior, and in October she entered it. She was admitted straight into the second year of Franz Krenn's composition class and studied there from 1876 to 1878. Besides her main courses she also took music history.
Her year-end results were successful. A Scherzo for piano quintet earned her second prize at the end of the first year, and her final piece, an Intermezzo from a suite, earned first prize. She graduated with a composition diploma and the society's silver medal.
She conducted her graduation piece herself at the composition class competition on 2 July 1878. Six other students from the class were assessed at the same competition, among them Gustav Mahler. Both Kralik and Mahler received a first prize.
In April 1894 and again in April 1895 Kralik's works were performed in the Brahms Hall of the Musikverein at evenings of music and recitation for women. In the 1898/99 season her Piano Trio in F major, composed in 1880, was heard. She had this piece printed by the publisher Albert Gutmann.
On 12 January 1900 a sacred concert took place in the Great Hall of the Musikverein, at which her work The Baptism of Christ, to a poem by Pope Leo XIII, was performed together with her Christmas cantata for four solo voices, choir and orchestra. For Maria Theresia Ledóchowska's play The Holy Odilia, Kralik wrote choruses and songs in 1906.
Brother and sister worked together in opera too. Mathilde's first opera was the three-act fairy-tale opera Blume und Weißblume, for which Richard shaped the libretto from the medieval romance Flos und Blankenflos. In 1908 four songs and arias from it were heard in the Brahms Hall; it was first staged in Hagen in 1910 and then in Bielitz in 1912.
The opera was discussed not only because of its stagings but also because of a scandal. Nicasius Schusser, a former Capuchin friar, wrote an opera, Quo vadis, into which he copied more than 50 pages of Blume und Weißblume note for note. Kralik responded in the press but did not take legal action against Schusser.
Kralik belonged to the Vienna Bach Society and the Club of Viennese Women Musicians, joined the Austrian Composers' Association and the Association of Writers and Artists of Vienna, and held the post of honorary president in a women's choral society of Vienna. In that club she often met Vilma von Webenau, Maria Bach and Alma Mahler, and she was closely bound by friendship to Vilma von Webenau.
On Sundays private concerts were often held at her house on Weimarer Strasse in Döbling. In October 1905 her mother died at the age of 74. The loss hit Mathilde hard, and her creative work came to a halt for half a year. From 1912 she lived together with the historian Alice Scarlates.
Kralik remained active into old age: at 80 she still took part in a concert at which women working in musical creation performed. Mathilde Kralik died in Vienna on 8 March 1944 and was buried in the city's central cemetery.
After the First World War the popularity of her music declined, but in recent years interest has returned. On 30 June 2007 part of a concert in Krefeld was devoted to Kralik's music. In 2019 Vienna's music and performing arts university held a concert, as part of Europride, that included her music. On 18 September 2021 at the Brucknerhaus in Linz conductor Silvia Spinnato led Austria's Female Symphonic Orchestra in her violin concerto with string orchestra in D minor (1936/37) and her F minor symphony, revised in 1942. And for the second New Year concert of women composers in the Ehrbar hall in Vienna on 1 January 2025, her waltz Neues Wiener Journal 1930 was announced.
Kralik wrote in a wide range of genres. Her list of works includes the fairy-tale opera Blume und Weißblume, the one-act lyric opera Unter der Linde, which was never staged, and music for the dramatic poem Der heilige Gral (premiere in 1912). There are oratorios too: the liturgical Pfingstfeier (1925/26) and Der heilige Leopold, which was heard in Klosterneuburg on 10 December 1933. Among her choral works are the cantata Volkers Wacht (1907–1908) and a Mass in B-flat major (1903).
For orchestra she wrote festival overtures (January 1897 and June 1906), a Symphony in F minor and a Violin Concerto in D minor (1936/37). Her chamber works include a Sonata in D minor for violin and piano (1878), a Trio in F major (1880), a Nonet in C minor (1901) and the German Dances from the Eastern Provinces (1943). For solo piano the list names a Sonata in F minor (1895) and the Schubert-Huldigungsmarsch (1928).
A separate part of her list is songs with piano. Among them are Lauretanische Litanei and Der Rosenkranz (both 1898), to words by her brother Richard, the ballad Die Liebesbrücke (1896), Vivat Österreich to words by Eichendorff (1908), Dragonerlied (1914) and Kaiserin Zita Lied (1918).
The list also names Lukas, der Arzt (1895), Prinzesslein im Vierblattklee (1912) and Jean D'Arc's Todesweg (1920). She also wrote unaccompanied vocal music, such as Der Geist der Liebe (1903) and Der Frühling zieht ein, for which she wrote both the music and the words. Two fantasias are named as well: one in E minor for voice, piano and violin (1928) and one for piano and cello (January 1929).
The site has 18 Kralik editions, all of them for voice and piano. You can start with the songs at the intermediate+ level: Die frühen Gräber, Veilchen, Sonett and Lied der Desdemona. Advanced-level songs include Rosen, Flieder, Himmelschlüssel and Wanderlied. The titles are kept in the German original, as in the editions.
Besides these, the site has intermediate+ songs such as Der Schmied, Die Bekehrte, Lied des Gefangenen, Maiglöckchen, Mailied and Morgengesang. Among the advanced ones are Das Mädchen und die Haselstaude, Die Spröde, Die verschwiegene Nachtigall and Einleitung. All of them are editions for voice and piano.