Humperdinck, Engelbert (1854-1921)

German composer. He studied in Cologne and Munich and assisted Richard Wagner in the preparation of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. He wrote the musical fairy operas Hänsel und Gretel (1893) and Königskinder/King's Children (1910).

He was born in Siegburg. He studied under Ferdinand Hiller at the Cologne Conservatory and later with Franz Lachner and Josef Rheinberger at Munich. In 1879 he met Wagner in Italy and acted as his assistant at Bayreuth 1881-82. Later he travelled in France, Italy, and Spain and taught at the Barcelona Conservatory 1885-87. In 1890-96 he taught at the Hoch Conservatory at Frankfurt and was for a time music critic of the newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung. His enduring success, Hänsel und Gretel, was premiered at Weimar in 1893 under Richard Strauss. In 1900 he became director of the Meisterschule for composition in Berlin.

Works Stage operas Hänsel und Gretel (1893), Dornröschen (1902), Die Heirat wider Willen (1905), Königskinder (1910), Die Marketenderin (1914), Gaudeamus (1919); play with music Königskinder (an earlier version of the opera); spectacular pantomime The Miracle; incidental music to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (1905), The Winter's Tale (1906), The Tempest (1906), and Twelfth Night, Maeterlinck's The Blue Bird (1912), Aristophanes' Lysistrata.

Other choral works Das Glück von Edenhall (Uhland), Die Wallfahrt nach Kevlaar (Heine); Humoreske and Maurische Rhapsodie for orchestra; part songs, songs.