Bernhard Kaun

Bernhard Kaun was born on 5 April 1899 in Milwaukee, WI (USA). He was the youngest child and only son (with 4 sisters) of the German composer Hugo Kaun. The family returned to Berlin in Germany in 1902. Nearly the complete musical education of Bernhard Kaun was taught by his father, he only received additional violin (under August Genzt) and piano lessons during his school days. His education stopped abruptly with the outbreak of World War I. Bernhard Kaun was drafted for military service (aged 15!) and served as a soldier until the end of war in 1918. During his time at the army he played the clarinet in a military band. After the war Bernhard Kaun studied conducting under Rudolf Krasselt.
One of the first jobs of Bernhard Kaun was as an orchestrator and conductor for the US film and music publisher RCA Victor. There he arranged music by Richard Wagner for the silent film "Die Nibelungen" (1924) by Fritz Lang. After this project Bernhard Kaun moved to New York to work more intensively in the film music business. But at first he had to work as a conductor at the Alhambra Theatre in Milwaukee and became teacher at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. There Bernhard Kaun met Howard Hanson, whose organ concerto op.27 he orchestrated as well as the "Lament for Beowulf" and the symphonic poem "Pan and the Priest".
In 1930 Bernhard Kaun was hired as an orchestrator for the Universal Studios Hollywood and he moved to Los Angeles. Later he also orchestrated for Warner Bros. and Paramount and over the next decade was involved in the creation of hundreds of film music scores, some of them now classics like King Kong, Gone with the Wind (orchestrations for Max Steiner), Hearts divided (Erich Wolfgang Korngold), Peter Ibbetson (Ernst Toch), Lost Horizon (Dimitri Tiomkin), Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin) as well as his own compositions like Heaven on Earth (the first full-length score for a sound film, 1931) or Frankenstein (1931).
In 1940 Bernhard Kaun quit his work in the film music business, moved to New York and focused on composing music for concert stage. This time was less successful and there is little known about this era. In 1953 Bernhard Kaun moved back to Germany and settled in Munich. In the following years he composed a few more film music for German television projects.
Bernhard Kaun died on 3 January 1980 in Baden-Baden (Germany).

In my possession are the autograph manuscripts of 4 songs for voice and piano by Bernhard Kaun. The songs are:

• Schummertid (text by Paul Warncke) - dedicated to Erna
• Goldene Wolken (text by Cäsar Flaischlen) - dedicated to Dora
• Lenzsturm (text by Otto Erich Hartleben) - dedicated to Senta
• Ziel (text by Hermann Hesse) - dedicated to Elizabeth Duncan in adoration

The manuscript has no joining title and therefore it is uncertain if the four songs build a cycle or not. But two of the songs are for high voice, two for low voice, therefore it seems more likely that these songs stand as individual compositions. All four songs were composed in December 1922.