Ludwig Thuille

His Innsbruck teacher of organ and theory recommended him to the distinguished composer Josef Rheinberger in Munich,[3] who took him as a pupil in the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, from where he graduated with honors in 1882.

His many pupils included Hermann Abendroth, Ernest Bloch, Ernst Boehe [de], Richard Wetz, Paul von Klenau, Rudi Stephan, Walter Braunfels, Mabel Wheeler Daniels, Henry Kimball Hadley and Walter R. Spalding, who became the head of the Division of Music at Harvard University, and later taught Leroy Anderson.

In 1897 his opera Theuerdank gained the first prize and a prestigious staged premiere in an operatic competition sponsored by the Regent of Bavaria, in which Alexander von Zemlinsky was placed second.

Despite his friendship with Strauss (which extended to making a 2-piano arrangement of the latter's tone poem Don Juan, dedicated to him), and despite his devotion to music-drama, Thuille remained a fairly conservative composer during his brief life.

Widely employed as part of the conservatory curriculum in German speaking countries through the 1960s, the Harmonielehre in two volumes is an important theoretical formulation devoted innovatively to the practices of the Munich School of composers, and remains one of few existing records providing examples of this music.