Style
Klughardt's meeting with Liszt established his enthusiasm for the music of the Neudeutsche Schule around Wagner and Liszt. Indeed, his works reflect some of their conceptions. Nevertheless, Klughardt did not shy away from keeping up genres which Wagner and Liszt rejected. He wrote six symphonies and a lot of chamber music. Likewise, he did not compose a single symphonic poem, a genre that was propagated by Liszt, but several more old-fashioned programmatic overtures. In fact, Robert Schumann's influence is probably more obvious in Klughardt's works.
He intended to create a synthesis of these dissimilar tendencies. In his operas, he used Wagner's leitmotif technique, but he held to the older number opera instead of Wagner's through-composed music-drama. Some of his compositions show Klughardt as a child of his times, for example his choral work Die Grenzberichtigung (The correction of the frontier), Op. 25, which was composed when Germany won the Franco-Prussian war in 1870/71. Altogether, Klughardt must be considered as a rather conservative composer in spite of his interest in more modern tendencies. Today, most of his output is nearly forgotten. Only his Violoncello concerto, his Schilflieder (Reed Songs) and his Wind quintet are played from time to time.
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