Iwan Knorr

Iwan Otto Armand Knorr (3 January 1853 – 22 January 1916) was a German composer and music teacher. Life A native of Gniew, Knorr was taken to southern Russia at the age of four, where he was surrounded by Russian folk music. His mother taught him piano. The family settled in Leipzig in 1868, where Knorr attended the Leipzig Conservatory, studying with Ignaz Moscheles, Ernst Friedrich Richter and Carl Reinecke. In 1874, he became a teacher and in 1878 director of music theory instruction at the Imperial Kharkiv Conservatory, in what is now Ukraine. In 1883, he settled in Frankfurt, where he joined the faculty of the Hoch Conservatory. In 1908, he became director of the school. As a teacher he exerted great influence. Among his pupils were Bernhard Sekles, Ernest Bloch, Vladimir Sokalskyi, Ernst Toch and Hans Pfitzner, as well as the English-speaking composers such as William Beatton Moonie and friends that become known as the Frankfurt Group: Balfour Gardiner, Percy Grainger, Norman O’Neill, Roger Quilter and Cyril Scott. His compositions include three operas, a symphony, a piano quartet and several sets of variations and suites, as well as pedagogical works of counterpoint and fugu