Robert Kahn (composer)

Robert Kahn (21 July 1865 – 29 May 1951) was a German composer, pianist, and music teacher. Life Kahn was born in Mannheim, the second son of and Emma Eberstadt. One of his seven siblings was the banker Otto Kahn, whose son Roger Wolfe Kahn was a jazz musician, composer and aviator. Khan’s parents belonged to a German-Jewish family of bankers and merchants. In 1882, Kahn entered the Königlichen Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, where he studied for the next three years. Between 1885 and 1886, he continued his musical education under Josef Rheinberger in Munich. On a visit to Vienna the following year, Kahn met and befriended composer Johannes Brahms, who offered to make Kahn his pupil. Although Kahn declined the invitation, Brahms’s music exerted a profound influence on his compositional style throughout his career. After finishing his military service, Kahn worked as a freelance composer in Berlin until 1890. For the next three years he was employed as a rehearsal pianist at the Stadttheater in Leipzig. Having been appointed lecturer in composition at his alma mater in 1894, Kahn trained some of the best-known musicians of the 20th century. His students include the pianists Arthur R