Hanns Jelinek

Hanns Jelinek (5 December 1901 – 27 January 1969) was an Austrian composer of Czech descent who is also known under the pseudonyms Hanns Elin, H. J. Hirsch, Jakob Fidelbogen.

Jelinek was born and died in Vienna.

His father was a machine operator (died 1917).

At the age of 6 he began violin lessons and at age 7, began learning the piano.

In 1918 he became a member of the newly founded Communist Party of Austria.

In 1918–19 Jelinek studied briefly with Arnold Schoenberg in the composition seminar which Schoenberg gave at Eugenie Schwarzwald's School in Vienna (with a focus on counterpoint and harmony), and privately with Alban Berg.

These two influenced him to write many works in the twelve-tone technique.

In 1920 he started the study with Franz Schmidt at the Vienna Academy of Music.

However, in 1922 he broke off his studies for financial reasons, and thereafter studied music on his own.

In order to support himself as a self-employed composer in Vienna, he appeared as a pianist in bars and cinemas and composed popular music under the pseudonym Hanns Elin.

Since 1934 (starting with his Second String Quartet op. 13) he used the twelve-tone technique in all of the works to which he gave an opus number.

In 1956 in his Three Blue Sketches op. 25 he combined dodecaphony with jazz.

Among his pupils were: Petr Kotík, Gunnar Sonstevold, Maj Sønstevold, Igor Štuhec, Erich Urbanner, Junsang Bahk, Anne-Marie Ørbeck, Gregory Rose, Dawid Engela and Heinz Karl Gruber.

Khosrow Sinai, future Iranian filmmaker, and Alireza Mashayekhi, one of the most important representatives of new music in Persia (Iran), studied under Jelinek for a while.

From 1958 on, he was a lecturer and, after 1965, a professor at the Vienna Academy of Music.

In 1966, he was awarded the Grand Austrian State Prize.