Hans Keller (2) (1919–1985)

Hans Keller was born to a wealthy and culturally well-connected Jewish family in Vienna, Austria. As a boy, he studied the violin with Oskar Adler, who had been Arnold Schoenberg's boyhood friend and first teacher. In 1938, following Nazi Germany's Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, Keller was arrested and interrogated. On his release, he fled to England with the help of his brother-in-law Roy Franey. Following the outbreak of World War II, Keller was interned in 1940 as a so-called enemy alien, first at Huyton Camp in Liverpool and then on the Isle of Man, where he was held until the spring of 1941. This period was marked by his increasing interest in psychology and psychoanalysis, which he was to develop into a central tenet of his thinking as a music critic. His collaboration with the sociologist Margaret Philips, an expert on the psychology of small social groups, also formed an important part of his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In the years that followed, he became a prominent and influential figure in the UK's musical and music-critical life. Initially active as a violinist and violist, he soon found his niche as a highly prolific and provocative writer on music, as well as an influential teacher, lecturer, broadcaster and coach. Keller's passionate support of composers whose work he saw as under-valued or insufficiently understood made him a tireless advocate of Benjamin Britten and Arnold Schoenberg, as well as an illuminating analyst of figures such as Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Many of Keller's earliest articles appeared in the journals Music Review and Music Survey. He later co-edited the latter with founding editor Donald Mitchell. In his later years, much of Keller's advocacy was carried out from within the BBC, where he came to hold several senior positions and was a regular contributor to The Listener magazine. When William Glock was appointed controller of music at the BBC in 1959, one of his first acts was to recruit Keller as music talks producer. Following his retirement from the BBC in 1979, Keller entered very rich period during which he not only continued to broadcast regularly and to write prolifically but also returned to coaching, teaching, and lecturing. In 1961, Keller married German-born artist Milein Cosman, who illustrated several of his works with her drawings.