Paul Tietjens

Paul Tietjens (May 22, 1877 – November 25, 1943) was an American composer whose Broadway credits include the landmark musical The Wizard of Oz. Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, he demonstrated exceptional musical ability from an early age, performing as a piano soloist with the St. Louis Symphony at fifteen. He subsequently pursued advanced studies in Europe under Hugo Kaun, Harold Bauer, and Theodor Leschetizky.

Early in his career, Tietjens set his sights on composing comic operas and operettas. In March 1901, shortly after the publication and commercial success of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he sought out Baum to propose a collaboration. Baum later recalled the encounter as an unexpected visit from a bespectacled young man at his door, though another account places their introduction through Ike Morgan, a Chicago artist who had contributed to Baum's American Fairy Tales (1901). The two agreed to work together, though their initial joint projects had no connection to Oz. Their first effort, a show titled The Octopus, or The Title Trust, was rejected by producers in both Chicago and New York. A second venture, a musical called King Midas, was never completed.

It was illustrator W. W. Denslow who proposed adapting The Wizard of Oz for the stage. Baum was initially reluctant, but Tietjens embraced the idea. Baum wrote the libretto, and Tietjens assembled a score that incorporated two songs carried over from The Octopus — "Love Is Love" and "The Traveler and the Pie." The production underwent extensive revisions, and Tietjens's score was ultimately supplemented with music by A. Baldwin Sloane and others. Denslow, who held co-copyright on the original book and designed the sets and costumes for the production, became embroiled in a royalty dispute that permanently ended his relationship with Baum. The show premiered in Chicago on June 16, 1902, and transferred to Broadway in January 1903. It ran through 1907 and subsequently toured widely, becoming one of the great popular hits of its era. The financial returns from the production made Tietjens independently wealthy at a relatively young age.

Tietjens did not replicate that level of success in his later theatrical work. He wrote The Sacred Serpent (1904), a three-act musical comedy, and composed incidental music for J. M. Barrie's play A Kiss for Cinderella. He also collaborated with Baum again on a project called The Pipes o' Pan, possibly a reworked version of King Midas, which was never produced and survives only in fragmentary form.

Beyond the popular stage, Tietjens composed symphonies, a concerto, sonatas, and chamber works. His opera The Tents of the Arabs is considered among his most significant serious compositions. In 1916, he was on the verge of mounting an opera production in Berlin when World War I intervened and the opening was cancelled. His compositions were confiscated by authorities, and he was accused of espionage and arrested in London. He was released only after Frederick W. Well, a former Berlin correspondent for the New York Times and the Daily Mail, interceded on his behalf. Tietjens returned to America, but his musical scores and manuscripts from that period were apparently never recovered.

In 1904, Tietjens married the poet Eunice Strong Hammond, who became known professionally as Eunice Tietjens. They had two daughters, Idea and Janet. The death of their elder daughter Idea at age four is thought to have contributed to the dissolution of the marriage; the couple separated in 1910 and divorced in 1914. Tietjens later married the artist Marjorie Richardson on December 25, 1927. He and Marjorie lived in New York City through 1942, when declining health prompted a return to St. Louis to live with his sister, Olga Dammert. He died there in 1943. His manuscripts are held at the Gaylord Music Library at Washington University in St. Louis, which named Tietjens Hall in his honor, and his diaries are part of the collection of the Newberry Library in Chicago.