Paul Tietjens

Paul Tietjens was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. At age 14 he appeared as a piano soloist with the St. Louis Symphony. He later studied in Europe with Hugo Kaun, Harold Bauer, and Theodor Leschetizky.

Early in his career, Tietjens's ambition was to establish himself as a successful composer of comic operas and operettas. He approached L. Frank Baum in March 1901, not long after the publication and success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. According to Baum's later recollection,

"The thought of making my fairy tale into a play had never even occurred to me when, one evening, my doorbell rang and I found a spectacled young man standing on the mat."

It was illustrator W. W. Denslow who suggested a Wizard of Oz stage adaptation. Though Baum was at first cool to the idea, Tietjens was enthusiastic. Baum prepared a libretto, and the project went forward. The show went through many script revisions and changes; Tietjens's score was supplemented with music composed by A. Baldwin Sloane and others. 

Tietjens, however, never equaled that early popular success in subsequent shows. In addition to his works for popular theater, Tietjens composed symphonies, a concerto, sonatas, and chamber works. His most significant serious work is arguably his opera The Tents of the Arabs.

Tietjens spent much of his life in Europe. When his health failed in 1942, he returned to St. Louis to live with his sister, and died there the following year.