German composer, conductor and teacher.

Sekles studied composition, orchestration, and piano with Iwan Knorr, Engelbert Humperdinck, and Lazzaro Uzielli at the Hoch Conservatory, Frankfurt/aM, then was appointed in 1896 as a teacher of music theory, later composition and instrumentation at the same institution, and from 1923 served as its director. He was removed from this position in 1933 and spent his final year in a Jewish old people's home.

Controversially, Sekles was the first in Germany to introduce jazz into any conservatory curriculum, under the direction of Mátyás Seiber.

Sekles and Schenker

There appears to have been no direct contact between the two men, nor is there any surviving correspondence. Sekles figures in Schenker's diaries in 1925 and 1927‒28, apparently in connection with Moriz Violin's wish for an appointment at the Hoch Conservatory. The exchanges involved also Wilhelm Altmann and Felix-Eberhard von Cube.

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