Adolph Bernhard Marx

Adolph Bernhard Marx

Adolph Bernhard Marx (born May 15, 1795 in Halle (Saale) , † May 17, 1866 in Berlin ) was a German musicologist , music theorist and composer .

Life

Adolph Bernhard Marx, who had studied law, took music lessons in his hometown with Daniel Gottlob Türk and then in Berlin with Carl Friedrich Zelter . In 1827 he received his doctorate from the University of Marburg Dr. phil. and in 1830 became music professor at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin and in 1832 university music director .

In 1844 he was next to Franz Commer , the custodian of the music department of the Royal Library, and Otto Lange , music critic of the Vossische Zeitung , a founding member of the Berliner Tonkünstlerverein, the first professional association of musicians on German soil. In 1850, along with Julius Stern and Theodor Kullak, he was one of the founders of the Stern Conservatory , where he worked as a composition teacher until 1856. One of his students was Nikolai Ivanovich Zaremba .

Marx earned his reputation primarily as a musicological author, as the author of a Beethoven biography, the book Gluck and the opera, and as an editor of the works of Handel and Bach . In 1824 he founded the Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung , which he published until 1830. As early as 1829 he supported the performance of the St. Matthew Passion by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy with the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin and vehemently advocated Beethoven's late work, which at the time was considered confused and unplayable.

Adolph Bernhard Marx died in Berlin in 1866 just two days after his 71st birthday and was buried in the Old St. Matthew Cemetery in Schöneberg . In the course of the leveling of the cemetery carried out by the National Socialists in 1938/1939, his remains were reburied in a collective grave in the south-west cemetery in Stahnsdorf near Berlin.

family

Marx married Marie Therese Cohn (* 1820 in Dessau) in Dessau in 1838 , a daughter of the local merchant Salomon Cohn from his marriage to Fanny Cohn, nee. Nice. She was a student of Friedrich Schneider and later also emerged as an author. Adolph Bernhard and Therese Marx had a son and three daughters.

Musical works

His own compositions had little success. Mention should be made of the oratorio John the Baptist and the oratorio Mose , which was performed for the first time on December 2, 1841 in Breslau under the direction of Johann Theodor Mosewius . On November 14th, 2009 the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin performed again in the Gethsemanekirche Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg and on November 9th, 2019 with the Gewandhauschor under Gregor Meyer in Leipzig. Also worth mentioning are a cantata , the Singspiel Jery ​​und Bätely based on a text by Goethe , an organ chorale book as well as songs, choirs and piano works.

Fonts

• The art of singing, theoretical and practical. Schlesinger, Berlin 1826, ( digitized version ).
• About the validity of Handel's solo chants for our time. An addendum to the art of singing. Schlesinger, Berlin 1828, ( digitized version ).
• About painting in music art. A May greeting to the art philosophers. Finck, Berlin 1828, ( digitized version ).
• Johann Sebastian Bach : Great Passion Music based on the Gospel of Matthaei. (BWV 244), complete piano reduction by Adolph Bernhard Marx. Schlesinger, Berlin 1830, 190 died S. qu-fol. ( Digitized version , City Library (Lübeck) ).
• The old music theory in conflict with our time. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1841, ( (digitized) ).
• Teaching of musical composition. 4 volumes. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1837–1847.
• General music theory. A resource book for teachers and students in any branch of musical instruction. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1839, ( digitized version ).
• The music of the nineteenth century and its care. Method of music. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1855, ( digitized version ).
• Ludwig van Beethoven. Life and work. 2 volumes. Janke, Berlin 1859, ( digitized volume 1 ; digitized volume 2 ; reprint: 2 volumes in 1 volume. Olms, Olms, Hildesheim 1979, ISBN 3-487-06720-X ).
• Instructions for the performance of Beethoven's piano works. Janke, Berlin 1863, ( digitized version ).
• Gluck and the opera. 2 volumes. Janke, Berlin 1863, ( digitized volume 1 ; digitized volume 2 ; reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 1980, ISBN 3-487-07035-9 ).
• Memories. Out of my life. 2 volumes. Janke, Berlin 1865, ( digitized volume 1 ; digitized volume 2 ).
• The ideal and the present. Costenoble, Jena 1867, ( digitized ).

literature

• Johann Theodor Mosewius : About the oratorio Moses by AB Marx. Lecture in the Patriotic Society in Breslau, held on April 26th, 1842. In: Allgemeine Musikische Zeitung . Vol. 44, No. 49, 1842, Col. 953-959 ; No. 49, 1842, col. 972-979 ; No. 50, 1842, col. 997-1004 ; No. 51, 1842, Col. 1027-1032 , (Also as a special print: Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1843).
• Robert Eitner :  Marx, Adolph Bernhard . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1884, pp. 533-539.
• Leopold Hirschberg : The composer Adolph Bernhard Marx. In: Edited volumes of the international music society. Vol. 10, No. 1, 1908, ISSN  1612-0124 , pp. 1-72, JSTOR 929256 .
• Theo Stenge : Lexicon of Jews in Music. With a title index of Jewish works (= publications of the institute of the NSDAP for researching the Jewish question. 2, ZDB -ID 279909-1 ). Hahnefeld, Berlin 1940.
• Arnfried Edler :  Marx, Adolph Bernhard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 321-323 ( digitized version ).
• Christina Siegfried: The Work of Adolf Bernhard Marx '. Aspects of the musical cultural development of Berlin in the first half of the 19th century. Dissertation. Potsdam 1992.
• Elisabeth Eleonore Bauer: How Beethoven got on the pedestal. The creation of a musical myth. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 1992, ISBN 3-476-00849-5 (At the same time: Berlin, Free University, dissertation, 1989, under the title: AB Marx and Beethoven in the Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung (1824-1830). ).
• Christina Siegfried: “The most interesting and problematic of his friends” - Adolf Bernhard Marx (1795–1866). In: Bernd Heyder, Christoph Spering (Ed.): Focus on Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Dohr, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-925366-36-9 , pp. 35-44.
• Michael Zywietz : Adolf Bernhard Marx and the oratorio in Berlin (= writings on musicology from Münster. 9). Verlag der Musikalienhandlung Wagner, Eisenach 1996, ISBN 3-88979-074-7 .
• Eva Weissweiler : Eliminated! The Lexicon of the Jews in Music and its Murderous Consequences. Dittrich, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-920862-25-2 .
• Peter Sühring : Counterpoint childhood in music history. Adolf Bernhard Marx's historical-philosophical thesis of the necessary end of counterpoint according to Bach. In: Ulrich Tadday (Hrsg.): Philosophy of counterpoint (= music concepts . New episode, special volume 2010). Edition Text + Critique, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-86916-088-7 , pp. 48–59.
• Klaus Martin Kopitz , Eva Katharina Klein, Thomas Synofzik (eds.): Robert and Clara Schumann's correspondence with correspondents in Berlin from 1832 to 1883 (=  Schumann letter edition. Series 2: Correspondence with friends and fellow artists. Vol. 17). Dohr, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-86846-028-5 , pp. 405-435.

Web links

Wikisource: Adolph Bernhard Marx  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Adolph Bernhard Marx in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Adolph Bernhard Marx  in the German Digital Library
• Sheet music and audio files by Adolph Bernhard Marx in the International Music Score Library Project
• Digitized works by Marx ( Memento of November 10, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) SICD of the Universities of Strasbourg

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende: Lexicon of Berlin tombs . Haude & Spener, Berlin 2006. pp. 305, 473.
2. ^ Johann Theodor Mosewius: The Breslauische Sing-Akademie in the first five and twenty years of its existence. Breslau 1850, p. 38.