August Conradi

August (Eduard Moritz) Conradi (born June 27, 1821 in Berlin ; † May 26, 1873 there ) was a German composer , organist and conductor.

Life

From 1840 at the latest, Conradi studied at the Berlin Königl. Academy with August Wilhelm Bach composition, organ and piano and with Carl Friedrich Rungenhagen figured bass and counterpoint. Between 1840 and 1842 he received several awards for his academic achievements. In 1843 he took up the position of organist at the church of the Berlin Invalidenhaus .

In the following years he worked sporadically with Franz Liszt , which began in 1844 with Conradi's first stay in Weimar . Perhaps the two had already met in 1841/42 when Liszt was celebrating triumphs in Berlin. At that time Conradi had more experience in instrumentation, which is why Liszt worked with him on the scores of his first orchestral works. This collaboration lasted with interruptions until 1849. In 1847 Liszt Conradis arranged the Zigeunerpolka for piano . When Conradi began his career as a theater conductor at the Stettiner Stadttheater in 1849, after a brief activity as Kapellmeister at the Thalia Theater, a Berlin lover's theater , Joachim Raff took his place with Liszt.

The year 1849 also saw the first collaboration with the text author David Kalisch , a master of the Berlin posse , at the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater in Berlin. It marks Conradi's final and exclusive turn to the light muse and the beginning of a fruitful and successful career as a stage composer. The other stations were the Königsstädtisches Theater in Berlin (February 1851), the Düsseldorf Opera House (July 1851), Kroll's Etablissement in Berlin (later the Kroll Opera ) (1852) and the Cologne City Theater (1852/53). Afterwards Conradi finally returned to Berlin, initially back to Kroll, before he first worked as Kapellmeister for a long time at the Wallner Theater in 1855 . In 1864 he finally succeeded Joseph Nesvadba, who had been appointed to Darmstadt, as Kapellmeister at the Victoria Theater, which opened in 1859 .

Until the end of his life, Conradi, respected both as a musician and as a person, was restlessly active. In addition to his success as a stage composer, it was above all his dances , marches , potpourris and songs for the bourgeois Berlin salons, with which he was able to acquire a considerable fortune, which after the death of his widow, according to the instructions, went to the Berlin Asylum Association .

Works

After a promising start as a composer of so-called "serious music" ( symphonies , chamber music ), he wrote works for the stage, primarily comic operas , antics , burlesques , taunts and magical fairy tales , as well as songs and couplets , e.g. T. became popular. His numerous instrumental works include the marches, polkas and potpourris mentioned, as well as fantasies about contemporary operatic themes.

He was the leading composer of the Berliner Lokalposse and worked successfully with well-known librettists such as Adolph L'Arronge , OF Berg , Carl Görlitz , Eduard Jacobson , David Kalisch and Heinrich Wilken . Their antics, taunts, burlesques, etc. were primarily tailored to the spirit of the Prussian metropolis. Topics were all aspects of the political and social environment that were critically or parodistically examined. They reflected to the same extent the conditions of the everyday life of the simple population as the current social conditions of the time, which were also examined critically. The demand for such pieces was great and it was not uncommon when they saw over 200 performances.

Conradi was a hardworking, fruitful composer, even if his stage music sometimes consisted of only a few strophic vocal numbers with short preludes and interludes. Thanks to their popularity, some were still sung in the 20th century, for example “Herzliebchen mein unterm Rebendach” from the popular piece “Berlin, how it weeps and laughs” (1858) by OF Berg and David Kalisch.

literature

• Georg Richard Kruse , August Conradi (died May 26, 1873). A memorial sheet , in: Die Musik , vol. 12, 4th quarter (= volume 48), (1912/13), pp. 3–13 ( digitized version )
• Heinz Becker:  Conradi, August Eduard Moritz. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1957, ISBN 3-428-00184-2 , p. 339 ( digitized version ).
• Dieter Siebenkäs: Conradi, August (Eduard Moritz) in: The music in history and present (MGG) , 2nd edition, personal part, vol. 4, Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel 2000 (col. 1482–1484)
• Erika Wischer: The Wallner Theater under the direction of Franz Wallner (1855-1868) , Phil. Diss. Berlin 1966, Mn. 1967

Catalog of works:

• F. Stieger: Opernlex. Part II: Composers Vol. 1, Tutzing 1977 (stage works)
• E. Hardeck: August Conradi , in: Rheinische Musicians , 4th episode, Cologne 1966 (other works).

Web links

• Works by and about August Conradi in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about August Conradi  in the German Digital Library