August Manns

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August Manns (1898)
August Manns (1895)
August Manns (43 years old)

Sir August Friedrich Manns (born March 12, 1825 in Stolzenburg near Stettin , Western Pomerania ; † March 1, 1907 in West Norwood , London ) was a British military bandmaster and conductor of Prussian origin who worked in London.

Life

Training and work in Prussia

When he was twelve years old, his parents sent him to his maternal uncle in Torgelow , where he attended the village school and learned to play the violin, clarinet , flute and horn under the guidance of the village musician named Trump . Trump taught him the basics of music and instrumental lessons from the textbooks of violinists such as Pierre Rode , Rodolphe Kreutzer and Pierre Baillot . He stayed in Torgelow until he graduated from school at the age of 14. After confirmation , he moved in with his parents, who were already living in Gelguhnen in Warmia .

The owners of the Gelguhnen glassworks , where his father worked as a glassmaker and blower , were also merchants in Elbing in 1838 and enabled him to continue his music education with the town musician of Elbing called Urban. In the last year of his training August Manns played first violin in the string orchestra and first clarinet in Urban's wind orchestra and received additional lessons in harmony and composition .

He volunteered in a military band in Gdansk, where he played the horn and clarinet. At the same time he played the violin in the theater, at concerts and for ballet. The German Revolution caused him to move from Posen to Berlin in 1848 , where he played the first violin in Josef Gung'l's orchestra . He then appeared in the years 1849-1851 as a conductor and solo violinist in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin. When the Kroll Opera was completely destroyed by a fire in February 1851, Colonel Albrecht von Roon quickly recruited him as Kapellmeister of the regiment to Königsberg in East Prussia . August Manns rebuilt the orchestra, created new arrangements of classical works for the wind orchestra and founded a string orchestra. Until the spring of 1854 he headed the men's choir "Polyhymnia" in Cologne.

Career as a musician in England

Mann's Caricature (1888)

In spring 1854 he left Prussia and at the beginning of May was hired by compatriot Henry Schallehn as clarinetist and deputy conductor for the newly founded harmony orchestra in London's Crystal Palace . After a dispute over the author's rights and the fee for his composition on the occasion of the Crimean War "The Alliance quadrille " he was dismissed from Schallehn and earned his living in Royal Leamington and the Edinburgh Opera Orchestra in the winter of 1854/55 . In the summer season of 1855 he conducted garden concerts in Amsterdam .

From mid-October 1855 he was conductor at the Crystal Palace, whose secretary was George Grove , continuously built the orchestra to full symphonic strength, introduced the German line-up and directed it for more than 45 years as artistic director . Under his direction and organization, a symphony orchestra with 90 permanent musicians, a rehearsal schedule and a regular series of concerts was created. In addition, August Manns was chief conductor of the Glasgow Choral Union Orchestra from 1879 to 1887 and led the Handel Festival in London from 1883 to 1900, succeeding Michele Costa .

He performed a wide range of classical music in London, including many works by young British composers as well as works by German masters previously unknown in England. Popular British composers included Arthur Sullivan , Charles Villiers Stanford , Hubert Parry , Hamish MacCunn , Edward Elgar , Edward German , George Macfarren and William Sterndale Bennett . He also performed works by composers from continental Europe such as Johannes Brahms , Joachim Raff , Franz Schubert , Hector Berlioz , Pjotr ​​Iljitsch Tschaikowski and Antonín Dvořák and won international soloists such as Joseph Joachim , Alfredo Piatti , Henri Vieuxtemps and Charles Hallé . In 1886 the oratorio singer Liza Lehmann , daughter of the Altona painter Rudolf Lehmann , performed in the Crystal Palace .

In 1898 the Musical Times counted that August Manns had performed the works of more than 300 composers in 12,000 concerts. The concert season lasted from October to April with concerts on Saturday afternoons from 1855 to 1901. The concerts in the Crystal Palast were among the most important concert institutions in the world.

reception

On June 29, 1888, at the instigation of Thomas Alva Edison , phonograph cylinders with the oratorio Israel in Egypt were recorded at one of the Handel concerts . Of these, three wax rollers still exist today . These are the oldest recorded music recorded in Britain to date.

Honors

Queen Victoria is said to have given him a Stradivarius violin . August's was on 21 May 1894 a British citizen, on 18 December 1903 as a Knight Bachelor ennobled . In May 1903 he was made an honorary doctor (Doctor of Music) from the University of Oxford .

Compositions

  • The Alliance quadrille. 1854
  • Little birdie. Cradle song. 1880
  • German bards. Waltz. 1882

literature

Web links

Commons : August Manns  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry Davey:  Manns, August . In: Sidney Lee (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . Suppl. 2, Volume 2:  Faed - Muybridge. MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London 1912, pp 561 - 562 (English).
  2. ^ A b Henry Saxe Wyndham: August Manns and the Saturday Concerts . Walter Scott Publishing, London 1909, p. 6–10 (English, cambridge.org [PDF; accessed November 28, 2018]).
  3. ↑ Manns, [sir] August . In: Hugo Riemann (Ed.): Musik-Lexikon . 8th, completely revised edition. Max Hesses Verlag, Berlin / Leipzig 1916, p. 673 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ a b Sir August Manns. The Norwood Society, accessed November 28, 2018 .
  5. ^ August Manns and the Crystal Palace Saturday Concerts. musiCB3 blog, August 3, 2012, accessed November 13, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Mr. August Manns . In: The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular . Volume 39, number 661, March 1, 1898, pp. 153-159, information from p. 157, doi: 10.2307 / 3367600 .
  7. ↑ Crystal Palace Concerts . In: Hugo Riemann (Ed.): Musik-Lexikon . 8th, completely revised edition. Max Hesses Verlag, Berlin / Leipzig 1916, p. 591 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  8. ↑ June 29, 1888 - 4000 voices singing Handel at the Crystal Palace, London (Remastered) on YouTube
  9. ↑ The recordings from 1888 as MP3 files ( Memento from February 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  10. ↑ Oskar-Wilhelm Bachor: Queen Victoria gave him a Stradivarius… In: The Ostpreußenblatt . March 19, 1960, p. 11 ( preussische-allgemeine.de [PDF; accessed on November 16, 2018]).
  11. ↑ Knights and Dames: MA – MIF at Leigh Rayment's Peerage
  12. ↑ Little Birdie (Manns, August). IMSLP , accessed January 21, 2019 .
  13. ↑ German Bards, Waltz. Répertoire International des Sources Musicales , October 8, 1882, accessed on August 15, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Manns, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Manns, Sir August Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British military bandmaster and conductor of Prussian origin
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH Stolzenburg near Stettin, Western Pomerania
DATE OF DEATH March 1, 1907
Place of death West Norwood , London