Carl Andreas Göpfert

Carl Andreas Göpfert (born January 16, 1768 in Rimpar near Würzburg, † April 11, 1818 in Meiningen ) was a German composer and musician . He is known as Meininger Mozart because his work is as varied as that of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart . Göpfert's main instrument was the clarinet , but he also played the piano and organ .

Life

Göpfert was born the son of an official surgeon . Initially instructed in singing, piano and organ by his school teacher, he took lessons from the Würzburg clarinet virtuoso Philipp Meißner from 1780, according to his preference for the clarinet, from whom he was also likely to have received his first instruction in composition.

Already at the age of 20 Göpfert received a permanent salary as first clarinetist in the Meiningen court orchestra of Duke George I and was also entrusted with the direction of the harmony music of the military corps. There he introduced the music of Mozart and Haydn - from 1793 as court music director - and also developed his own creative compositional work, but this achievement was hardly encouraged by those around him during his lifetime, although his virtuosity as a musician as well as his compositions were appreciated .

In Bad Liebenstein , the former summer residence of the Dukes of Saxony-Meiningen, Göpfert has been in charge of harmony music since the beginning of the permanent bathing business by Georg I in 1798. H. the accompaniment at balls, redoubts and the table.

Although concert life in the Age of Enlightenment seemed to be in bloom, Göpfert was a serf of the Duke and was treated as a largely unlawful servant and not as a free artist. Göpfert was increasingly aware of the narrowness of this small residence, he tried to further educate himself musically, but failed because of the narrow-mindedness of his employer, who - multiple applications and requests are archived - repeatedly refused a study trip to Vienna to see Mozart, whom Göpfert admired.

Nevertheless, Göpfert was artistically productive and composed a large number of concerts and harmony music for the court in Meiningen and the residence in Bad Liebenstein.

In 1818, Carl Andreas Göpfert died of total exhaustion, impoverished and artistically desperate, but honored as a "dear, honest person" in Meiningen. The "Leipziger Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung" praised his work with appreciative words and at the same time lamented his personal fate in an obituary. Göpfert's work went unnoticed for a long time and was therefore largely lost.

Recently, individual works have been performed again, especially by the clarinetist Dieter Klöcker and the Jena Philharmonic with a first recording of three clarinet concerts.

Works

During Andreas Göpfert's lifetime, 40 compositions were published with opus numbers, including 5 clarinet concertos (op.1 in B flat major, op.14 in E flat major, op.20 in B flat major, op.27 in B flat major, op.35 in E flat major) , a concert in F major for horn and orchestra op.21, two duos concertants for clarinet and bassoon op.19, six duos faciles for two clarinets op.30, 24 duos faciles for 2 horns op.31.

Three symphonies, an oboe concerto, a trumpet concerto, a double concerto for 2 bassoons, a concertante for clarinet, bassoon and orchestra, piano works, songs, pieces for guitar, as well as a wealth of beautiful harmony music have remained in the manuscript .

Arrangements for harmony music by Göpfert from the early 19th century, all of which were probably intended for use in the bathing area in Liebenstein, have survived. a. of works by Johann Rudolf Zumsteeg , Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Other compositions:

• Quartet No 2. in B flat major for clarinet, violin, viola and violoncello.
• Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in E flat major op.14
• Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in B flat major, op.20
• Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in E flat major op.35

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Music in the past and present, 2nd edition of the Musiklexikon, Vol. 7, 2002.
2. ↑ , blurb by Bernhard Päuler on the sheet music for the clarinet quartet No.2  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. the Amadeus Foundation . Retrieved March 4, 2014.  
3. ↑ "Herzogli.Sachsen-Meiningen'scher Cammermusikus, excellent virtuoso on the clarinet and respectable composer" (Universal-Lexicon der Tonkunst of 1836)
4. ↑ Christian Storch, "Haydn in the Bath: Carl Andreas Göpfert's adaptations of Joseph Haydn's Die Schöpfung für die Badegesellschaft in Liebenstein" Lecture 2009 ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked . Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at the Carl Maria von Weber University of Music in Dresden. 
5. ↑ “Since, with his meek character, he could not be urgent at all, he had all the less opportunity to make himself known abroad as a virtuoso, in which case his playing would certainly have met with the same approval everywhere as his very popular compositions would. ” (Universal Lexicon of Music from 1836).
6. ↑ asas
7. ↑ Review of the first recording of three clarinet concertos by Dieter Klöcker at JPC, JPC website

literature

• Johan van Kalker (edited by Volkmar von Pechstaedt): Carl Andreas Göpfert, Heinrich Ofen and Heinrich Neumann: three clarinetists at the beginning of the 19th century , Göttingen: Hainholz 2012

Web links

• Biography and catalog raisonné on the Klassika website . Retrieved March 4, 2014.
• Biography on the website of the Amadeus Foundation . Retrieved March 4, 2014.