Carl Guhr

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Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand Guhr , also Karl Guhr (born October 27, 1787 in Militsch , Silesia ; † July 23, 1848 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German violinist, composer and, from 1821 until his untimely death, theater conductor and music entrepreneur in the Free City Frankfurt .

family

He came from a family of musicians. His father was Carl Christoph Guhr, a cantor at the Protestant Gnadenkirche in Militsch (now Polish Milicz ), about 55 kilometers north of Wroclaw with about 3,300 predominantly Protestant inhabitants at the time. This church was one of the six Silesian grace churches that the Austrian Emperor had to grant to the Silesian Lutherans in 1709. In 1797/98 Count Joachim Carl von Maltzan , who for many years was Frederick the Great's envoy to the courts of Vienna , London and Petersburg , had a new palace built by Carl Gottfried Geißler in Militsch in the classical style. Until 1810, the count maintained a small palace chapel with permanently paid musicians, including his father Carl Christoph Guhr. From this band, the first Silesian Concert Society developed in 1811, and was directed by his younger brother Friedrich Heinrich Florian Guhr (born April 17, 1791–1841).

education

Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand Guhr received his basic musical training from his father Carl Christoph Guhr, who then enabled him to be accepted as a violinist in the court orchestra of Count von Maltzan. He received further training from the composers and church musicians Joseph Ignaz Schnabel (1767–1831) and later Friedrich Wilhelm Berner (1780–1827) in nearby Breslau. Even Georg Joseph Vogler , also known as Abbé Vogler or Abt Vogler (1749-1814), was his teacher later.

Career

Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand Guhr left his Silesian homeland. One reason may have been the Napoleonic Wars , which devastated this area again and made Militsch poor. The feudal dependence of the city on Count Maltzan was also lifted.

Wurzburg

From 1807 Guhr was a chamber musician for violin in the Grand Duchy of Würzburg , which had belonged to the Confederation of the Rhine since 1806 under his Habsburg Grand Duke Ferdinand , the former Grand Duke of Tuscany .

Nuremberg

To the delight of the people of Nuremberg, Joseph Reuter took over the management of the theater and in 1808 transferred the position of music director to Guhr. In this city, which had belonged to the new Kingdom of Bavaria since 1806 , Guhr quickly achieved professional and private success. He appeared several times as a celebrated cellist and composed several smaller operas. Here he met the 18-year-old singer Wilhelmine Epp (1792–1845) and married her.

Wiesbaden

In 1812/13 he became musical director of the traveling drama and opera troupe of the Duchy of Nassau in Wiesbaden , which had joined the Rhine Confederation under Duke Friedrich August in 1806. After the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig from October 16 to 19, 1813, the Napoleonic power system of the Rhine Confederation disintegrated. The Duchy of Nassau left the Confederation of the Rhine and changed sides just in time.

In Wiesbaden, Guhr met the exiled Elector Wilhelm I of Hessen-Kassel . Wilhelm I was still considered one of the richest German princes of his time, and with the help of the Frankfurt banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild , he managed to save this fortune even after the Napoleonic era.

kassel

Hoftheater Kassel

On October 26, 1813, King Jérôme fled Kassel , the capital of the Kingdom of Westphalia , which he ruled . On November 21, 1813, after seven years of exile, the rightful sovereign, Elector Wilhelm I, returned to his capital, Kassel. At the beginning of 1814 the electoral court theater in Kassel was reopened and Guhr was offered the post of music director and director of the electoral theater, which he also accepted. Soon the theater and the opera were among the best theaters in Germany at that time. His wife Wilhelmine Epp shone in the opera alongside other singers. At the end of 1814, Guhr resigned from the theater and concentrated on opera. Here he wrote his own works and performed them. The first work was the music for the opera "Feodore and Deodata" by Kotzebue . The second work consisted almost entirely of choirs, dances and romances. The third work was "The Vestal Virgin". In 1819 he composed the opera "König Siegmar". Soon there were disputes with the Kassel theater director, as attempts were made to curtail the costly opera business in favor of spoken theater. Elector Wilhelm I. died on February 27, 1821.

Frankfurt am Main

Frankfurt City Theater

In the winter of 1821 Guhr finally moved to the municipal theater in Frankfurt and was appointed Kapellmeister of the municipal orchestra . Here he was initially employed for six years, soon afterwards for 22 years.

Louis Spohr was Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand Guhr's predecessor as Kapellmeister in Frankfurt am Main from winter 1817 to September 1819. Along with Paganini, Spohr was considered the most famous violin virtuoso of his time and at that time a leading composer of the Romantic era. Spohr left this position to undertake a famous major concert tour and extensive art tours to Belgium and Paris . Bizarrely, Louis Spohr was appointed General Music Director as successor to Guhr in Kassel in 1822, now under the rule of Elector Wilhelm II .

Guhr met and heard Niccolò Paganini in Frankfurt . He admired him very much and followed the virtuoso to various cities for his concerts. He is also said to have played in a string quartet with the Italian for a while . Guhr, too, was a brilliant musician and, especially as an opera conductor, of unusual skill. So he owned u. a. an extraordinary ability to read scores, a keen musical ear, and a seldom well developed memory. Only in this way was it possible for him to write down Paganini's still unprinted compositions just by hearing and to depict and pass on Paganini's abundance of technical characteristics. He published these thoughts in his highly acclaimed work “About Paganini's Art of Playing the Violin” in 1829. In addition, Guhr had numerous contacts with well-known musical personalities of his time, so u. a. to Richard Wagner , Hector Berlioz (who speaks commendably about him in his “Mémoires”) and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , and has conducted many works by Beethoven . His management style seems to have been legendary from an early age (“sure, strict and despotic conductor” (R. Wagner)), and he was also well known as a violin and piano virtuoso at the time. He composed a. a. Today forgotten operas, instrumental works and church music as well as (contrapuntally well-elaborated) masses and symphonies.

He also ended his employment relationship and became an independent music entrepreneur. He also took on the economic risks of the opera and concert performances in Frankfurt am Main. Together with Carl Malß and Leonhard Meck , Guhr had been one of the tenants of the Frankfurt National Theater since 1842 . In addition, he also worked as a music dealer. In his time he was known as a collector of Bach autographs. Even during his time in Nuremberg, he took the opportunity to purchase the collection.

Bockenheim

Guhr's house in Bockenheim

Guhr lived long before the gates of Frankfurt in the town of Bockenheim, which at that time belonged to Kurhessen . Here he lived with his wife until his death in 1848 on Frankfurter Straße (today Leipziger Straße No. 9) in the hexagonal house built in 1826 by the architect and later mayor Philipp Brandt. This still existing house is known today, after a later owner, as Delkeskampsches Haus .

Guhr died in the revolutionary year of 1848 . He was buried in the old Bockenheim cemetery on Solmsstrasse. Only one photo of his gravestone from 1905 is preserved today. His grave was opened in 1909 on the occasion of construction work to widen Solmsstrasse. The baton found in the process was given to the city's historical museum. In 1953, a commemorative plaque created by August Bischoff on behalf of the city of Frankfurt am Main for the Bockenheim artists Friedrich Wilhelm Delkeskamp , Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand Guhr and Anton Felix Schindler buried here was installed in the old Bockenheim cemetery. Today it is located on the grounds of the Greek Orthodox parish "Prophet Elias" by the old cemetery wall.

Memorial plaque for the graves of Guhr, Schindler and Delkeskamp on the old cemetery grounds in Bockenheim.

Works (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frankfurter Stadttheater directed by entrepreneurs in: Emil von Oven : The first urban theater in Frankfurt am Main , Frankfurt am Main 1872, p. 56 ffhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D1gtWAAAAcAAJ~IA%3D~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3DPA56~ double-sided%3D~LT%3DS.%2056%26%23x202f%3Bff.~PUR% 3D .
personal data
SURNAME Guhr, Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guhr, Carl Wilhelm Ferdinand (full name); Guhr, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German violinist, composer, theater bandmaster and music entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1787
PLACE OF BIRTH Militsch , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1848
Place of death Frankfurt am Main