Catharina Josepha Pratten

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Catharina Josepha Pratten (known as Madame Sidney Pratten , * 1821 in Mülheim am Rhein , † October 10, 1895 in London ) was a German guitarist , composer and guitar teacher.

Life

Catharina Josepha was born in 1821 as the daughter of the German guitarist Ferdinand Pelzer . Like her younger sister Giulia, she grew up in England and received guitar lessons from her father. She became known as a child prodigy on the guitar and gave concerts with Giulio Regondi as a child .

After a short stay in Exeter , in 1854 she married the flautist Robert Sidney Pratten (1824–1868), who had also been known since childhood and came from a renowned family of musicians , with whom she had three sons. This branch of the Pratten family probably used the middle name Sidney to differentiate itself from other branches of the family. After the marriage, Catharina appeared publicly under the name Madame Sidney Pratten .

Under this name she was able to develop a reputation as an excellent guitar teacher. The fact that she taught the princesses Louise and Beatrice at the royal court, among others, may have contributed to this . Later (from 1888) the guitarist and composer Ernest Shand was one of her students. In this context, Yates describes her as "the most respected guitarist of her time".

In her textbooks, Pratten increasingly showed simple and easy-to-learn ways to play the guitar. Turnbull sees this as a reflection of the decline of the guitar in the course of the nineteenth century: If her Guitar Tutor still contained pieces by Fernando Sor and Mauro Giuliani , the subsequent Learning the Guitar Simplified was already mixed with "pleasant and easy pieces" and on every other page a picture of the fingerboard. The Colored Diagrams published in 1891 finally used simple color coding and the Instructions for the Guitar Tuned in E-Major were specifically dedicated to those "who have little time to practice or who learn to play the guitar late in life".

After her death, her sister Giulia managed the inheritance and also continued the guitar school in London.

plant

Textbooks

  • Instructions for the guitar
  • The Guitar Tutor , 2 volumes, London 1881
  • Learning the Guitar Simplified , self-published, 1891
  • Colored Diagrams of the Notes of the Fingerboard of the Guitar
  • Instructions for the Guitar Tuned in E Major

Compositions (selection)

  • Songs Without Words and Sketches
  • Four Italian Songs, for the Guitar, etc. London 1861.
  • Pianoforte and Guitar accompaniments to various Pieces for the Gigelira , etc. London 1882
  • 12 Easy songs with accompn. for the guitar . Boosey, London 1888.
  • First set of easy ... Pieces, composed, arranged and selected from various composers, to illustrate the various styles of guitar playing . Boosey, London 1889

literature

  • Maurice J. Summerfield: The classical guitar: its evolution and its players since 1800 , p. 160
  • AP Sharpe: The story of the Spanish guitar , p. 50
  • Frank Mott Harrison: Reminiscences of Madame Sidney Pratten: guitariste and composer. Barnes & Mullins, 1899

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tom Evans, Mary Anne Evans: Guitars - Music, History, Construction and Players. New York 1977, ISBN 0-448-22240-X , p. 158
  2. ↑ This is the assumption made by Arthur Ness in a contribution to the early guitar newsgroup .
  3. ^ Stanley Yates: Ernest Shand: 23 Guitar Solos from Victorian England. Pacific 2000, ISBN 0-786-65298-5 , p. 3
  4. ^ Harvey Turnbull: The Guitar from the Renaissance to the Present Day. Westport 1974, pp. 101f.
personal data
SURNAME Pratten, Catharina Josepha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Pratten, Madame Sidney
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German guitarist, composer and guitar teacher
DATE OF BIRTH 1821
PLACE OF BIRTH Mülheim am Rhein
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1895
Place of death London