Dolphins from Schauroth

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Delphine von Schauroth after a painting by Wilhelm Hensel , around 1839

Delphine von Schauroth , also Adolphine von Schauroth , married Hill-Handley (born March 13, 1813 in Magdeburg , † 1887 in Munich ), was a German pianist and composer .

origin

Her parents were Eduard Friedrich Roger Georg von Schauroth (1774-1829) and his second wife Louise (von) Teltz (* March 8, 1792; † October 20, 1847). Her father was an officer who was initially in Prussian and later French service.

Life

As a pianist, Delphine Schauroth was a student of Friedrich Kalkbrenner . Already at the age of nine she caused a sensation, which was later consolidated through concert tours throughout Europe. "In addition to a rapid skill, she showed a rare depth of feeling in her performance. It would be difficult for another piano virtuoso to have had so much and so great mastery over the various characteristic nuances of the various older and newer schools as Fraulein von Schauroth. For example, when performing Beethoven's works, especially the beautiful sonatas by Carl Maria von Weber, she also plays the modern works of Czerny's, Herz, Chopin's and other newer piano composers with gorgeous grace and dazzling brilliance. "

She lived in Munich for several years until 1833, then went to London and married the English clergyman Hill-Handley there, but was soon divorced, returned to Munich in the summer of 1837 and took her maiden name again.

Title page of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy's Piano Concerto No. 1 with a dedication to Delphine von Schauroth

She was one of the few women with whom Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy seriously flirted. During his trip to Munich in June 1830 they played duets and in letters from that time they are mentioned more often: “As far as I'm concerned, I go to the gallery day after day and twice a week to Schauroth, where I make long visits ; we rasps horribly. ”On October 16, in Venice, he wrote the famous Venetian Gondola Song ( Songs without Words , Book 1, Op. 19b No. 6), which is dedicated to her in the autograph (not in print). His Piano Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 , written in Munich in 1831, is also dedicated to her. Josephine Lang (another crush of Mendelssohn) dedicated her songs to her based on poems by Johann Georg Jacobi op.4.

Robert Schumann discussed two of her compositions in 1835 and 1837 in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik benevolently, praised their musicality, but criticized the execution: "If only I could have been there while she wrote the sonata! I would have ignored everything, false fifths, inharmonious ones Quarreling, in short everything; because it is music in its essence, the most feminine one can imagine; yes, it will develop into a romantic, and so with Clara Wieck two Amazons would stand in the sparkling ranks. " Schumann's comments are also not free from erotic connotations.

In 1837 Schumann wrote: "The Caprice [...], with all its small weaknesses, is one of the lovable ones. The defects are those of inexperience, not of clumsiness; the real musical nerve feels everywhere. This time it is still a very delicate, passionate redness, which makes this thumbnail interesting. "

In 1839 Schauroth, "which unfortunately can only be heard very rarely in public", played Beethoven's E-flat major concerto in Munich on the occasion of the inauguration of the Beethoven Monument and "proved her mastery again in the most brilliant way".

On May 4, 1848 she married the baron Stephan Henniger von Eberg (* 1820) - the marriage was divorced again - and on July 19, 1856 Edward Knight, this marriage was divorced again.

In 1870 she gave a concert in memory of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (who had died in 1847) and dedicated the fifth and sixth of her Six Songs without Words op. 18 with the titles Venezia and Am Arno to him .

From 1881 (or earlier?) Until shortly before her death she lived in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Even the lexicographers of their time found it regrettable that this strong talent was lost in the dark of history after a brilliant beginning: "It is matter of great regret that a life which began so brilliantly should, to all appearance, be so much overclouded at its close. "

Her playing was characterized as follows: "Her touch is quite the strong and steady touch that can be expected from a Kalkbrenner school, only it sometimes appears a bit delicate. Your playing itself, apart from those higher relationships, is also solid, extremely precise and even pure to an exaggerated delicacy. "

Compositions for piano

  • 6 Songs without Words, Op. 18, Book 1, composed in 1830, printed in 1870.
  • Sonata brilliant in C minor, printed in 1834.
  • Caprice in B flat major, printed in 1836.

literature

chronologically

  • Robert Schumann: Collected writings on music and musicians . Leipzig 1854, Volume 1, pp. 92-93 and Volume 2, p. 71.
  • Gustav Schilling: Encyclopedia of the entire musical sciences or universal lexicon of music art. Volume VI, 1838, p. 176.
  • George Grove: Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 3. Edition. Volume 3, 1883, p. 242.
  • O. Ebel: Women Composers - a Biographical Handbook of Women's Work in Music. Brooklyn / NY 1902. (French translation 1910 as Les femmes compositeurs de musique. Pp. 149–150)
  • Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses, 1902, third year, S.752
  • Monika Schwarz-Danuser: Schauroth, Delphine von, divorced Hill Handley, divorced Henninger von Eberg, divorced Knight . In: Eva Labouvie (Ed.): Women in Saxony-Anhalt, Vol. 2: A biographical-bibliographical lexicon from the 19th century to 1945. Böhlau, Cologne et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-412-51145-6 , p. 393-396.

Web links

Commons : Delphine von Schauroth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ not 1814, as recorded in several encyclopedias. The biographical data according to MGG 2nd edition. Volume 14, 2005.
  2. ↑ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of noble houses , 1902, third year, p. 751 .
  3. ^ Encyclopedia of the Entire Musical Sciences. P. 176.
  4. ^ Letter to his sister Fanny Hensel dated June 27, 1830.
  5. ^ Collected writings on music and musicians , Volume 1, pp. 92–93.
  6. ↑ This ranges from the quoted saying of Alexander the Great to the Amazon queen Thalestris to the evocation of the composer's dusky chamber. See Collected Writings on Music and Musicians , Volume 1, pp. 92–93. Remarkably, Schumann judges two sonatas by Franz Graf von Pocci , the second of which is dedicated to Delphine von Schauroth, with almost the same criteria and addresses him as a composer: "If someone had held the title for me, I would have advised a composer. “( Collected Writings on Music and Musicians Volume 1, pp. 154–155. ).
  7. ^ Collected writings on music and musicians , Volume 2, p. 71.
  8. ↑ Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung , 41st year 1836, column 488.
  9. ^ Genealogical paperback of baronial houses. 1848, p. 163.
  10. ^ Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians. P. 242.
  11. ↑ Schilling Encyclopedia. P. 176.
personal data
SURNAME Schauroth, dolphins from
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schauroth, Adolphine von; Hill-Handley, Dolphins of
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pianist and composer
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1813
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH 1887
Place of death Munich