Eduard Gelbart

Eduard Gelbart (born February 20, 1878 in Frankfurt am Main ; † November 3, 1948 in Frankfurt am Main) was a German organist , pianist , music teacher and composer . He studied and taught organ and piano at the Hoch Conservatory (today: University of Music and Performing Arts) in Frankfurt am Main and from 1915 worked as an organist at the Dreikönigskirche in Sachsenhausen. His successor in this office was Helmut Walcha .

life and work

Eduard Gelbart was born as the sixth child of the middle school teacher Johann Jacob Adolph Gelbart (1834-1891) from Gernsbach / Baden and Anna Margareta Karoline born. Lanz (1848–1912) was born in Frankfurt am Main. His upbringing was Protestant, educated and loyal to the emperor. After the early death of his father, the musically gifted young man began studying with Anton Urspruch at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main, where he himself taught as a lecturer after an excellent degree in the subjects of organ and piano. Among his students was the composer Paul Hindemith (1895–1963). He had a lively correspondence with Albert Schweitzer .

Gelbart worked for several years as a music teacher at Schloss Bieberstein near Fulda before he returned to his hometown after his engagement to Margarete Sofie Endres, a simple girl from Niederrad, who had modeled the sculptor Friedrich Hausmann for the mermaid on the Frankfurt fairy tale fountain in 1906 .

There he worked as an organist at the Dreikönigskirche until 1946. Gelbart wrote several variations on organ works by Johann Sebastian Bach . The movements for piano and voice of many well-known Frankfurt folk songs ( folk songs for voice and piano, most kindly dedicated to Caecilia Maria Geis ) as well as variations on a Mexican folk song come from his pen. As the creator of his own piano compositions, Gelbart experimented with twelve-tone music, for example in his Scherzo and the humoresque in G major (Musik- und Bühnen-Verlag Fritz Baselt, Frankfurt am Main). His early works, however, remain rooted in the late romantic tradition, as u. a. the sounds of spring (waltz for piano, Leipzig, Friedrich Hofmeister ).

Eduard Gelbart was also a member of the New German Bach Society and a Protestant synod officer. In the middle of World War II, he was able to celebrate his 25th anniversary in office at the Dreikönigskirche in 1940. In old age he almost became deaf. In 1948 he succumbed to cancer. He is buried in a family grave in the main cemetery in Frankfurt am Main.

His son donated his estate to the Frankfurt am Main city and university library. It includes two folio capsules; a folder with reviews and programs for your own concerts and a résumé; Letters and postcards, for example from Paul Hindemith, Max Reger, Siegmund von Hausegger; Music manuscripts of eight own works and two opera adaptations; Music prints of three own works, plus an inventory list.

expenditure

• Choral book for the Frankfurt Evangelical Hymnbook containing the chorale book for the German Evangelical Hymnbook edited by Arnold Mendelssohn and the chorals for the Frankfurt special item edited by Bernhard Dreier and Eduard Gelbart. Published by the Evangelical Church in Frankfurt a. M. 1929. On commission at the bookshop of the Evangelical Association for Inner Mission (R. Ecklin Nachf.), Frankfurt am Main.

swell

• Copy of Eduard Gelbart's estate
• Secret revealed after 100 years: The naked beauty from the fountain , Frankfurter Neue Presse, June 22, 2004
• The dictatorship of the award , Frankfurter Neue Presse, December 16, 2005
• Personal documents (family book, birth certificate, certificates, etc.)
• http://gw0.geneanet.org/index.php3?b=cdeus&lang=de;p=eduard;n=gelbart