Elise Barensfeld

Juliane Katharine Elisabet Barensfeld (born August 27, 1796 in Regensburg , † after 1820) was a singer.

Life and accomplishments

Juliane Katharine Elisabet Barensfeld, whose nickname Elisabet was also used in the form Elise , was known as a musical child prodigy. She received her first singing lessons in Regensburg from Johann Franz Xaver Sterkel (1750–1817), who gave her two songs based on texts by Benedikt Josef M. von Koller in his 12th song collection: "Girl with the silver voice" and "Beautiful is a rose youthful bud " dedicated. As a 12- to 13-year-old she went  on concert tours with the famous Regensburg mechanic and Beethoven friend Johann Nepomuk Mälzel  - the inventor of the metronome - and from 1809 continued her training as a singer with Antonio Salieri , among others . She lived with Mälzel in Vienna, and it was not until 1813 that the then 17-year-old left her mentor when she left Vienna. She later became a chamber singer for the Grand Duchess of Baden, but after 1820 her traces of life disappear.

Rita Steblin thinks it is conceivable that Elisabet Barensfeld was the recipient of Beethoven's piano piece Für Elise . Her connection to Therese Malfatti , the later owner of the Elise manuscript, can be indirectly proven: she lived in the immediate vicinity of the house in which Mälzel lived with his student. According to Steblin, Therese Malfatti could have taught 13-year-old Elisabet Barensfeld on the piano. However, it cannot be proven that she was one of the composer's circle of friends.

literature

• Rita Steblin : Who was Beethoven's “Elise”? A new solution to the mystery , in: The Musical Times , vol. 155, no. 1927 (summer 2014), pp. 3–39

Web links

• Was Mälzel's singer also Beethoven's “Elise”? ( New music newspaper online)
• Michael Lorenz : "A Letter to the Editor of The Musical Times" (Vienna, 2014)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, March 1809, p. 366