Joseph Bähr

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Franz Joseph Bähr (born February 19, 1770 in Deiningen , † August 7, 1819 in Vienna ; also Bär or Behr ) was a German clarinetist.

Life

Bähr was a son of the baker Andreas Beer; however, it is not known from which of the numerous marriages his father comes from. Between 1782 and 1783 Joseph Bähr was a discantist at the parish church of St. Alban in Wallerstein and from 1783 as a violinist a member of the court orchestra of Kraft Ernst Fürst zu Oettingen-Wallerstein . After Bähr received a clarinet as a gift from Kraft Ernst zu Oettingen-Wallerstein in 1785, he increasingly devoted himself to playing this instrument. In May of the same year he was listed in the list of the court orchestra led by the conductor Antonio Rosetti as second violinist and clarinetist with an annual salary of 96 guilders. At the instigation of Kraft Ernst zu Oettingen-Wallerstein, Bähr took clarinet lessons in Würzburg in 1787 with the first clarinetist of the prince-bishop's court orchestra, Philipp Meißner. Until 1796 Bähr worked as the wind player of the harmony music of the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein and was also violinist of the Princely Wallersteiner Hofkapelle under the direction of Rosetti and his successors Georg Feldmayr , Paul Wineberger and Friedrich Witt .

Bähr gave his first clarinet concert abroad in 1788 together with the flautist Alois Ernst at the Zum Weißen Lamm inn in Augsburg . Shortly afterwards there was another concert by Bähr, Ernst and the pianist Nannette Stein in the Hochgräflich Fuggerisches Saal . With the cellist Friedrich Witt, Bähr went on concert tours to Thuringia, Ludwigslust, Berlin and Potsdam in 1793 and 1794, where Bähr was also successful with compositions by Witt. During the concerts in Prussia, Bähr probably met his namesake, the royal Prussian court musician Joseph Beer . The Prussian second horn player Karl Türrschmidt was fascinated by the performances of Witt and Bähr; at the same time he regretted "since we already have a bier, so give that a nice team, then our senior clarinetist is heartily bad". Witt and Bähr did not return from a concert tour to Vienna in 1796. Witt left the metropolis of the Imperial and Royal Monarchy a little later; Bähr stayed there all his life.

Aloys Prince of Liechtenstein appointed Bähr in 1796 to replace Johann Klein, who had left the kk service, with an annual salary of 400 guilders in his harmony music under the direction of Joseph Triebensee . As a member of the princely chamber and theater band, Bähr made music in Vienna, during the hunting season also at the castles in Feldsberg and Eisgrub , as well as in the suburban theater in Penzing and in the Liechtenstein city palace .

In addition, Bähr appeared in Vienna as a soloist and chamber musician. In 1797 he played the world premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven's quintet op. 16 for piano and wind instruments , with the composer taking over the piano himself, as in another performance on April 2, 1798 by the Vienna Tonkünstler Society in the Hofburgtheater . On April 1, 1798, Bähr performed another clarinet concerto in the Hofburgtheater. Also in the Hofburgtheater on April 2, 1800, Bähr took part in a concert organized by Beethoven himself for the premiere of the Septet Op. 20 . On April 4, 1803, Bähr gave the clarinet concert by Friedrich Witt at the same place in a concert of the Tonkünstler-Societät . In the Court and National Theater on April 5, 1805, Bähr played the part of first clarinet at the premiere of Beethoven's wind sextet op. 71 as part of a benefit concert by the Schuppanzigh Quartet ; this was also his last big appearance. In December 1807, Bähr felt compelled to apply for retirement due to an increasing number of serious chest problems. At the beginning of 1808, the Liechtenstein court chancellery in Bähr approved an annual salary of 200 guilders.

Beethoven's Piano Trio op. 11 from 1797 may have been commissioned by Bähr. Bähr had been married to Barbara Prem, who was eleven years his junior, since 1802; the marriage remained childless. From May 15, 1803 he was a member of the Vienna Tonkünstler Society.

Joseph Bähr died of a hectic fever in 1819 . His widow died two years later at the age of 39 of pulmonary consumption.

Confusion with Joseph Beer

The study by the musicologist Ludwig Schiedermair in his 1907 study The heyday of the Öttingen-Wallerstein'schen Hofkapelle was equated Franz Joseph Bähr with his namesake Johann Joseph Beer (1744–1812), who worked in Berlin , for a long time led to confusion about the clarinetist Joseph Beer . In 1972, Jon R. Piersol, in his dissertation The Oettingen-Wallerstein Hofkapelle and its Wind Music, suggested that the Wallersteiner and the Viennese clarinetist Joseph Bähr were one and the same person. A little later, Ulrich Rau followed this thesis in his dissertation. Since the work of Karl Maria Pisarowitz had remained unknown to him (like Günther Grünsteudel), he made a distinction between three clarinetists Joseph Beer - the Berliner Beer , the Wiener Beer and the Wallersteiner Beer . As early as 1973, Karl Maria Pisarowitz had cleared up all errors in his essay The Bear, which we were told, and proved that Joseph Bähr was identical to the Wallerstein clarinetist.

literature

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Lorenz, 2015.
  2. ↑ Ludwig Schiedermair: The heyday of the Öttingen-Wallerstein'schen court chapel . In: Anthologies of the International Music Society 9 (1907/08), pp. 83–130.
  3. ↑ Jon R. Piersol: The Oettingen-Wallerstein court orchestra and its Wind Music . University of Iowa 1972, pp. 320-329.
  4. ^ Ulrich Rau: Chamber music for clarinet and string instruments in the age of Viennese classical music . Saarbrücken 1977, pp. 100-106.
  5. ↑ Karl Maria Pisarowitz: The bear that we were untied. In: Acta Mozartiana (November 1973), pp. 62-67.
personal data
SURNAME Bähr, Joseph
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bähr, Franz Joseph (full name); Bear, Joseph; Behr, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German clarinetist
DATE OF BIRTH February 19, 1770
PLACE OF BIRTH Deiningen
DATE OF DEATH August 7, 1819
Place of death Vienna