Friedrich August Burgmüller

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Friedrich August Burgmüller (born May 3, 1760 in Magdeburg ; † August 21, 1824 in Düsseldorf ) was a German pianist , conductor and conductor, as well as the first city music director in Düsseldorf and co-founder of the Niederrheinische Musikfest . He is the father of the composers Friedrich Burgmüller and Norbert Burgmüller .

Live and act

Therese and August Burgmüller as spectators at Napoleon's entry into Düsseldorf on November 3, 1811, colored engraving by Johann Petersen (excerpt); City Museum Düsseldorf

Burgmüller was born on May 3, 1760 in Magdeburg and was christened "Anton Friedrich" on May 6. In the older literature, the first names are also "Friedrich August" or "Johann August Franz", the latter in most handwritten sources. He usually signed himself briefly with "August Burgmüller". His father was Johann Christian Burgmüller (1734–1776), organist at Magdeburg Cathedral , who taught him to play the piano. From 1783 Burgmüller studied in Leipzig and Erfurt , but broke off the studies in 1785 and went from Erfurt to Weimar to the theater company there of the Graz- born principal Joseph Bellomo (aka Joseph Edler von Zambiasi, 1752 / 54-1833). Burgmüller worked there as Kapellmeister , but also as an actor , and composed a singspiel and incidental music for the troupe .

In autumn 1786 he moved to Gustav Friedrich Großmann and his co-director Christian Wilhelm Klos at their newly founded theater company in Cologne , with whom he also made guest appearances in Düsseldorf and Bonn . Most recently, Klos led the company alone and led it to bankruptcy in Aachen in July 1788 . The so-called Bonn National Theater emerged from the outstanding ensemble, which was subsidized annually by Elector Maximilian Franz with 15,000 Reichstalers and opened on January 3, 1789. Together with other members of the Klosschen troupe - including Christiane Keilholz , Carl Demmer , Joseph Lux , Johann Baptist Spitzeder and Heinrich Vohs  - Burgmüller also went to Bonn and became Kapellmeister there. His theater orchestra consisted mainly of musicians from the Bonn court orchestra, among them Ludwig van Beethoven , who was 18 years old at the time , who played the viola . Beethoven was obviously hoping for a performance of his Joseph Cantata WoO 87 from Burgmüller , because on June 16, 1790 he wrote to the court chamberlain August von Schall :

"In the musical field, Bethof has a sonata on the death of Joseph II - the text is from the Averdonk - so completely prepared that it can only be performed by a local orchestra or the same orchestra."

The humorous letter still contains a lot of news from Bonn's cultural life, but Burgmüller didn't last long in Bonn either. In the same year he moved to the National Theater in Mainz . After the French occupation of the city in 1792 , he went to Düsseldorf, where he settled as a piano teacher. Here he met his student and later wife Therese von Zandt . When Düsseldorf was also occupied by the French in October 1794, he lost sight of them again for many years.

Burgmüller fled to Mainz again, where he took over the musical direction of various actors around Friedrich Wilhelm Hunnius and Johann Ludwig Büchner. He also played with the two troops in Aachen, Cologne and Düsseldorf.

Due to a search advertisement that Therese von Zandt published in the Leipziger Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung on November 9, 1803 , Burgmüller left the Rhineland and traveled to Regensburg in August 1804 , where he saw his former fiancée again and married on May 13, 1805. Burgmüller received the position of music director at the newly built Regensburg Theater in Regensburg on the recommendation of the Secret State Councilor Karl Christian Ernst von Bentzel-Sternau . He also founded the first German drama school there, largely supported by the influential Elector and Imperial Chancellor Karl Theodor von Dalberg . Burgmüller's move to Regensburg can probably be explained by the fact that Therese's father had thwarted the liaison with the musician as best he could, so that the two could only live together in "exile".

After Burgmüller's father-in-law died in Düsseldorf on March 18, 1807, the Burgmüller family was able to leave Regensburg and settle in Düsseldorf, where they arrived in July 1807. Burgmüller initially accepted a position as Kapellmeister at the Bergisches Theater in the city and on August 26, 1807 he co-founded the Düsseldorf Music Academy, an association that marked the birth of bourgeois musical life in Düsseldorf. On August 21, 1812 he was appointed city music director. In addition, he was responsible for church music in St. Maximilian and St. Lambertus and taught at the Düsseldorf high school . The later poet Heinrich Heine was one of his students. Four years later, Burgmüller attracted attention with the world premiere of the oratorio “Die Glocke” by Andreas Romberg . In 1817 he and his orchestra took part in a successful concert event in Elberfeld , during which he and the Elberfeld music director Johannes Schornstein made the decision to hold this event regularly from now on. On the initiative of Burgmüller, after this initial success, various Düsseldorf music associations formed the "Verein für Tonkunst" and in 1818 the Städtisches Musikverein e. V. under his leadership, from which the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker later developed. At Pentecost of the same year they organized the official 1st Niederrheinische Musikfest in Düsseldorf under Burgmüller's festival direction. The festival was again a resounding success, and so the two music directors decided to keep this event every year at Whitsun alternating between Elberfeld and Düsseldorf. The city of Cologne was added in 1821 , whereas Elberfeld was eliminated with a last event in 1827, as the city was no longer logistically able to cope with the rush of musicians and guests. Aachen stepped in for this in 1825 . The following music festivals in Düsseldorf in 1820 and 1822 and in Cologne in 1821 were also under his direction, and Burgmüller was at the height of his fame. In the meantime he went on a successful concert tour as a pianist and conductor in 1819 with the soprano Angelica Catalani through western and northern Germany.

Gravestone FA Burgmüller

Half a year after his last director of the festival in Düsseldorf, in 1822, he was dismissed by the theater directors Josef Derossi and Wolf for inexplicable reasons , which led to severe financial losses at Burgmüller, as a result of which he became seriously ill. He did not recover from this ailment and finally died on August 21, 1824. He was buried in the Golzheim cemetery . After his death, a benefit concert was held for the benefit of his family. The people of Düsseldorf thanked him retrospectively in 1949 for his services with a new grave slab and the inscription: "Municipal music director Friedrich August Burgmüller, founder of the Niederrheinische Musikfest, 1760-1824." His two sons Friedrich Burgmüller and Norbert Burgmüller also became respected pianists and composers, whereby Norbert, despite his short life, became the more talented and successful musician and followed in his father's footsteps. He also played a prominent role in the Düsseldorf music scene.

Trivia

Burgmüller was apparently also vaguely known to the family of Heinrich Heine , who wrote to his mother Betty Heine from Paris on October 25, 1833 : “I'm safe everywhere, I'm dispassionate, calm - and I'm getting a big belly like Burgmüller. "

Works (selection)

  • Drama music at Macbeth , Weimar 1785, lost
  • I would not have thought that (libretto: Christian August Vulpius ), Singspiel, Weimar 1785/86, lost
  • Ariette In questa tomba oscura (Text: Giuseppe Carpani ), ca.1805
  • Four songs (texts: Theodor von Haupt), ca.1818
  • Spring breeze, Düsseldorf: Comtoir der National-Industrie, around 1818 (digitized version)
  • Cantata to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the office of Pastor and Consistorial Councilor Hartmann in Düsseldorf on October 17, 1823 / by JF Wilhelmi. Music by Burgmüller. Düsseldorf: Dänzer, 1823 (digitized version of the libretto)

literature

  • Heinrich von Sahr :  Burgmüller, August Friedrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 610.
  • K. Wachter, Acts, concerning the music director Burgmüller (1812). In: Contributions to the history of the Lower Rhine. Yearbook of the Düsseldorfer Geschichtsverein , Volume 4 (1889), pp. 193–198
  • Klaus Martin Kopitz , The Düsseldorf composer Norbert Burgmüller. A life between Beethoven - Spohr - Mendelssohn , Kleve 1998
  • Klaus Tischendorf, "What now sounds wrong in the course of things, once sounds in eternal harmonies." The Düsseldorf city music director August Burgmüller as accompanist for the singer Angelica Catalani . In: Düsseldorfer Jahrbuch. Contributions to the history of the Lower Rhine , Volume 71 (2001), pp. 243-257
  • Matthias Nagel, stations of an indefatigable. August Burgmüller, the first music director of the Regensburg Theater. In: Mälzel's magazine. Magazine for music culture in Regensburg , vol. 7, no. 4 from Oct. – Dec. 2004, pp. 8–13 (digitized version)
  • Klaus Martin Kopitz, August Burgmüller as teacher of the Leipzig music aesthetician Christian Friedrich Michaelis . A mishap about Beethoven's biography. In: Nota Bene Norbert Burgmüller . Studies on a contemporary of Mendelssohn and Schumann , ed. by Tobias Koch and Klaus Martin Kopitz, Dohr, Cologne 2009, pp. 43–46

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Magdeburg, Evangelical Superintendentur, baptismal register Domgemeinde 1656–1814, p. 237.
  2. ↑ Klaus Martin Kopitz , Rainer Cadenbach (Ed.) U. a .: Beethoven from the point of view of his contemporaries in diaries, letters, poems and memories. Volume 1: Adamberger - Kuffner. Edited by the Beethoven Research Center at the Berlin University of the Arts. Henle, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-87328-120-2 , pp. 165f.
  3. ↑ World premieres of choral works from 1818 to today: Burgmüller, Johann August Franz in the Chronicle from 1818 to 1822 , on Städtischer Musikverein zu Düsseldorf e. V., accessed on February 19, 2016
  4. ↑ Heinrich Heine's correspondence , ed. by Friedrich Hirth , Volume 2, Berlin: G. Müller 1917, p. 45 ( digitized version )
personal data
SURNAME Burgmüller, Friedrich August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burgmüller, Johann August Franz Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pianist, conductor and conductor as well as city music director in Düsseldorf
DATE OF BIRTH May 3, 1760
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1824
Place of death Dusseldorf