Friedrich Wink

Heinrich Friedrich Wink (born May 7, 1843 in Elberfeld (today a district of Wuppertal ), † 1905 in Fort Washington) was a German-American textile manufacturer and composer .

Life

Heinrich Friedrich Wink was the brother of Pauline Luhn, who was married to August Luhn, the founder of the Luhns company . With his father, Georg Friedrich Wink (1810-1892), who operated and manufactured printed silk fabrics for men's vests, he learned the textile trade and was characterized by imaginative and pleasing pattern designs. His artistic streak was also reflected in his love of music, which led to activities in the choral society and the composing of pieces of music that were also performed in public. The music manuscript and the program sheet for a performance of "Overture No. 1" as part of a charity concert on January 15, 1870 in the Elberfeld Hall by Adam Stoll have been preserved from Wink's Wuppertal time. On November 7th of the same year in the Küpper-Saal on the Elberfelder Johannisberg as part of a "Concert for the best of the bereaved of the fallen Elberfeld warriors" the citizen ballad "the knight and his love" was performed by Wink - the battle of Sedan lay back then just two months.

Since he did not like the factory life and the constant pattern-making as well as the cramped conditions in Wuppertal, he emigrated - encouraged by the rapid rise of his cousin Karl Heinrich Wink in Philadelphia - to the USA around 1872, where he worked first in New Jersey and later in Philadelphia lived. In 1878 he married the German Barbara Therese Johanna Kreker. He overcame his aversion to pattern making and thus made a career: he soon owned a flourishing men's shawl company. He had a mansion built in Fort Washington. This was surrounded by 250 vines, for the yields of which he added a press house with tasting room. In this beautiful hideaway, Fred celebrated many a party with his friends, including many musicians, where his homemade wine could not be missing. His friends included u. a. Walter Damrosch, the conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the brothers Wilhelm and Edmund Wolsieffer, one of whom worked as a conductor and the other as concertmaster at the Deutsche Oper in Philadelphia. You were responsible for the rehearsal of the Wink operetta "Zephyr" from 1891, which was performed at least three times, on April 8, 10 and 11, 1896, with Wink himself taking on a supporting role. His comic opera "Amina or the bride of the Shah" was successfully premiered in Philadelphia in May 1890 and re-enacted on April 23, 1891 in the Tivoli Opera House in San Francisco.

The contact with his family living in Wuppertal remained constant: Friedrich Wink traveled to Europe several times. In 1904 he was visited by Rudolf and Robert Luhn, the sons of August Luhn, when they traveled to the USA in 1904 for the World Exhibition in St. Louis.

The musical work of Heinrich Friedrich Wink, who died in 1905, includes several operas, operettas, symphonies, orchestral and choral works, chamber and piano music. Some of them have been performed in renowned concert halls and some have been printed. Most of his works, however, only existed in handwritten form and were copied by handwritten by copyists for performance purposes. Prof. Dr. Joachim Dorfmüller , who dealt with the musical legacy of Heinrich Friedrich Wink, considers Heinrich Friedrich Wink to be the first real composer born in the Wupper valley between Beyenburg and Vohwinkel with a comprehensive oeuvre. In his book Wuppertal Composers I, he classifies the music of Heinrich Friedrich Wink as popular music, which was aimed at popularity in the best sense of the word: it was music for everyday use, made solidly, instrumentalized in a solid way, to be played primarily by lovers.

After several pieces, including the waltz "An der Schöne schwarzen Wupper", had been performed again in the early 80s, on November 20, 2010 - 127 years after its creation - the Wuppertal Instrumental Association conducted Symphony No. 2 under the direction of Christof Hilger premiered as part of his autumn concert in the Immanuelskirche in Wuppertal.

Works

• Overture No. 1 (1870)
• The knight and his love (1870)
• The beautiful black Wupper (1870)
• Tableaux of choice pieces for piano (1873)
• Twinkling Star, Serenade for the piano-forte (1873)
• Old king Gorm / Gorm the Old (1875)
• Zephyr, opera (1875)
• Symphony No. 2 (1883)
• Amina or the shah's bride, opera (1890)

Various works are available online through the Library of Congress, Washington DC.

literature

• Joachim Dorfmüller : Wuppertal Composers, Vol. 1 . Born, Wuppertal 1986 (= contributions to the history and local history of Wuppertal 33)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Library of Congress - Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.