Gottfried Herrmann (composer)

Gottfried Herrmann

Gottfried Herrmann (born May 15, 1808 in Sondershausen ; † June 6, 1878 in Lübeck ) was a German organist and composer .

Life

Gottfried Herrmann came from a family of musicians in Thuringia . With his father Johann Herrman he came to Nordhausen in 1813 , where he was employed as a town musician. There he received his first musical lessons from August Mühling . In 1826 he became Louis Spohr's student and assistant in Kassel , where he was also taught by Moritz Hauptmann . First jobs as a violinist in Hanover and Frankfurt followed.

In 1832 he was appointed assistant to Johann Wilhelm Cornelius von Königslöw at the Marienkirche in Lübeck and took over its office after his death in 1834. Like Königslöw, he was also the city's music director, and this took up more and more space over time, which led to tensions with the church Office led. Herrmann saw himself more as an orchestra and choir conductor and less as an organist. He led a well-known quartet with himself on first violin and piano, Wilhelm Pape on second violin, Louis Pape on cello and Karl Herrmann (until 1839) and then Johann Daniel Zacharias Burjam on viola .

In 1844 he was appointed Kapellmeister in his hometown Sondershausen. There he had to conduct the court concerts and opera performances. The church council of the Marienkirche decided to fill the office of organist again independently of the music directorate, and appointed Hermann Jimmerthal as his successor.

The City Council of Lübeck managed to bring Herrmann back to Lübeck in 1852, now with sole responsibility for the city's musical life. As the city's music director, not as a church musician, he arranged for the first performance of Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Lübeck in 1860 , which took place in the Katharinenkirche . The St. John Passion in St. Mary's Church followed a year later .

Works

At the time, Herrmann was known and valued primarily as a song composer. After being forgotten for decades, the Lübeck City Library began to reissue some of his works in 2000.

literature

• Fritz Jung: The music in Lübeck. In: Fritz Endres (ed.): History of the free and Hanseatic city of Lübeck. Lübeck 1926, p. 171 ff.
• Wilhelm Stahl : Gottfried Herrmann. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1939 (Collection of individual musicological presentations. Issue 17), reprint: Kraus-Reprint, Nendeln / Liechtenstein 1976
• Imogen Fellinger:  Herrmann, Gottfried. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 8, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1969, ISBN 3-428-00189-3 , p. 688 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

• Works by and about Gottfried Herrmann in the catalog of the German National Library

predecessor	Office	successor
Johann Wilhelm Cornelius von Königslöw	Organist at St. Marien zu Lübeck 1834–1844	Hermann Jimmerthal