Gustav Barth

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Gustav Barth, lithograph by Josef Kriehuber , 1849

Thaddäus Joseph Franz Gustav Barth (born September 2, 1811 in Vienna ; † May 11, 1897 in Frankfurt am Main ) was an Austrian song composer , pianist and choir director.

Life

Gustav Barth was born as the son of the Imperial and Royal court orchestra singer Joseph Barth, who worked for Prince Schwarzenberg . He enjoyed a thorough musical education very early on. At the age of 5 he was already playing simple piano pieces. He attended grammar school and at the same time lectured on organ and basso continuo with St. Anna Drechsler . Self-taught, he began composing songs and dances. He later took lessons from Adalbert Gyrowetz and Ignaz von Seyfried , including in harmony . Then he studied philosophy for two semesters in Prague, then law in Vienna and switched to medicine there after a year.

From 1835 Barth devoted himself entirely to music. In 1838 he met the famous Imperial and Royal Court Opera singer Anna Maria Wilhelmine van Hasselt-Barth and married her in 1840. However, she divorced a few years later. The daughter Johanna van Hasselt-Barth (1841-1918), who later became a well-known opera singer, emerged from this marriage . From 1843 to 1854, Barth headed the Vienna Men's Singing Association , which soon reached a remarkable level under his leadership. He was also an important song composer of his time. His well-known works include the Waldklänge cycle , the setting of Johann Nepomuk Vogls Ade, du grüner Tannenwald and polyphonic male vocal pieces such as Mein Herz ist im Hochland ( Robert Burns ). From the end of the 1850s he was the Nassau court concertmaster in Wiesbaden .

After his retirement he settled in Frankfurt am Main.

The contemporary music critic Eduard Hanslick praised the fact that Barth, especially in love songs, "would [give] feelings back in a warm, graceful way, far from the trivial sentimentality that today so likes to pretend to be depth of feeling".

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Constantin von Wurzbach : Barth, Thaddäus Joseph Franz Gustav . In: Biographisches Lexikon des Kaiserthums Oesterreich . 1st part. University printing house L. C. Zamarski (formerly JP Sollinger), Vienna 1856, p. 165 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Karl-Josef Kutsch , Leo Riemens : Large singer lexicon . Saur, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-598-11598-9 , Vol. 3, p. 1984.
  3. ^ Felix Czeike : Historical Lexicon Vienna. Volume 1: A – Da. Kremayr & Scheriau, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-218-00543-4 , p. 263.
personal data
SURNAME Barth, Gustav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Barth, Thaddäus Joseph Franz Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian song composer, pianist and choir director
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1811
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1897
Place of death Frankfurt am Main