Hans Sommer (composer, 1837)

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Hans Sommer around 1890

Hans Sommer (born July 20, 1837 in Braunschweig ; † April 26, 1922 there ; actually: Hans Friedrich August Zincken called Sommer ) was a German composer and mathematician.

Live and act

Hans Sommer was the son of Otto Gustav Zincken called Sommer (* March 28, 1809; † January 9, 1840), a son of the Braunschweig court physician and entomologist Julius Leopold Zincken called Sommer , and his wife Nanny geb. Langenheim (1813–1902), daughter of the Braunschweig lawyer and notary Friedrich Wilhelm Langenheim. After the early death of his father (1840) he grew up in the family of his stepfather, the optician and factory owner Peter Wilhelm Friedrich Voigtländer (1812–1878), in Vienna and Braunschweig . Voigtländer promoted mathematical talent early in the summer, e.g. B. by sending him to Braunschweig as a young student at the renowned Collegium Carolinum from 1851 . Sommer also received basic musical training privately since his youth in Vienna (1845–1849). The mother nanny was born in Langenheim, daughter of the Braunschweig lawyer and notary Friedrich Wilhelm Langenheim. Voigtländer resolutely opposed Sommer's wish to study music and insisted on studying mathematics and physics in Göttingen (1854–1858). Summer's teachers here included professors Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (mathematics) and Wilhelm Weber (physics) as well as Bernhard Riemann , Moritz Stern and Richard Dedekind . Dedekind, who had a lot of private activities with the summer and who had already given him private lessons in Braunschweig, became his most important mentor in Göttingen. Sommer also studied history with Georg Waitz , attended lectures by the philosopher Rudolf Hermann Lotze , began taking composition lessons and was introduced to the Brunsviga fraternity by Dedekind in 1854 .

Summer as a scientist

After successfully completing his doctorate (1858), Sommer began to teach mathematics at the Braunschweig Collegium Carolinum (1859). In 1862 the school was converted into a polytechnic. In 1866, Sommer was appointed professor for (elementary) mathematics. From 1872 initially deputy director under the directorate of his friend Richard Dedekind, Hans Sommer led the polytechnic as director from 1875 in the phase of conversion into a technical university (1878) and earned services in maintaining Braunschweig as a scientific location. In 1881 he resigned from the directorate and in 1884 took early retirement without any pension payments in order to be exclusively musically active from then on.

Under his full name, known as Zin (c) ken, the specialist in lens systems published in the 1860s and 1870s calculations for the further and new development of optical devices and did important development work for his stepfather's Voigtlander works. Sommer's calculations led to the construction of the widespread lens series Euryskop (from 1877) and the portrait lenses of the series Ia (from 1899); Changes to telescope lenses and eyepieces can also be traced back to him, as well as a modification of Petzval's portrait lens with the cemented rear lens.

Summer as a musician

Founded While still teaching and research activities summer the standing now on under his artistic direction first Brunswick Association for Classical Music (1863-1870), the concerts, among others, with Joseph Joachim , Clara Schumann , Ferdinand Hiller and Hans von Bulow organized and entered himself as a composer (with the one-act play Der Nachtwächter , 1865) in appearance. He initially used the pseudonym "ET Neckniz" ("ET" for Été = French summer, "Neckniz" = Ananym for "Zincken"). Sommer had already started studying composition with the Schumann and Brahms friend Julius Otto Grimm during his studies in Göttingen and continued this with Adolf Bernhard Marx after his time in Göttingen . His Braunschweig composition teacher Wilhelm Meves (* December 1, 1808; † December 24, 1871) also aroused Sommer's interest in musicology and his passion for collecting old prints and manuscripts. In 1880, Sommer joined the Berlin Society for Music Research founded by Robert Eitner as an active member and did extensive research on the Braunschweig court conductor Georg Caspar Schürmann (1672 / 73–1751). In 1875, Sommer met Richard and Cosima Wagner during their stay in Braunschweig and in the same year founded the local Richard Wagner Association. After a short apprenticeship with Franz Liszt (1884) and his marriage (1885) to Antonie Thurow (1854–1904), daughter of the Schwerin court opera and Bayreuth singer Carl Hill (1831–1893), Sommer lived as a freelance composer in Berlin ( 1885–1888) and Weimar (1888–1898), where he became friends with Richard Strauss . As a now respected opera composer, Hans Sommer returned to Braunschweig in 1898. His wife died there in 1904. He had two sons, Otto and Richard.

Initially stimulated by the music of the circle around Robert and Clara Schumann , since the 1870s before all others by Richard Wagner , Sommer remained associated with a late romantic style of composition until the end. In 1876 a collection of five songs went to print as his opus 1 under the name Hans Sommer, which was used from then on. Further, often extensive collections of songs, with which he soon became known to a wider public and which he orchestrated in part after publication, appeared in quick succession from 1882 onwards. Especially in the ballad collections published in 1886 (op. 8 / op. 11), besides the use of leitmotifs, the independent melody of the piano part in connection with a vocal part that is closely related to the natural language style and declaiming the text is a defining stylistic feature. His last teacher, Franz Liszt, expressly encouraged him to create more dramatizing than lyrical design and preferring open forms.

The stage play Lorelei , after two early attempts at Singspiel from 1886 onwards, the first major stage work of the summer (premiered in 1891), so interested Richard Strauss that he performed it at the Weimar Theater in 1892. With the following conversation opera Saint Foix , premiered at the Hoftheater in Munich under Hermann Levi , Sommer (at the same time as Giuseppe Verdi and still without knowledge of his Falstaff ) developed a style of thoroughly composed Parlando opera that was new for the German-speaking world in terms of choice of material, text declamation and orchestral treatment in a kind of musical historicism , which in his personal environment (Richard Strauss, Eugen d'Albert , Max Schillings and Engelbert Humperdinck ) received a lot of attention and in some cases became the starting point for his own work (e.g. d'Albert The Departure , 1898; Strauss Der Rosenkavalier , 1910). The basis for the design of the one-act musical comedy was our own genre-historical research. With the last opera Der Waldschratt (1910) based on a text by Eberhard König recommended to him by Strauss, Sommer finally returned to a kind of number opera and tried out a hybrid form of spoken and musical theater.

Hans Sommer was chairman of the German composers 'association from 1898 to 1903 and chaired the founding assembly of the German composers' association (GDT) and the AFMA on January 14, 1903. With the pamphlet The Appreciation of Music published in the spring of 1898 , Sommer had encouraged his friend Strauss in particular to commit themselves to the protection of the composer's economic interests and ultimately to found a company together with Sommer and Strauss' childhood friend Friedrich Rösch (1862–1925) enforced by the collecting society dependent on the composers' association (AFMA), which still exists in GEMA today .

From 1903 to 1911, Hans Sommer was a member of the board of directors of the General German Music Association (ADMV) and in 1919 was the first to be appointed to the honorary advisory board of the German composers ' association for his services to copyright protection in Germany . In the Netherlands he was appointed a member of the Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Toonkunst in 1895 and a member of the Société de l'histoire de la musique dans les Pays-Bas in 1899 . Shortly before his death in 1922, he was accepted into the Prussian Academy of the Arts .

Hans Sommer was buried in the Braunschweig main cemetery, Abbot 40A; the GEMA Foundation currently bears the costs for tending the grave.

Works (selection)

Songs

  • Five songs op. 1 (comp. Around 1872/1873), Litolff Braunschweig 1876
  • Hunold Singuf (33 Pied Piper Songs, Julius Wolff ) op.4 ( comp. About 1882), Litolff Braunschweig 1884
  • Sapphos Gesänge ( C. Sylva ) op. 6 (comp. 1883/1884), Litolff Braunschweig 1884 [also orchestrated 1884/1885, Universal Edition 2010]
  • Six ballads and romances op.8 (comp. Around 1885), Litolff Braunschweig 1886
  • Ten songs ( J. Eichendorff ) op.9 (comp. Around 1885), Litolff Braunschweig 1886
  • Seven ballads and romances op.11 (comp. 1886), Litolff Braunschweig 1886
  • Sieben Lieder ( G. Keller ) op.16 (comp. Around 1891), Leede Leipzig 1892
  • Eliland ( K. Stieler ) op.33 (comp. Around 1891/1892), Litolff Braunschweig 1900
  • Five Brettl-Lieder op.34 (comp. 1895/1901), Leede Leipzig 1901
  • 21 songs ( JW Goethe ), o. Op. (Comp. 1919–1922), published in parts, Litolff Braunschweig 1932/1937 [20 songs orchestrated, published in parts 2003/2010 (Universal Edition)]

Operas

  • Der Nachtwächter (ET Neckniz / pseudonym of the composer , after Theodor Körner ), Operetta 1 act, no op., Premier Braunschweig 1865, not printed
  • The cousin from Bremen (ET Neckniz / pseudonym of the composer , after Theodor Körner), Operetta 1 act, without op., Not printed
  • Lorelei (Gustav Gurski) stage play 3 acts, op.13, premier Braunschweig 1891, Leede Leipzig 1889
  • Saint Foix ( Hans von Wolzüge ) cheerful stage play 1 act, op.20, premier Munich 1894, Leede Leipzig 1893
  • The Meermann (ders.) Nordic legend 1 act, op.28, WP Weimar 1896, Leede Leipzig 1895
  • Münchhausen (also with Ferdinand Graf Sporck and Hans Sommer), Ein Schelmenstück 3 acts, op.31, Leede Leipzig 1897
  • Augustin (Hans von Wolzüge), Fasnachtspiel 1 act, op.32, Leede Leipzig 1899
  • Rübezahl and the bagpiper by Neisse ( Eberhard König ), poetry and music 4 acts, op. 36, premier Braunschweig 1904, Leede Leipzig 1904
  • Riquet mit dem Schopf (ders.), Märchenspiel 3 acts, op.38, WP Braunschweig 1907, Leede Leipzig 1907
  • Der Waldschratt (ders.), Game 3 Acts, op.42, WP Braunschweig 1912, Leede Leipzig 1910

Chamber music

  • Piano trio in D minor or op. (Comp. 1858)
  • Piano quartet in G minor or op. (Comp. 1870 / barrel 1884)
  • Piano trio in E flat major or op. (Comp. 1884)

Fonts

  • (Hans Zinken called Sommer): To determine the refraction ratios, dissertation, Göttingen 1858
  • (Hans Zinken called Sommer): About the calculation of the image curvature in optical devices (proof that Petzval's formula only applies in a very special case), in: Poggendorff 's Annalen der Physik , Vol. 122, p. 563 ff., Berlin 1864
  • (Hans Zinken called Sommer): Investigations into the dioptrics of the lens systems, Braunschweig, 1870
  • (Anonymous): To clarify the polytechnic question, parts 1–5, in: Braunschweigische advertisements, March 1876
  • (Hans Zincken called Sommer): About the refraction of a light beam through a lens system, in: Monthly reports of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences (February 1876) and Journal for pure and applied mathematics , Vol. 82, Berlin 1876
  • (Hans Sommer): The emergence of the opera, in: Braunschweigische advertisements from February 27, 1880, extended version in: Bayreuther Blätter, ed. by Hans von Wolzüge , Bayreuth 1883, p. 273 ff.
  • (Hans Sommer): The opera Ludwig der Pious by Georg Caspar Schürmann, in: MONTHS FOR MUSIC HISTORY, ed. by the Society for Music Research, editor: Robert Eitner , Berlin 1882
  • (Hans Sommer): The appreciation of music, in: Der Kunstwart , Vol. 13–15, Munich 1898
  • (Hans Sommer): From the "International Music Society", in: Der Kunstwart , Vol. 6, Munich 1899
  • (Hans Sommer): Music in the People's Household, in: The Future, Vol. 51, 1908
  • (Hans Sommer): Richard Wagner memories of a Braunschweig native, Braunschweig 1913

(WP = world premiere)

Discography

(Selection)

literature

  • Hans Harting: On the history of the Voigtländer family, their workshops and employees. In: Central newspaper for optics and mechanics , Berlin 1924/1925
  • Erich Valentin : Hans Sommer. Way, work and deed of a German master. Braunschweig 1939.
  • Hans-Christoph Mauruschat: The appreciation of music. In: GEMA Nachrichten 160–166, Munich 1999–2002.
  • Hans-Christoph Mauruschat: “You can't do deeds with hope and effort”, portrait of the composer and natural scientist Hans Sommer. In: NMZ 49, July / Aug. 2000, p. 47f.
  • Carsten Grabenhorst: Voigtländer & Son. Braunschweig 2002.
  • Albrecht Dümling: Music has its value. Regensburg 2003.
  • Martin Albrecht-Hohmaier: Summer, Hans (Friedrich August). In: Ludwig Finscher (Hrsg.): The music in past and present. 2nd, revised edition, person part vol. 15, Kassel et al. 2006, col. 1045 f.
  • Geertje Andresen:  Summer, Hans Friedrich August. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 24, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-428-11205-0 , p. 567 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume II: Artists. Winter, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8253-6813-5 , pp. 645-647.
personal data
SURNAME Summer, Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zincken called Sommer, Hans Friedrich August (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and mathematician
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunschweig
DATE OF DEATH April 26, 1922
Place of death Braunschweig