Hermann Pätzold

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Hermann Pätzold (born August 15, 1824 in Neudorf , Silesia , † February 6, 1861 in Königsberg ) was a German composer and conductor at the Königsberg Music Academy . He wrote orchestral, vocal and piano compositions as well as a setting for Käthchen von Heilbronn . Pätzold died at the age of 36 while conducting the oratorio Elias by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy .

biography

Hermann Pätzold was born as the son of the Lower Silesian sculptor Karl Friedrich Wilhelm Pätzold (1797–1874) and his wife Christiana Elisabeth Koritzky (1799–1870). He had the two sisters Luise and Bertha. The descendants of his nephew Karl Nordheim are the cantor Gottfried Steffen, the media artist Chris Ziegler and the musician Silke Wolter.

Pätzold received his musical training in Breslau ( Wrocław ). At first he was a scientific and musical tutor to Count Yorck von Wartenburg . King Friedrich Wilhelm IV met him in Erdmannsdorf (Mysłakowice), who promoted him from then on. Pätzold attended the Royal Music Institute in Berlin , after which the king gave him the position of palace organist and music lessons in the Königsberg orphanage . In addition to these offices, Pätzold worked as a singing teacher in schools and as a private music teacher, especially in piano playing. For almost seven years he was conductor at the Music Academy in Königsberg as the successor to Eduard Sobolewski ; around 1860 he took over the management of the organ teaching institute in Königsberg, whereby he was also shortlisted for the management of the institute for church music .

Upon his sudden death, Pätzold left behind his wife and a young daughter. It is acknowledged that he was "a righteous character, as an artist pure and strict".

A handwritten letter from Hermann Pätzold that he wrote to his parents when he was 20 years old (1844) from Breslau has come down to us. In it he asks for a new skirt for his private tutoring and reports on the performance of a passage from the schoolmaster's cantata by Georg Philipp Telemann on the birthday of Friedrich Wilhelm IV:

“I had to perform the schoolmaster in front of all the seminarians and the teachers. I couldn't understand how they came up with me, but it didn't help, however much I resisted, I had to go there. I succeeded admirably in the bass part; because my whole being was in a cheerful mood that day, and so I didn't just get from everyone. Seminarians a constant Bravo, but also from the teachers and senior teacher Scholz said, now they will be the j. Pätzold issue the doctor's diploma. It was just not easy, dear parents, to appear in front of so many and learned gentlemen on top of that, because they can judge every gesticulation, so I was all the more pleased when I earned laurels. On the following day, when I went to the Bernhardin Library with him, Mr. Löschke gave me a friendly pat on the armpit and the like. testified that he was delighted with the successful performance, as did the other teachers. How I was envied! "

A travel diary has been preserved from Pätzold's father in which he describes his trip to Königsberg, where he tried to clarify the circumstances of his son's death. He witnessed the coronation of Wilhelm I , which he also described.

Musical work

As a practical artist, Pätzold had his greatest strength in organ playing, which he practiced enthusiastically. He wrote several orchestral, organ, choir and salon compositions, some of which he had performed himself. In addition to a chorale book, he published the lyric album Op. 2 (eight pieces for pianoforte), women's choirs and Nachklänge Op. 5 . The three four-hand pieces were published by Julius Schuberth and Comp. in Hamburg.

criticism

Pätzold's Lyric Album Op. 2 in eight pieces compared the contemporary critics with the album leaves Op. 124 by Robert Schumann ; a work to which the Pätzoldsche is a kind of “counterpart”: “If you enjoy sunny combinations in executed motifs everywhere in the work, whereby the lyrical element is faithfully preserved and not evaporated in reflection, then on the other hand there is also an excellent one handled harmony full of pretty features and spicy moments. "

To the aftermath Op. 5 it is said that it is “a playfully playful piece, its rhythms easily slide along”.

Death during the performance

The magazine Signals for the Musical World (1861) reported in detail on the artist's death:

“I am deeply moved to report that during the performance of Mendelssohn's“ Elias ”in Koenigsberg on February 6th, the conductor, Hermann Pätzold, fell down dead while conducting, right after the first subject of the overture! What a terribly deafening blow this event was for the numerous performance staff and for the audience, which spread from the hall to the anteroom, everyone will feel! An exhausting job and the long rehearsals, which “Elias” (whose performance was most vividly desired by the eternal one), may have excited and exhausted the dutiful and art-loving conductor, so that the moment of the performance, perhaps connected caused a kind of stroke of the brain, lungs or nerves with other causes, e.g. heat of the hall, and in fact in one of the most beautiful moments of the respected artist: he fell in full honor and he himself conducted Mendelssohn's dull tones of mourning with the conductor's baton, the had to sound at the moment of his death. No musician has died more beautifully and probably never an artist at all! "

literature

  • Hugo Riemann: Music Lexicon. Volume 2, Paderborn 2015, ISBN 978-3-8460-8633-9 .
  • Rudolf Vogler: The music magazine "Signals for the musical world" 1843-1900. Bosse, Regensburg 1975, ISBN 3-7649-2589-2 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hugo Riemann: Music Lexicon. Volume 2, Leipzig 8th edition 1916, p. 827.
  2. ↑ Award for life's work. In: Official Journal of the Sömmerda district. No. 50 / December 30, 2014 ( landkreis-soemmerda.de PDF).
  3. ^ Bavarian State Opera Biographies
  4. ↑ Participation as oboist in the production of the LP Zahraj Nam Rejku Sorbian folklore with Sprjewjan , Amiga 1990.
  5. ↑ studio / for music and therapy
  6. ↑ a b c d Nekrolog, In: Signals for the musical world . Leipzig 1861, 19th year, No. 12, p. 127.
  7. ^ Hans Huchzermeyer: Contributions to the life and work of the church musician Ernst Maschke (1867–1940) as well as to the history of the church music institutes in Königsberg / Prussia (1824–1945). Diss. Paderborn 2012, p. 81.
  8. ^ Letter of November 3, 1844.
  9. ↑ Stefan Wolter: The Prince and the Proradies. Hall 2009, p. 106.
  10. ↑ Signals for the musical world. Volume 18, No. 35, Leipzig 1860, p. 414.
  11. ↑ Signals for the musical world. 19th vol., No. 15, Leipzig 1861, p. 172.
personal data
SURNAME Pätzold, Hermann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer and conductor at the Musical Academy in Königsberg
DATE OF BIRTH August 15, 1824
PLACE OF BIRTH Neudorf , Silesia
DATE OF DEATH February 6, 1861
Place of death Koenigsberg