Johann Friedrich Reichardt

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Johann Friedrich Reichardt after Anton Graff

Johann Friedrich Reichardt (born November 25, 1752 in Königsberg in Prussia , † June 27, 1814 in Giebichenstein near Halle ) was a German composer , music writer and critic .

Life

Reichardt was the son of the town musician Johann Reichardt and was trained in music and especially in playing the violin from childhood . When he was ten years old, his father went on concert tours in East Prussia with his “boy wonder”. At Kant's instigation , he studied law and philosophy in his hometown and in Leipzig from 1769 to 1771 . In 1771, however, he escaped a bourgeois career choice due to a virtuoso journey under the banner of " Sturm und Drang ". In 1774 he returned to Königsberg and became chamber secretary in Ragnit . In 1775, Friedrich II. , To whom he had sent his opera Lefest galanti as a test piece , appointed him to Johann Friedrich Agricola's place as royal Prussian court conductor. In the intended reform of the orchestra, however, he fought against the resistance of the musicians and the conservative musical taste of the king, so that he tried more and more to evade the service. In 1777 he married Juliane Benda and concentrated increasingly on writing and the composition of songs and instrumental works.

On the way back from his first trip to Italy in 1783, he stopped in Vienna , where he met Emperor Joseph II and Christoph Willibald Gluck . Further art trips to France and England did not lead to the long-term response he had hoped for - he reluctantly returned to Berlin . From 1786 he developed closer relationships with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Johann Gottfried Herder , Friedrich Schiller and Johann Georg Hamann . Further attempts (1788) to gain a foothold in Paris failed, but Reichardt was enthusiastic about the ideas of the revolution. After the publication of his Confidante Letters (1792), he was dismissed from his position as court music director in 1794 as a revolutionary sympathizer without a pension and then lived first in Hamburg , where he published the Journal France , then from 1794 in Giebichenstein near Halle (Saale). In 1796 he was pardoned and appointed saline director in Halle, from where he often went to Berlin to direct the performances of his compositions.

The "Kästner Kossatengut" in Giebichenstein he acquired became the " Inn of Romanticism ". Another trip to Paris (1803) dampened his enthusiasm for the French and their politics considerably: Reichardt became an opponent of Napoléon . When his estate was looted by French troops four years later, he fled to Danzig and became a patriot and freedom fighter. Napoléon's brother Jérôme in Kassel appointed the impoverished returnee as theater director in 1807. This interlude only lasted about nine months. In November 1809 he sought success in Vienna. The experience of Joseph Haydn , Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven made him - belatedly - open to the Viennese classic . But he soon retired to Giebichenstein, where he died lonely on June 27, 1814 from the consequences of a stomach ailment. His grave is in the courtyard of the Church of St. Bartholomew in Halle.

Reichardt's gravestone
Bronze bust in “Reichardts Garten” , Halle

Reichardt was constantly on the move: in 1783 in Italy , Switzerland , Vienna and Hamburg; 1785 and 1792 in London ; 1785/86/87, 1792, 1802/03 in Paris; 1790 in Italy; 1793 in Copenhagen and Stockholm . Contemporaries quickly forgot him and his work.

family

He was married twice. His first wife Juliane Benda was the daughter of his violin teacher, the composer Franz Benda , and a well-known singer, pianist and song composer. The couple had two sons and two daughters. The first son, Wilhelm (1777–1782), died early, the second also. The daughter Louise Reichardt (born April 11, 1779 in Berlin, † November 17, 1826 in Hamburg) was also known for her song compositions .

After his first wife died in childbed with their daughter Wilhelmine Juliane (1783–1839, later wife of Christian Steltzer ), he married Johanna Alberti (1754–1827) in 1783. She was the daughter of the deacon and poet Julius Gustav Alberti (1723–1772) from Hanover. It was also the second marriage of his wife, her first marriage to the lawyer and poet Peter Wilhelm Hensler (1742–1779) and who brought a son and two daughters into the marriage. Five children were born to him in the marriage:

  • Johanna (1784– after 1848) ∞ Henrich Steffens (1773–1845) philosopher and natural scientist
  • Friederike (1790–1869) ∞ Councilor Karl von Raumer (1783–1865) geologist, geographer and educator
  • Sophie (1795–1838) ∞ Ernst Wilhelm Jacob Radecke (1790–1873) Superintendent in Wernigerode

One son, Hermann, had an accident (1801) as a high school student in Magdeburg while skating, another, Carl Friedrich (1803–1871), architect in Hamburg, survived his father. The stepson August Wilhelm (Richard) Hensler (1772–1835) became a French colonel, the stepdaughter Charlotte Hensler (1776–1850) married the postal councilor Carl Philipp Heinrich Pistor (1778–1847), the other Wilhelmine Hensler (1777–1851) the privy councilor Carl Alberti (1763-1829).

Works

Reichardt gained a reputation as a composer in particular through his compositions for Goethe's songs, in which he was able to develop his individuality with full freedom, but no less through his Singspiele, an art form which he also with Goethe's assistance in his Claudine von Villa Bella (1789 ), Erwin and Elmire (1790), Jery ​​and Bätely (1790). He also set 49 songs by J. G. Herders to music. With the first addendum to the song appendix in the collection for freye and accepted masons (1780) he published masonic songs. His composition Bunt sind die Wälder from 1799 is one of the most famous German folk songs today , as is his If I Were a Vöglein , which he wrote a few years earlier on a text by Herder. His setting of the Passion libretto La passione di Gesù Cristo by Pietro Metastasio was performed with great success in Berlin in 1784 and in London and Paris in 1785.

His writings are consistently of lasting value, especially the letters of an observant traveler on music (1774–1776); About the German comic opera (1774); Musical art magazine (1781–1792); Studies for musicians and music lovers (1793); Familiar letters from Paris (1804); Familiar letters from Vienna (1810) and others.

The poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim is - in the afterword - dedicated to Reichardt. Probably in the expectation that Reichardt will set the lyrics to music. However, that did not happen.

Catalogs of works are available from Hanns Dennerlein (1929, piano works, DenR, Brook 1038), Rolf Pröpper (1965, stage works, PröR, Brook 1039) and Swantje Köhnecke (1998, Lieder, KöhR, Brook deest).

literature

swell

  • Christmas cantilena by Mathias Claudius, set to music by Johann Friederich Reichardt, Königl. Prussia. Capellmeister. Berlin, at the author's expense, 1786.
  • Eugen Lehnoff / Oskar Posner / Dieter A. Binder: Internationales Freemaurer-Lexikon, 6th edition, Herbig, Munich 2006, p. 697.

Documents

Letters from Johann Friedrich Reichardt from 1805, 1807 and 1808 are in the holdings of the Leipzig music publisher CFPeters in the Leipzig State Archives .

Web links

Commons : Johann Friedrich Reichardt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Johann Friedrich Reichardt  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Monument to Reichardt near Halle in the picture
  2. ↑ a b c Heinz Härtl: Correspondence III (1805-1806) . Walter de Gruyter, 2012, ISBN 978-3-11-025072-5 ( google.de [accessed on January 22, 2018]).
  3. ^ Hotel Petersburg built in 1843: View as a steel engraving by Gottheil / Poppel? , accessed January 16, 2013
  4. ↑ Ursula Jürgens: Rare stroke of luck in a treasure hunt. The rediscovery of the Metastasio Passion by Johann Friedrich Reichardt. (PDF)
personal data
SURNAME Reichardt, Johann Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German composer, music writer and critic
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1752
PLACE OF BIRTH Königsberg in Prussia
DATE OF DEATH June 27, 1814
Place of death Giebichenstein near Halle