Ludwig Nohl

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Ludwig Nohl

Ludwig Nohl (born December 5, 1831 in Iserlohn , † December 15, 1885 in Heidelberg ) was a German musicologist and music writer.

Life

After attending grammar school in Duisburg , Nohl first studied law at the universities in Bonn , Heidelberg and Berlin , where he also took music lessons from Siegfried Dehn and Friedrich Kiel . During his studies he became a member of the Alemannia Bonn fraternity in 1851 . From 1853 to 1856 he was a trainee lawyer , then traveled to France and Italy and then became a music teacher in Heidelberg. In 1860 he completed his habilitation with a thesis on Mozart and became a private lecturer for "History and Aesthetics of Music".

In 1864 Nohl moved to Munich , sought the acquaintance of Richard Wagner  - for whose works he was a writer - and in 1865 was honored with the title of professor at the University of Munich for a collection of Mozart letters from King Ludwig II . After Heinrich Carl Breidenstein in Bonn (1826) and Adolf Bernhard Marx in Berlin (1830), the extraordinary professorship created for Nohl in Munich in 1865 was the third of its kind and is therefore of great importance for the history of musicology as a university discipline. In 1868 he gave up the job to live as a freelance writer in Badenweiler . In 1872 he resumed teaching at Heidelberg University, where he taught the history and aesthetics of music until his death. At the same time, he was appointed lecturer at the Polytechnic in Karlsruhe in 1875 and professor there in 1880. (The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology later emerged from the facility .)

In 1865 he discovered the now-lost autograph of Beethoven's album sheet “ Für Elise ” from the “industrial teacher” Babeth Bredl in Munich , which he published for the first time in 1867 in his book Neue Briefe Beethoven .

Friedrich Nietzsche came across Nohl's Wagner biography in a hotel library in the early summer of 1888, in which he himself appeared as a Wagner fanatic. In 1888 Nietzsche had already become a bitter enemy of Wagner, so that he could only mock Nohl's elaborate. Of course, this did not prevent him from exploiting Nohl's book for his own polemics against Wagner. This is how he used it in The Wagner Case .

Nohl was one of the most widely read music writers of his time, as his musician biographies were published in large numbers in Reclam's Universal Library . Its significance for the present is clouded by the partly one-sided and partly unscientific view of music history: “Nohl went down in music history primarily as a Beethoven and Mozart researcher. The editions of letters and documents in particular, but also the biographies, contain valuable, but uncritical material. The musicians' letters have remained a much-cited, but overestimated (scientifically not always reliable) source up to the present day. One-sided Wagnerianism arose from Nohl's wrong assessment of the musical and dramatic development before Wagner ( Gluck and Richard Wagner (1870), among others). Numerous translations (not always the most substantial works) have made his name known abroad ”(Richard Schaal, 1961).

Robert Eitner characterizes Nohl's uncritical obsession with Wagner with the words: “Through these writings and countless newspaper articles in specialist, entertainment and political papers, he had finally written himself into a true maddening rage against everything that did not come from Wagner and Liszt. Every theme, every older master, had only to serve as the pedestal on which he raised Wagner and Liszt. He rose to the point of maddening contempt for everything that was composed before and alongside Wagner. His blindness went so far that he reviled the entire German people and used every opportunity to scorn it, only under the impression that Wagner and Liszt did not sufficiently adore it, whom he wanted to be recognized as the only ones who were to save art and humanity would have arisen at all. […] Or in another place: 'Meyerbeer's musical behavior is consistently the kind of ape who shows us the natural movements of the external and internal human being in a distortion that hurts deep feelings. It is a terrifying picture of inner poverty '. N. himself offers us a terrifying picture of absurdity in all these things. His judgments are as well screwed on one side as on the other and ridiculous, for example when he says of Elsa in Lohengrin: 'She is the woman of the future from whom we all have to hope for redemption'. Although the criticism passed his judgment on N. mercilessly, he did not allow himself to be controlled in his behavior; she finally kept silent about him. "

Part of Nohl's estate is in the Iserlohn City Archives .

Books

  • WA Mozart . An attempt from the aesthetics of music. Habilitation thesis for obtaining the venia docendi at the philosophical faculty of Heidelberg University , Heidelberg: Bangel and Schmitt, 1860
  • The Spirit of Tonkunst , Frankfurt / M. 1861
  • The Magic Flute. Reflections on the importance of dramatic music in the history of the human spirit , Frankfurt / M .: Sauerländer, 1862
  • Mozart , Stuttgart: Bruckmann, 1863
  • Inventory of the Beethoven estate, insofar as it was found in the estate ... Anton Schindler and is currently in the hands of Mrs. Marie Egloff ...: (current owner of this collection, Mr. Nowotny ...) recorded in Mannheim in June 1864 by Ludwig Nohl , Carlsbad 1864
  • Beethoven's life , 3 volumes, Vienna 1864, Leipzig 1867 and 1877 (the first scientific Beethoven biography)
  • Beethoven's letters, with a facsimile , Stuttgart 1865
  • Musical sketchbook , Frankfurt / M. 1866
  • Beethoven's New Letters , Stuttgart 1867
  • Musicians letters. A collection of letters from CW von Gluck , Ph. E. Bach , Jos. Haydn , Carl Maria von Weber and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1867
  • Mozart's letters , Salzburg: Taube, 1877
  • New sketchbook. For the knowledge of the German, especially the Munich music and opera conditions of the present , Munich: Carl Merhoff, 1869
  • New pictures from the life of music and its masters , Munich: Louis Finsterlin, 1870
  • Beethoven's breviary. Collection of passages extracted by himself from poets and writers of old and new times; together with a description of Beethoven's intellectual development , Leipzig: Ernst Julius Günther, 1870
  • Gluck and Wagner . On the development of musical drama , Munich: Louis Finsterlin, 1870
  • The Beethoven celebration and contemporary art. A souvenir , Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1871
  • Beethoven, Liszt , Wagner. A picture of the art movement of our century , Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1874
  • A silent love for Beethoven. From the diary of a young lady , Leipzig: Ernst Julius Günther, 1875
  • Music and music history. Address for the opening of his teaching activities at the Grand Ducal Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe on November 17, 1875, given by Ludwig Nohl , Karlsruhe: Müller, 1876
  • Our intellectual education , Leipzig: Schlömp, 1877
  • Mozart's life. For the educated of all classes told , 2nd edition, Leipzig: Günther, 1877
  • Beethoven, based on the descriptions of his contemporaries , Stuttgart: JG Cotta, 1877
  • Mozart based on the descriptions of his contemporaries , Leipzig: Thiel, 1880
  • General history of music, popularly presented. , Leipzig: Reclam, 1881
  • Mosaic. For the musically educated , Leipzig: Senf brothers , 1882
  • Richard Wagner's Significance for National Art , Vienna: Prochaska, 1883
  • Spohr , Leipzig: Reclam, 1884 (= musician biographies , volume 7)
  • The modern musical drama. For educated laypeople , 1884
  • The historical development of chamber music and its significance for the musician , Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1885

Essays

  • Beethoven's Tod , in: Westermann's illustrated German monthly books , Volume 18 (1864/65), pp. 620–650 ( digitized version )
  • Beethoven's unprinted letters , in: Westermann's illustrated German monthly books , Volume 19 (1865), pp. 306-313 ( digitized version )
  • A prayer from Beethoven. New Mittheilungen from his later life , in: Die Grenzboten , Vol. 2 (1873), pp. 42-120
  • Fischhof's handwriting. A contribution to Beethoven's life , in: Im neue Reich , vol. 9 (1879), pp. 313-330
  • Three friends of Beethoven. About Beethoven's relationship with Ignaz v. Gleichenstein, Stephan v. Breuning and Johann Malfatti , in: Allgemeine Deutsche Musikzeitung , Jg. 6 (1879), pp. 305–308, 313–315, 321–323, 329–331 and 337–339
  • Beethoven's last love , in: The Salon for Literature, Art and Society , Volume 1 (1880), pp. 537-545 ( digitized version )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Urs Sommer : Commentary on Nietzsche's “The Antichrist”. "Ecce homo". "Dionysus dithyrambs". "Nietzsche contra Wagner" = historical and critical commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's works, ed. from the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Vol. 6/2. Berlin / Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2013, pp. 515–516
  2. ↑ Cf. Andreas Urs Sommer : Commentary on Nietzsche's “The Wagner Case”. "Götzen-Dämmerung" (= historical and critical commentary on Friedrich Nietzsche's works. Vol. 6/1). De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2012, pp. 245 f., 480 f.
  3. ^ Richard Schaal: Nohl, Karl Friedrich Ludwig , in: Music in Past and Present , 1st Edition, Vol. 9, 1961, Col. 1551–1552
  4. ↑ Nohl, Ludwig . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie , Volume 23, 1886, pp. 756-757

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Ludwig Nohl  - sources and full texts
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personal data
SURNAME Nohl, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German musicologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Iserlohn
DATE OF DEATH December 15, 1885
Place of death Heidelberg