Marianne Kirchgeßner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kirchgessner's Concert in Vienna (Mozart's K. 617)

Marianne Kirchgeßner (born June 5, 1769 in Bruchsal , † December 9, 1808 in Schaffhausen ) was the most successful and important glass harmonica virtuoso of her time.

Life

At the age of four, Marianne Kirchgeßner went blind as a result of the flapping . At the age of eleven she came to the Karlsruhe conductor Joseph Aloys Schmittbaur , who endeavored to get her musical education. In early 1791 she started a concert tour that lasted several years. She came to Linz and Vienna and made the acquaintance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , who composed the quintet for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and violoncello KV 617 and the Adagio KV 356 / 617a for glass harmonica solo for her.

Kirchgeßner's fatherly confidante and impresario was the renowned music publisher as well as Heinrich Philipp Carl Boßler, an expedition councilor from Brandenburg-Onolzbach .

She also visited Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg and Magdeburg during the tour in 1792. She lived in London for two and a half years from 1794 to 1796 and then undertook further concert tours between 1796 and 1800 to Hamburg, Copenhagen, Danzig, Königsberg and Petersburg. In 1800 she settled in Gohlis near Leipzig. However, she continued her tours and gave concerts in Hanover and Frankfurt / Main (1801), Stuttgart, Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna and Prague (1802–1808), as well as Karlsbad , where she met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Karlsbad in the summer of 1808 . She died during a concert tour, coming from Stuttgart, after an accident with the stagecoach in Schaffhausen.

Quotes

Kirchgessner's Concert in Vienna (1806)

Bruno Hoffmann writes in "A Life for the Glass Harp":

“She was blind at the age of four after suffering from smallpox, but despite all that, she showed great talent at playing the piano very early on. Joseph Anton Reichsherr von Beroldingen , Domkapitular von Speyer, enabled the ten-year-old to train on the glass harmonica with Kapellmeister Schmittbaur in Karlsruhe and had him build a glass harmonica for 100 ducats. On her first concert tour in the spring of 1791 she came via Stuttgart - Munich to Vienna, where she played at court. Mozart had already got to know the glass harmonica through Marianne Davies ; but only for Marianne Kirchgeßner did he compose his famous quintet for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and violoncello (KV617) and his solo adagio in C (KV 617a) on May 23, 1791 . She gave the first performance of the work in the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna on August 19, 1791 , with Mozart himself, probably on the viola. "[...]
“Marianne Kirchgeßner traveled to Leipzig, Dresden, Poland, Berlin (where she played four times at court), Hamburg and London. In London in particular, which at the time was the refuge of many European artists from the chaos of the Napoleonic war, she encouraged well-known composers to write works for her instrument. Since she, as a blind person, possessed an extraordinary faculty of comprehension and she was probably only given many new works on the piano, some of the original works might be lost forever in this way. After her three-year stay in London, Copenhagen, the Baltic countries and Petersburg were further stages of her success. In 1799 she settled on an estate in Gohlis near Leipzig. Her “last” concert tour, as she herself said, was to “romantic Switzerland” in 1808. After concerts in Stuttgart, where she played Antonin Reicha's SOLO POUR HARMONICA AVEC ACCOMPAGNEMENT DE L'ORCHESTRE, and in Tübingen, where the Bach chorale played as an encore, 'What God does, that is well done' should be her last play on the glass harmonica, she contracted a chest fever in a stagecoach accident in a ravine in rough November weather, on which she succumbed at the age of 39 on December 9, 1808 in Schaffhausen, a few days before the concert planned with the Musikkollegium ". [...]
"But nothing of this great artist has come to our day, no pictorial representation, no biography that her constant companion, Rath Boßler from Speyer, had promised after her death, no glass harmonica, no sheet music - just a hauntingly beautiful, blond curl, which the Schaffhausen City Library keeps in G. Müller's estate. "

literature

  • Carl Ferdinand Pohl:  Kirchgeßner, Marianna . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, p. 7 f.
  • Bruno Hoffmann: A life for the glass harp , Netherland-Verlag, Backnang 1983, ISBN 3-923947-06-2
  • Hermann Josef Ullrich : The blind glass harmonica virtuoso Marianne Kirchgeßner and Vienna. An artist of the sensitive time , Verlag Hans Schneider, Tutzing 1971
  • Harald Strebel : Mozart's blind glass harmonica player Marianne Kirchgessner and the sudden end of her planned trip to Switzerland in Schaffhausen: Mishap to a relationship with Heinrich Philipp Bossler. In: In signo Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Mitteilungen der MGZ, 19 vol., No. 32, March 2009, pp. 31–68.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Schleuning: The citizen rises - history of German music in the 18th century . JB Metzler , Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-476-01797-4 , pp. 208 .
personal data
SURNAME Kirchgeßner, Marianne
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kirchgessner, Marianne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German glass harmonica virtuoso
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1769
PLACE OF BIRTH Bruchsal
DATE OF DEATH December 9, 1808
Place of death Schaffhausen